Friday afternoon John and I loaded up Betsy (my honda accord that's rapidly nearing the end of her life span-dad spends way too much money, thanks dad, on her-and I just found out i'm 2 months behind on my inspection..oops, BUT she still gets great gas mileage so I keep driving her) and headed to Charlotte for Operation Christmas Child with the Surles family. Operation Christmas Child is a mission of Samaritan's Purse where each year they collect Christmas boxes for children overseas. Charlotte is host to the huge collection and distribution center and here people come and volunteer sorting and packing boxes. Since 1993, over 61 million shoe boxes have been distributed. After a quick training session they sent us out to the huge assembly lines and we started our task of unpacking, inspecting, stuffing, taping, and repacking boxes. I have to say, although an assembly line career isn't one I dream of, it definately is a pretty stress free job as you are doing the exact task every.single.time. And they played Christmas music over the loud speaker..so it seemed more like Santa's workshop than it did work. On top of that I got to see some of my dad's side of the family that I haven't seen since I was "this tall". The special treat was seeing my cousin Leanna, whom I absolutely adore!
Leanna
her oldest son, Joshua
pay attention to the speaker, sir! : )
we stopped packing to pray over the boxes 
John's job was "repacking" the boxes by age & gender..he said it was like a big game of tetris because you had to get at least 14 boxes in each bigger box and they were all different sizes..
how many engineers and baseball players does it take to pack a box?..(3)
sweet kate...she was a "taper"
.my family.
"no, you can't take the box home!"
free t-shirts..always a plus
(i'm also testing a new action for photoshop I just downloaded..I kinda like it)
the whole group
What a fun Saturday! After lunch we went back to Matt's for a quick nap then John and I had dinner with Jill & her (recently acquired) fiance! I finally got to see the bling...I think I actually stopped Jill in mid-sentence when she waved her hand in front of me...and just snatched it right off her little finger..haha..sorry Jill! But great job Daniel! : )
After dinner John and I headed to the movies...he had really been wanting to see "Role Models"...but I had already seen it so naturally I convince him that we really needed to see that new movie "Australia" with Nicole Kidman & Hugh Jackman instead..and he's such a sweetheart that of course he gave in....well.....3-hours-later we finally get out of the theatre...John's just smiling and shaking his head and i'm thinking "i'm never gonna live this one down" (we have this long-running inside joke about who picks the worst movies...he does, by far)..and we get to the car only to find it unlocked. Unlocked...for three hours on a Saturday night in Charlotte at a very crowded mall....with...drum roll please....my camera bag with ALL my equipment sitting very pretty in the backseat. Let's just say I think I get at least 5 "bad movie passes" for that one and man oh man, how thankful I am for you Betsy...in all your rustiness..no one would ever think to look in your back seat for anything of value. Whew.
Always put that camera bag in the trunk, locked or not! Have a good Christmas! Enjoying the pretty photo's!
ReplyDeleteSweet. I work for SP, so in a way, you were working at the same place as me. . . . . . kind of. OCC is a great project, so glad to hear you enjoyed helping out! It was good to see you over Thanksgiving, have a great Christmas!
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