Family Outing...

My family had the opportunity to go and volunteer in Santa Monica at a Veteran's memorial type thing (I'm not exactly sure what to call it). We went because my mom had signed our family up for the "Give a day, get a day" that Disney is sponsoring right now. So, how it's supposed to work is that you volunteer with some program, they sign you off, you send it in, and they send each person a free ticket for Disneyland. So that's what we did.

Our job was to put out candles and cups over them (to protect from the wind when lit) in front of a bunch of wooden crosses that were set-up on the beach for a memorial service. It was kind of funny though, because even though there was thousands of crosses...there are so many of us...it didn't really take us that long to put everything out. And then it was like "was that it?" We felt like we didn't really do too much...but the guy in charge was very grateful and appreciated our help. Here are some pictures, 'cause it's a little hard to explain...so maybe the pictures will help.

This is the "front" of the set-up with the name of the organization (Arlington West) that does this memorial service. This memorial set-up was specifically to recognize our soldiers that have died in Iraq.


Each red cross represents 10 soldiers that have died. Each white cross represents 1 soldier that has died. It was a lot.

(as you can probably tell, it was pretty gloomy...which doesn't make for such good pictures sometimes)

These are the rows and rows of crosses we had to put candles and cups in front of. It was great. : -)

A.J. with his stack of cups going down the line.

Rachele...she didn't really want her picture taken...but I finally got her to smile.

Bethy! She had the "putting out the candle" job.

Shaina!

Daddy would just drop the candle...sometimes it landed straight, and sometimes it didn't.

Benjamin was a "cover the candle with a red cup" person.

: -)

Oh Nick...the constantly funny one.

See what I mean...

Boys...

I went and stood up on the pier and took pictures of the family. I was thinking it would have been nice to have been in the picture...but it's probably not the smartest idea to just hand an expensive camera to some random stranger and say "hey, would you mind going up there on the pier and taking some pictures of us?" Yeah, I decided against that idea. Hence, not being in the family picture.

Also taken from the pier...this gives you an idea of how many crosses were set-up. It was a lot. (sorry this one is so over exposed...)

Can you imagine putting up all those crosses? Talk about a lot of work. It seems like kind of a waste to me...but I guess it makes people that pass by aware of how many people have died.

Okay, so I was actually a little bummed, I was planning on going down by the water and taking lots more pictures...but then we got evacuated off the beach by the police because of two "suspicious" packages that were thought to have bombs in them. They cleared the whole pier and surrounding beach area and told everyone they had to leave. It was slightly chaotic. Also a bummer because all those candles and cups we put out were supposed to be lighted and it would have been really cool to see all the candle lights shining on the crosses when it got dark. Oh well. So, we just ended up going home (Daddy was happy because we got home a lot earlier).

In the car on the way home. It's always fun to take a self-portrait picture. I'm actually pretty fond of pictures like this. Reminds me of one that was taken about six months ago.

So now, because we did this, we get to go to that place called "Disneyland"...my mom is pretty excited and so are the kids. Now the challenge is just finding a day that works for all of our different schedules.