A Service Morning

This morning, a lad in my ward held a service project. He's working on his Eagle Scout, and this morning was his project. He was doing hygiene bags for people in Honduras maybe? Ah I can't remember exactly. So this morning, he asked the ward to help him put them together. Nobody was sure how many people would show up, and there were so many that showed up! We had set aside a couple of hours, and we completely finished in 23 minutes, with a 5 or so minute break in the middle, to get more bags after we had run out. We celebrated with pics at the end.

A Tall Ladder

Today, as I was sitting here, playing some candy crush and watching TV, I got a text from Chelle, asking if I had a ladder, a long one. There’s a smoke alarm in her house, that’s really high, that was chirping with the battery dying. There are many ladders I have access to, either through them being at my house, or at my in-laws, or any of my sibling-in-laws. After sitting and discussing it for a while, Husband and I decided it might be a good idea to go look at her house, to get an idea of what we needed. We checked out the situation, and then went to get the ladder.

We strapped the ladder to the roof of the car, and then made our way over to her house again. After unloading it, and getting it inside, we found that one of the legs wasn’t quite right – there was a thing on the bottom, that you put down to stabilize it, it was broken. So, Husband stayed down there, holding it, while I climbed up.

I got up there, figured out how to get the smoke alarm off the wall, figured out how to get the door off, and replaced the battery.

And it worked! The smoke alarm has a new battery, and we were done. We put the ladder back on the roof, and were done for the night. I was flying high from the adrenaline of getting up that high, and it felt pretty good to have lived through.

Merry Happy!

Merry Christmas everyone! On Christmas Eve, at the in-laws house, they usually find a person in the neighborhood that could use a bit of a hand-up. (Is that a phrase? Probably not.) So we spend some of the evening putting together said thing, and then deliver it under the guise of night. This year, we were looking for a way to make sort of a money Christmas tree, and found a Styrofoam wreath. The wheels started to churn in my head, I realized we could pin the money that we (they) were giving around the wreath. So, after finding some pins, I got to work. I pinned a row of money, then another row, and finished up with a row of 1-dollar bills, to hide the money underneath. I hung some money using some ribbon, then finished it with a bow.

Snazzy, eh? I was proud of my work. We wrote a poem to go with the money, so they’d make sure to dig a little to find it all, and of course, I wanted to get a pic with it.

We piled into the car, and off we went. We took a back road to the house, and the driver waited in the getaway vehicle. We crept up, and off Husband went to put the wreath on the door, and ring the bell. He dressed up as Santa for this, beard and all. I was dying laughing. After we rang the bell, we hid behind a fence, to make sure they got it. After we waited a minute, Husband said he wasn’t sure if the bell rang, so he went to retrieve it, and put it on the other door.

As soon as he turned the corner to the door, the first one opened! I panicked, and got behind the fence, praying he wouldn’t come out here. I started to casually walk away, like I hadn’t been involved in this, when suddenly, Husband appeared behind me. We waited at the fence for a second, then both of us peeked around it, to see the progress.

Busted!

The guy had poked his head out of the door right at that moment and saw us, and we were exposed. In his best Santa voice, Husband wished them a Merry Christmas, and told them we’d left them a present on the other door. Then, we turned and ran down the icy sidewalk, laughing all the way back to the car.

It was a fun experience, even with the hiccups. I love doing this sort of thing, I was so glad to be involved! I hope you all had Merry days as well!