Today was the annual Help a Neighbor Day with our church. This year Alex and I helped out with the cleanup crew at Our Father's House. Somehow, over the years the alleyways all around their building have turned into dumps, more or less; I suppose that anything that was donated but was basically junk or didn't sell was just moved outside and left there. The building itself is surrounded by other abandoned buildings, and all of the spaces around the building were just piled with stuff. Piled high. They said to get rid of it all. We filled dumpsters and dumpsters with stuff. Anything you can imagine that had been left out in the weather for so long that trees were growing in the piles. We separated recyclable scrap metal as best we could, but multiple dumpsters got filled with stuff that was basically trash. We were supposed to paint the building too, but it's been too wet lately. Good thing too, because we wouldn't have been able to get crews in close to the building until the alleys had been cleaned up. It was all the same in the other alleys where other crews were working. Overall there must have been 50 or more people working there. Beth and the girls did laundry love, paying for people to get their clothes washed in a local laundromat. We also paid for people behind us in line at Burger King. Twice. