CG Service Day

At our church, C3, we are part of a Community Group, or CG. As part of our groups, we take on service projects and missions to help out in our surrounding community. For instance, our group has "adopted" the local fire station, and once a month we take them dinner. This month, the leaders of our group decided that for our service project we were going to work in my parents' yard. Mom and Dad have spent a great deal of time working on their yard in the past few years, and before Dad originally got sick it looked pretty amazing. They had quite a variety of plants, lime trees, a grapevine, and he also grew things like okra, tomatoes, and various peppers. But because of his illness, he is not allowed to "play in the dirt." So, over the past almost 2 years, the beauty of the yard has slowly declined. The fish pond had been emptied of all fish during the Great Raccoon War of 2009, and then was irreparebly damaged during the harsh winter, and was probably done in by Lola trying to swim in it.

So early Saturday morning everyone came over and worked for about an hour and a half, and made a HUGE difference!!!

These flower beds had poison ivy in them somehow...personally I think the raccoon put it there on purpose....don't know how else it gets into a random yard in the middle of the street.

They replaced the pond liner and fixed the pump

Planted new flowers around the pond and back porch

This is Mindy and her daughter Ariel. Mindy has OCD(like, for real) and had a REALLY hard time planting the flowers in random order as opposed to in lines by color!

Carter napped most of the time, but woke up and had to be in the middle of it all. Yes my child is running around outdoors in his jammies at 10AM, and yes those are shark Crocs he is also wearing. And yes he moves so constantly that almost every picture I take these days is blurry like this one.

Grand Dude did some entertaining with bubbles on the front porch

And our CG. We love them! Not only do Christiaan and I feel so blessed to be a part of this group, but they are such servants that they took on this project, even though many of them don't know my parents, and my mom and dad are not members of C3! Its so refreshing to worship in a church that does not act like they are a retail store in competition with every other church. Not that we have had issues with that in the past. :)

Finished products! The pond... and there are fish in there again!

They planted the hydrangea plant that I bought Mom for Mother's Day. Its already flourishing!

Trimmed the bushes and cleaned out the beds

All the randomly planted flowers in the now poison ivy-free bed!

And I cleaned out the beds on the sides of the house and discovered these gorgeous lilies were blooming

Thanks so much for brightning my parents' eyes! Seriously like 3 weeks of work was done in about an hour and a half! I hope that now Dad will be able to enjoy it outside before he heads back in for transplant!