Guys - we did a thing, and we had SO MUCH fun doing it!! I'll go back to where it all started. Back in August a group of the cuzzies rented a house in northern Wisconsin and spent a week enjoying our time together. One late night over cards (and beers, of course!) we started talking and realized that we could do better. We realized how fortunate we are, looking around at all we have, and our strong family that supports us and we realized, it was time for us to start giving back. That was the start of this family volunteer day.
We did some research, looking for a family friendly volunteer opportunity that would welcome kids and we found Cradles to Crayons a charity located in downtown Chicago that provides kids with toys, clothes, hygiene supplies, books and other essentials. Schools, hospitals, churches, welfare agencies etc all submit requests to Cradles for Crayons to support needy kids and those orders are filled in the warehouse downtown.
Cradles to Crayons takes donations of used items, and new, and money, and then turns those donations into kits given to local kids and families in needs. In the warehouse, volunteers sort, clean, pack and then bundle the items to send out to the kids.
On this Saturday in February, about 25 of the Murphy family got together to volunteer and help work at the warehouse. Guys, we had SUCH a good time! About 2/3rds of us were in the packing station, which was a really fun place to be. We got to take the lists for each child and then "shop" the shelves to fill their orders. It was fun to be so close to the end recipient. We got to see the fulfillment of all of the hard work that came before this station.
The other 1/3rd of our group moved between two stations during the time we spent there. They started out in the cleaning station, scrubbing lightly used shoes and getting them ready for repacking. About half way through the day the switched to sorting clothes. Going through the bags of donations, sorting for size etc and packaging those pieces up into bags that we (in the packing station) would pick up and bundle for the recipients.
We spent about 2 hours helping out at Cradles for Crayons and it was one of my favorite activities we had scheduled this winter. It fact, it sounds like we're already planning the next family give back day - a walk to support pancreatic cancer this summer. I hope that this is a tradition we start to do a few times a year. We always have a great time when we're together, and doing something that helps others on top of that is just the icing on the cake.
Oh, and! Pizza and beer to follow definitely helped keep us motivated. After we finished our shift at Cradles to Crayons we migrated the group over to Revolution Brewery where we had pizza delivered (it was SO GOOD). We had lunch, hung out and overall, had a great day!!
I totally think this is something we'll organize again, so, if anyone has any suggestions of places we could volunteer with a large group, and kids, we're all ears!!
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