Luminries

My best running buddy friend and neighbor had this idea to do a luminary event for our neighborhood.   She wanted it to be a service project for her children to help raise money for something.   Last year she mentioned this to me at about December NearlyChristmas-ish and I said something like, “that sounds like a great idea” and didn’t say anything else.    This year we talked about it in November and there was time to plan it and do it right so I said something like, “hey, I’d really like to do that luminary thing with you this year, let’s get to planning it.”

And we have.   The planning is done, the ordering of estimated supplies was made, the calculation of percentage of funds to go to the hospital was announced and a Signup Genius page invitation was created.   We have pre-sold over one-thousand luminaries for our neighborhood.   On December 19th, we’re meeting at our clubhouse, neighbors will pick up bags of sand, luminary bags and candles and pay $10 for each package of ten luminaries.    Over $7.50 per ten-pack will go to towards the hospital.

Today we put bags and candles into larger paper bags, ready for pickup.   We scooped sand into produce plastic bags.  You know those thin bags you put apples or tomatoes or other produce in?    Those suckers are sturdy.   You can put ten pounds of sand into one of them and tie them shut and they hold up if you’re not too rough with them.   We tried to come up with some sort of “reuse” plan and those bags were great because they were just getting sent back to the grocery store for recycling.

My garage is packed with sand, bags and candles in preparation for the 19th.   We’re ready for 1200 luminaries to be sold.   We’re getting close to that number already.   The neighborhood should look lovely on the 19th.   We hope the message of giving of your time to help others will be one my children and my neighbor’s children understand as well.

The Big Boy Update:  My son loves my neighbor’s four girls.  I think he tried to impress them the entire day while they were here.  He didn’t run out of energy even through two movies and pizza.   It only went downhill at the very end of the night when he started pulling his penis out in the living room.   As it turns out, it was itching badly from some eczema and it wasn’t him trying to take it “to the next level” with the ladies.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter has been focused on drawing and coloring a lot lately.   She colored in over the last three days one of those “Velvet Elvis” sheets (as I like to call them).  It was a 18”x24” poster with a geometric design in white, surrounded by black fuzzy material.   You can color anywhere that’s white, but not on the black.   This works very well for my daughter given her limited vision.  She was so proud of it when she finished that I put it on our refrigerator so we can appreciate it over the next week or so.