Habitat for Humanity - Waterloo

About 7 months ago I signed up at a Volunteer Fair to help with Habitat for Humanity when the Waterloo build was ready to start. I got the call last week and have started helping. I volunteered for Parking, Registration and Food, any of those three...right now I'm on Parking duty, it's an early start and I'm volunteering 3 days a week.

I couldn't believe the difference in the four houses from one day to the next. The first day there was only the cement foundation, day 2 each home had all the wood sticks attached! They are fast!!!

Each family that is picked to live in these homes have to contribute 500 hours (family combined) labour, if the family has a single parent they have to contribute 250 hours. Their mortgages are either interest free or very low interest and are amortized over a period the family can afford to repay. It's a great great organization and I feel honoured to be involved with it...

And another Dang Twang...

ha ha ha !!! Rick's brother Chris, his son Sandbox, Rick and I went to Port Rowan on Saturday August 25th for a Bluegrass Jam. It started at 2 pm and was very low key. As it turns out it was in a very small campground and the campers were the bluegrass musicians. They were all really good and a Jam it was. Everyone one was walking around with beer, cept for us of course. Around 4 o'clock the guys went into the town to get beer...we had so much fun. We ended up leaving during the supper break and coming back for the evening part. The campers gave us beer and wouldn't take anything for it. We made lots of new friends, vowed to come back next year and camp. Chris said he'd come to Ontario next year, same time :-) We left around 10 pm so we could be back to Bryan's so Sandbox could watch the Ultimate Fighting match on the free satellite. I went straight to bed and the guys ordered pizza and watch the fights. I was a little sluggish the next day but that didn't stop us all from heading to London to see Shane and his truck in the Canadian Nationals Truck Show. It was darn hot! Shane was happy to see us, some of the trucks were pretty cool...

and another dang twang....

Flamboro Speedway

I pretended we were going here for the boys...Rick and Ian, our son in law...but really it was for me! I absolutely love the stock cars. the loud noise is so exciting!

I remember when rick, shane and bryan and I would go and see the stock car races at the ex every wednesday night. shane used to get admission tickets as a bonus from delivering his flyers. they eventually closed it down because of the noise and it being located so close to residential neighbourhoods.

at flamboro admission was $20 and what a great night that was!!!

African Children's Choir

wow, what a treat this was. I had heard of this group of kids, saw them on Oprah earlier in the year and also saw them on American Idol Gives Back. My neighbors mentioned that they were hosting this group at their church in St. Agatha in the middle of August. I was excited to hear that I could go and Rick's daughter and I were honoured to be their guests.

This group of children ranged in age from 10 to 12 years old. The kids usually tour for two years and then go back to Africa to school. They go to school 7 days a week and consider it a grand privilege. There were 22 in the choir and were amazing, they all introduced themselves and told us what they wanted to be when they grew up, it was so interesting, brought tears to your eyes.

thanks nikki and mark for the invite, a memorable evening for sure...