Calling All Volunteers

Think about the last time you volunteered some of your time to help the community. (No, helping your friend move between homes in exchange for pizza and beer doesn't count.)

I can remember being required to volunteer a certain number of hours every year when I was in high school.  I volunteered at assisted living facilities near our home. I remember bright lighting, small rooms, terrible smells, and sad faces. Despite those things, I really enjoyed spending time with the residents there and my volunteer hours went by very quickly.

More recently, I did some volunteer work with the Walnut Creek Open Space Foundation.  They have an ongoing project in the vast open space where volunteers and staff constantly check the health of Oak trees planted in the last decade or two. These little trees need protection from the weather and from critters like voles, in order to grow tall and large. A strong man could probably rip most of them out right now, even though they've been growing for years! I enjoyed working outside and learning to appreciate how long it really takes for the little seedlings to grow into magnificent trees with rope swings. This was my favorite volunteer work. I liked clearing weeds and working in the sun. It was nice to be outside and active.

Unfortunately, the greatest need for volunteers is more likely helping other people, rather than checking up on little trees; and this can be very hard work. When Casey and I heard of a need for volunteers to work with children at a homeless shelter located on the property of a local church, I immediately raised our hands to fill the position. "We'll do it!" (Actually it was more of a very enthusiastic email response.) We would be assisting with homework and play time for children of all ages.  Sounds fun, right?

It honestly was a lot of fun, but it was pretty terrible at the same time. Small rooms and sad faces.  The amazing church hosting these families allows the Winter Nights Shelter of Walnut Creek to set up several family-size tents in a large auditorium room on their campus. Several classrooms are attached to this room, as well as restrooms and an industrial kitchen.  The sanctuary is the next building over, and dinner was served in a room attached to it.  We arrived and helped little boys and older girls with a variety of different homework questions. Casey solved math. I had a book report presented to me. Stories were read, and then we found coloring books.

While coloring, I taught one little girl about sharing. She insisted all of the coloring books were hers, so I had to explain that they were for everyone to share. Her eyes told me that she probably didn't have much that was just hers, and so she clung to the idea that these books belonged to her. She looked at me with hurt when I had to tell her that the other little girls could color in them too. I can't imagine being 8 years old and homeless.

Another little girl crawled up on my lap and wanted to just be held. She was very young and wanted attention, but Mom had another child in her arms. She never said one word the entire evening, even though I'm pretty sure she was old enough to talk. A lot of the kids just wanted to be noticed. They waited their turns to show us what they were doing and were happy to let us help them. It was fun, but it was hard for us. It was hard to see them and know some of their basic needs weren't being met. It was hard to know that they went to school with other kids who had homes and wonder how that made school life for them. And it was hard to think about all of the other families who weren't spending the night inside a warm and safe shelter. Temperatures reached freezing a few hours after we left the shelter. We were home in our beds, with our arms around one another. Our heat was on, but our hearts were already warmed from the work. We really have a lot to be thankful for.

There are a lot of ways to reach out and help the less fortunate in your community. It's even more important during non-holiday months, when there are far less people volunteering.  For volunteer opportunities, check out www.govoluntr.com ; you can search by date or location. They have one-time and ongoing projects. It's a great resource and a wonderful company!

Weekend celebrations

I keep an old-school, paper day-planning calendar in my purse. I could probably learn to use my phone or some other electronic calendar system, which would save me from the hysterical moments when I can't find my little book, but I prefer filling in all of the daily boxes with our planned activities. And month after month, MOST of the days have something planned.  It's no wonder we're already most of the way through November and we can't believe it's gone by this fast.

Last weekend we had the honor of joining family and friends for celebrations on both Saturday and  Sunday:

Saturday morning we drove to Petaluma where lots of my in-laws were gathered to celebrate our little nephews first birthday. I've pretty much never understood the idea of having a first birthday until now. I always just imagined they were mostly a reason for friends with children to get together and have a party. But little one year old Miles definitely knew this party was for him! And the other children did too. Even the very little ones remembered when it had been their own birthday and they talked about it.

One year olds are smart. They are cute and fun and this is the first celebration of their lives that is all about them. While it's unlikely they'll remember this birthday forever, it teaches them that they have a special day and gives them something to be excited over. Though it seemed to me like they get excited over just about everything. *Excitement* OhhHHHhhh, balloons!! *Excitement*

 

Since it's not enough for us to ever have just one awesome day of the weekend, after a great Saturday spent catching up with lots of family, Sunday rolled around and we spent it celebrating the new citizenship status of one of our friends! (And some other stuff.)

 



Sunday afternoon we left our house headed to Sacramento. A little over an hour later we arrived at the Cal Expo center where the State Fair is held annually.  The place is huge and we were attending two separate events here this day.

Our first stop was the Crossroads of the West gun show. While I generally enjoy walking around and looking at all of the great items at these shows, we arrived later than we had intended and there was only an hour left for the vendors to have their goods displayed, so we decided to only purchase one $14 admission, and sent Casey in to look for what we needed.  Unfortunately for him, most of the sellers were already packing up their stuff even though there was still a solid hour left. I understand wanting to get on the road after a tiring weekend at work, but it's unfair for the paying consumer that they're being cheated of that hour. Perhaps they should offer free admission at first sight of seller flight. Casey found one of the items he needed at an outrageous price that he finally talked the seller down from. He also looked at ammunition and the jaw-dropping price tags on this too. Last year was a different story and we found lots of good deals on items here. What happened?!

