Thursday, October 23, 2008

Shalom House

It's been a really busy week here! I'm hosting my first-ever scrapping challenge over on the DIS-board (where people go to discuss all things Disney!), and if anybody has any Disney stuff to scrap, see if you can enter my challenge here I'm looking forward to seeing what everybody enters! Here's my entry:


The kids got their flu shots on Tuesday, and Zach's already had an allergic reaction to his.....so that's lots of fun! And this week was our department offsite meeting for the year, so our entire team, from all over the country got together for 2 days.

The offsites are always fun....the meeting parts I could do without, but catching up with the coworkers that I only email or talk to on the phone is nice! Plus, this year we had a technology demonstration on Tuesday afternoon where I got to fly an F18 simulator. Not only did I NOT kill myself or crash the thing, but I took down 5 enemy aircraft! Go me! I should've been a pilot! oh, and also on Tuesday I was given my 5-year service award.....yay me! got a plaque and a gold-ish pin from the company.....I already ordered my gift, which was a silver bracelet I had engraved with the kids' initials. So now I'm vested in the company pension.....that's good I guess, since all my other investments have tanked!!!

Wednesday was our community service projects. I'm really quite proud of the big B for letting us do these community service projects on the clock, 'cuz if you think about it, that's a lot of money the company is spending having all of us on the clock but not doing any of the company's work! So kudos to Boeing for reaching out to the community and putting your money where your mouth is!

With there being almost 150 of us in our dept, they divided us up into 3 teams. One team went to a daycare center for mentally/physically handicapped children to do odd jobs/paint/etc. One team went to a local park to pull weeds, plant flowers, and spread mulch. The team I was on went to Shalom House, which is a homeless shelter for women, most of which are mentally handicapped and recovering addicts.

I knew working in a homelss shelter would be eye-opening for me. I knew it would be humbling. I wasn't quite prepared for HOW humbling it would be. I felt so bad for these women that show up with basically nothing but the clothes on their backs. I won't complain about a leaky bathtub again....these women don't even HAVE bathtubs!
Shalom House has a 90-day emergency program and a 24-month transition program for the women living there. They've done a lot with not much other than the donations from the public and a few grants they've managed to get. They didn't really have the manpower or funds to do the little projects around their building (which used to be an old church) that needed to be done. That's where the big B comes in! Part of our team built shelves for them to store supplies on. Another group of us cleaned out and organized their food pantry, and the last group (that I was in) painted. I was also the designated photographer for the day, which actually got me out of a lot of the real work, but somebody had to document it! I didn't take any pictures of the residents or their personal stuff, even though I COULD have......it just didn't seem right to me. So here's some pictures from our day at Shalom House:

how many engineers does it take.......



The office we painted (originally tangerine!)

Proof that I DID do SOME work!

The food pantry (after it was organized!):

And our big group shot....everybody loved my "painting pants" I wore.....I've got at least 5 different colors of paint on those things now!

After we finished up at Shalom, I borrowed a room key from a friend and went to her hotel room to clean up and change for the big department dinner and concert.....it was too far for me to drive home to clean up and make it back in time. I got all gussied up and went downstairs to hang out waiting for my coworkers to show up and talk to people that weren't at Shalom about what they did all day.

We had dinner, and then a private concert from Pearl Heart. I didn't watch Nashville Star, as I'm not a country-music fan by any stretch of the imagination. But these girls were on it and I think they finished 4th? I don't remember, but I think it was something like that, and they also happen to be the daughters of one of our team members, Bill Krechel. And as another atta-boy for my employer, and more specifically our VP Peter Lawrence, Bill moved his entire family to Nashville almost 2 years ago to help these girls pursue their dream. And now he's a full-time virtual employee, so he didn't have to give up his job to help out his kids. LOVE that about this place!


So anyways, we had our concert, and it was really good, even for country music......I managed to record a couple of their songs since Karl's never heard them sing either....i'm hoping to update this later with the video clip once I track down the cord to get the clip off the camera!
And I had to take some pictures of my coworkers since we're not allowed to have cameras in our building, something like this is the only time we CAN take pictures!

Here's me and the world's best Office Administrator, Karen


And me and Angela, Courtney, and Amy Krechel (aka PearlHeart....I hope I didn't mix up the twins' names!)......I look like an amazon next to these tiny people!

the girls with their dad, Bill

And me and my boss, Alyssa

Here's one of the "IVHM girls".....Jeanne, Alyssa, and myself....the only women on the IVHM team!
And here's Team MIDOT....Pete, Ken, me and Matt

So it was a very fun night hanging out with the coworkers but not needing to discuss work at all! Next year's offsite will be in Seattle, so until next October......
I'll post later with layouts and my blessing.......

2 comments:

Tinker326 said...

Who is that girl in the pink with makeup? I don't recognize her......

Our Three Girls said...

That sounds like lots of fun! From an administrator at a non-profit organization, your help is GREATLY appreciated...I know! :)