Day 6: Whew...

First off: No news on courts - so that really bummed us out. I don't think they got any word that files were ready, so Wadson didn't get anything.

Okay next: Anyone who says volunteer work is easy at GLA is nuts! Today was crazy, exciting, unexpected, overwhelming and FULFILLING.

You just never know what the day will hold. And given it is Christmas time AND we had a storm, it all made for one interesting day. You saw the earlier post about the storm... well, we headed up to the balcony and were in shock at the mess it left us. The tarp was blown off, sun shades gone, toys everywhere and water was 3-4 inches deep. What a mess. We did our best to put things away, but the rain and wind continued until late afternoon, so there was not much point to working on the water problem...

So Dixie let us know we were going to put together 80 (yes 80) Christmas food bags for the GLA employees! These were massive bags with rice, beans, pasta, sugar, oil, tomato sauce, milk, cereal and candy bars. So we started an even bigger assembly line that yesterday, for the other gifts... Only this time we had to take bulk bags of rice, beans and sugar and individually bag them. So Tanya and I took the lead (after getting directions from Dixie, of course!) and got the team-work going. The only problem was that we ran out of some items, so we had to wait for Ernst go buy some more items... We were making good time before than happened!

In the meantime, Joe and I changed rooms... moved all of our items (how on earth we have so much stuff is beyond me!) The new room is clean and freshly painted, which is fabulous!

Then... it was back to finishing the food bag project. It was so much work, but totally worth our while! It will be so much fun to pass everything out for Christmas! :-)

Next - we did 1 hour of baby watching in the living room (couldn't go outside as the weather was still awful.) Stephanie said the weather reminded her of the tropical storms last fall... it was that bad.

So... we had 2 more hours of baby watching, but Joe and I made the executive decision that we needed to go work on the balcony some more. If it didn't get cleaned up, we wouldn't be able to go up there for the next few days... not good. It stopped raining, which allowed us to work on the water situation. 2 hours later - with the help of a squeegee, broom and mop/bucket - we had most of the water cleaned up. It was SO hard because the drainage holes are about 2 inches in diameter... not a lot of water going through at once. I have already taken my extra strength Tylenol because my back muscles will be killing me tomorrow!

It was then time for dinner. No rest for the weary as we needed to get the table set.

After dinner we spent an hour with Samuel, but we decided we needed to call it a night (we were going to decorate cookies with Aaron and Tanya, but all decided to wait until tomorrow.)

We are both thoroughly exhausted. I feel like I ran a marathon today...

Who knows what tomorrow will bring! At the end of the day... IT'S ALL GOOD.

Tonight...  he was in a cute mood.  :-)
 

Our first glimpse of the balcony

Aaron with the squeegy

Sweeping the water through the 2" hole!  :-(

Assembly line!

Joe, filling bags of rice

Vivianne and the chocolates (she is the one who went through the sliding glass door.)

Bags of beans...

Finished food bags

Our "new" room

Tanya & Laurie, making Christmas cookies