Year of Service

A few years ago Scott came up with the fabulous idea of writing our family's goals for the year on a big poster board and then reviewing them each month to evaluate how we are doing.  We have a few "family" goals, and then we each have a section for personal goals.  It's pretty great....we've been doing it for five years or so now, and we've been able to accomplish some very cool things.  Well, this year we wanted to do something service-oriented, so we thought we would try to find someone each month that we could do service for.  Just a couple of days after we decided on this goal, Scott came home from work and announced that he had our first service project...should we choose to accept...

A sweet lady he works with (the kids call her their California Grandma) needed a big dead tree in her front yard removed, but couldn't afford to have it done.  Scott was more than happy to volunteer his chainsaw skills and said we would be there that Saturday morning, bright and early!

Here is the tree (can you find Anna?):

Scott and the chainsaw (a.k.a. "Wild Thing"...the saw, not Scott...)

Everyone working hard:

Nathan, so excited to use Daddy's tools!

Ryan's favorite part was pushing around this cart with the cut-up logs:

Aimee slaving away:

Ryan supervised the whole process:

Anna showing that tree who's boss:

This is too easy:

Okay, Mom, enough with the pictures...we have work to do!

Loading the logs into the firewood pile:

Awww...the kids are always saying how they would love a tree to climb...they thought it was a shame to cut this one down:

Anna climbed up into the tree to snap a few shots of Ryan:

Finally a tool Ryan can use!  We let him play with the rake, but snatched up that hand saw that he was eyeing in a hurry!

Anna taking a little break from all the hard work...

Still sawing...

Ah, the moment we've all been waiting for...everyone waiting for Daddy to take the actual tree down (from the safety of the Suburban)...

Ready...here it goes...

Timberrrrrr......

Yessssss...

Anna was a little sentimental about the fallen tree:

....actually all three of them were...

Goofballs.

Oh, good, all better:

These are some random pictures, but Ryan's face had us cracking up.  He was trying to blow some of the sawdust off of the logs:

Almost done...just a few more loads...

Stomping down the smaller branches...we filled three large garbage cans!

I don't know how this happens, but Annalyn ALWAYS ends up the dirtiest of anyone in the family:

Wow...all done!  It was a morning well spent and we all had so much fun working together.  We're going to remember this for a long time.

Oh, and here is Ryan enjoying his In-n-Out on the way home.  Good times...

Hmmmm...we're wondering what the next project will be...