Service Project and Baseball

We had a busy couple of days with youth events. The first was a service project aimed at sprucing up the church. There were a lot of "things" tucked away in the closets and storage areas of the church that were inherited along with the building. Broken chairs, old sports equipment, basketballs that lost their bumps, couch covers, Christmas decorations that have seen better days, just loads of things to sort, organize, and sometimes toss.



Outside there was a crew working on fixing--yup, a retaining wall (no!!! our nemesis!!!) Buck wisely chose not to participate, other than encouragement and moral support. However, without a knowledgeable supervisor, the wee little wall had to be built twice :) Good thing it is only two pavers tall.





When the dumpster was full, the youth pastor's wife put the kids to work cleaning the church--vacuuming, sweeping, scrubbing toilets, washing windows, cleaning rugs, emptying trash; it was a whirlwind of work! (Some of which needed to be done several times, because not all teens are trained in cleaning a space the size of a church :) 






At home the next day, I was dealing with this mess. I have to say, printers--ugh! This was supposed to be my wonderous decade-long friend! But then it started off-setting print lines, refusing to spit certain colors, throwing out error codes, grinding like there were coffee beans inside, and refusing to succumb to my online tutorial cleaning and repair efforts. We even invested in fresh ink cartridges instead of refills--to no avail. 

Thankfully, we can return the whole shebang since it is less than two years old. The pricey ink gets returned too. As you can see, I've created (before this fiasco) my own print test sheet. I just save it in my document files for the special times like this when I fight with electronics for the better part of the day (it's been a much longer fight than that, but this was my final straw fix it or kick it morning). Farewell cloggy Epson, let's see who takes your place!



Later that day . . . the youth group scored tix to a nearby baseball tournament. Buck had been hoping to check said tournament out, and a few things shifted last minute at work (so Buck didn't have to be in before dawn), and we joined the crowd. And crowd it was! The youth pastor said this was more than double the 16 or so he'd taken to a baseball tournament event previously. It was a little nerve-wracking for me, keeping track of that many pre-teens and teens, but we all made it there and everyone arrived home safely afterwards. Even the scary weather circling around us didn't put a damper on our evening of fun.






My favorite part of the event was the wave . . . there were a few rowdy boys in the next section over, who seemed adept at inspiring the crowd to participation (for better or for worse). I've seen the wave at sporting events before, but they got it to go in slow motion, backwards, in fast forward, and it became so fun to watch that the players on the field couldn't keep their eyes off the stands!



As the night darkened and the clock stretched past 10 (and the game still had several innings remaining), we decided to head for the hills. 

The one hiccup--no one was allowed to bring a bag of any kind into the ball park. So . . . at the gates, the YP's wife had collected all of our purses and carried them back to her car. Since we were leaving early, she gave us her keys and said, "Just lock them in; my hubby has the spare set with him." 

Easier said than done! Her car had some crazy anti-lock system that I could not trick. If the keys were inside the trunk, the trunk would not lock--in fact, it popped itself open every time I tried :) They also would not lock inside the car . . . conundrum! We couldn't get back in the stadium, and she couldn't leave the 20 some kids remaining at the game. 

Finally, we decided to hide the keys inside the gas door of the youth van, which was parked nearby, but not too nearby. I was worried leaving them, but it all worked out. 

As it turns out, this was probably the boys' last baseball game of the year as seven of theirs (including the one that was rescheduled twice due to rain) were rained out. I think that means they got to play in seven games this season--maybe eight. Even extending it into the fifth month didn't improve the game total. But they did improve a ton in practice :)