Giving Back

My son, Aidan, joined Cub Scouts this year. So far, he absolutely loves it! We meet every other week for our Den meetings, and we always do fun things: taking nature walks and making "moon men" out of paper & clay. Then, once a month we have our Pack meetings, where the really cool things happen! We've had a presentation from the Wild Bird Sanctuary, a magician, and a homemade rocketship race called the Space Derby. (That was Aidan's favorite so far!)

This month, our Pack focused on giving back to the community. This is such an important message to teach our children; give to the less fortunate, especially in these economic times when so many people are out of work, and families are living paycheck to paycheck, literally counting pennies.

Each year, the Boy Scouts of America has their "Scouting for Food" food drive, and we got to participate. I never realized how much work is involved in a community project of this caliber! Last week, Jeff & Aidan went door to door, hanging those plastic bags on doorknobs, and this week Aidan & I went back through the neighborhood & collected the donations. After everyone's car was literally loaded to the max with food, we had to sort it all out by cans & dry goods. Ten cans to a plastic bag.. we recieved over 460 bags! That's right- over FOUR THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED cans of food! Plus another SIXTY cardboard boxes of various sizes piled high with dry goods: anything from peanut butter to Spam to biscotti! It took us about three hours of collecting, packing, sorting, carrying, loading and finally driving all the food to the food pantry to be donated. Loads of work (literally!), but I'm so glad I got to be involved in this type of project. To know that all your hard work will help a needy family this winter makes all those back aches & leg cramps completely worth it! And to top it off, Aidan never complained once. Oh sure, he would've liked to have been playing on the monkey bars while we were unloading everything at the school, but when I reminded him that we were helping the community (or as he called it, the "poor people"), he dove right in with all the innocent enthusiasm only a child has.

I've attached some pics to show our contribution to this wonderful cause.


(Loading a plastic bag with cans)




(Some of the bags were a bit heavy for him, but he tried!)




(10 cans to a bag, 50 bags in a line, 500 cans per line)




(Here are all the Scouts who participated. Aidan is the 2nd from far right; against the wall.)




(Finishing off the day with the Pledge; I love that the little guy on the right is saluting with the wrong hand!)