I walked around the gigantic parking lot (yes, for fun) until he called me and we headed to the second event, the Snowbomb Ski and Board Festival.  The previous weekend it was held in San Francisco, next weekend it will be San Jose, and this weekend it was Sac-town.  Free lift tickets for attendees brought a large crowd, but since it was later in the day we had no line getting in. We each snagged a couple free lift tickets and then browsed the winter gear on display.  Casey needs new equipment but we didn't plan on buying anything this particular weekend. We did browse the clothing section and tried on some beanies, helmets, and goggles. Unfortunately, we were able to find every item we liked at a lower price online. What is the point of paying to come to a festival like this if you're not going to get a better deal than just buying the items on your own?  We left empty-handed and let down by the greedy vendors.

I guess it's more accurate to say that Amy left empty-handed and Casey.... well.... as you can see.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since it'd be impossible to have this much fun without any food all day, I'm going to take a moment to share what happened next. Thanks to my handy food-finding app, we searched for "nachos", and were directed to Oscar's Very Mexican Food in West Sacramento.

 

Most people do not stop for food on their way to a BBQ dinner party. We are not most people. We stopped and ate the best nachos I've ever had. Real cheese baked onto light, crispy chips, spicy salsa on a nearby salsa bar with jalapeno slices, and beans, sour cream, and fresh guacamole. It was mouth heaven! And it was exactly what we needed to survive the hour drive to El Sobrante to see our friends for one last hoorah before we could go home and call it a weekend.

 



 

 

Most people don't spend a lot of time thinking about citizenship. Casey is a dual citizen of the United States and France. I am a US citizen. Our good friend Sy considered herself an American because she has been raised here, but she was born in Cambodia, in a small enough village that she didn't have a birth certificate to acknowledge her birth. On Independence Day 2013, she married our friend Corey, who is a US citizen and wounded veteran for this country.  For the last several months she has worked hard to obtain her citizenship. Her mission was complicated by the missing birth certificate. But finally her day, her moment to truly be recognized as a legal citizen, had arrived! She renounced all princes, former government or loyalties to Cambodia, swore to take up arms if necessary to defend her country, and took an oath of loyalty to the United States. She was given a small flag when it was all over.  Congratulations, Sy! 

 

We celebrated this moment with her, her husband, and several friends over great food and good laughs. Lots of smiles and hugs, and before we knew it, another weekend had come and gone. And it was another good one.

 

A Day in Half Moon Bay

Destination: Surfer's Beach

While Half Moon Bay isn't that far from our home (it's about 60 miles away) we cannot expect to make it there in an hour. Especially with all of the cool places to stop on the way.

And, we're off!

We left home last weekend with a plan to stop in San Francisco for a snowboarding festival and perhaps grab some food. From there we were going to head down to Half Moon Bay and hopefully see some big waves.

The snow fest attendees were in a line wrapping around AT&T park so we skipped this part of our adventure and drove to SF's Valencia neighborhood for a trip to my husband's favorite gravy-makers: a restaurant called The Pork Store.  With a name like that it's not surprising they have an amazing sausage gravy. It's without question the best breakfast gravy I've ever had. What is surprising is their selection of vegan and vegetarian items.  Most carnivores don't think twice about their green-eating friends when they dine out, but menus are often geared toward animal-inclusive dishes.  The Pork Store cares. Out of curiosity I ordered the vegan sausage the first time I saw it, and I have ordered it on every visit since; I highly recommend stopping in here and trying it. (It's extra good when dipped in the sausage gravy.) Nom! If it's a Saturday afternoon and you're not in the mood for breakfast, the place next door has $1 oysters all day and pitchers of ice cold adult beverages.

With full bellies we resumed our journey and found ourselves on the beautiful highway leading through and past South San Francisco. The large San Andreas Lake crept along the road with us, making the drive a little bit prettier than it already was. We ended up stopping again in Hillsborough. My husband calls this "the town with no sidewalks". The residents don't want riff-raff like us coming through, or something like that. Hearing this made it imperative that we cruise through the neighborhoods and check out the homes. It's a very pretty community.  Lower Crystal Springs Reservoir is not far off the freeway and the park has the wonderful Sawyer Camp Trail leading around the water. Even though there's no shore-access, it's a great place to stop and stretch your legs.

We turned onto Half Moon Bay Road. The slow traffic ahead didn't bother us much - we had more stops to make! A brightly colored sign for Lemos Farm caught our eye and we headed up their driveway. Children everywhere! This place might be fun for adults with kids. There was a train and ponies and games. We didn't even park - just drove through the HUGE parking lot and turned around. Way too many kids for us.

Several pumpkin farms were still open and since it was only a few days past Halloween we decided to stop at Marsh & Sons farm and buy a couple. My husband hates when I over-react but as I picked up a moldy pumpkin and squashed my hand into it's bug-filled bottom, I screamed so loud that people stopped what they were doing and stared for a minute. We cautiously checked a few others. Were they really trying to sell their moldy pumpkins? Back to the car!

We drove past a few Christmas tree farms. Did you know the average home tree takes about ten years to grow? It can take a hundred years for the giant ones used commercially. We made one last stop at Smith Field. We had finally reached Half Moon Bay and wanted to now find Surfer's Beach, where the Maverick's competition takes place. It was late in the day and we were pretty tired from all the fun; it was the perfect time to sit down and watch the waves. Our map took us to a cliffy area where we hiked down to the sand. The sand was noticeably soft and warm. Smart beach-goers would've worn sandals, but we really didn't mind. We went home that night with a great day behind us and a little sand in our shoes. Life's good.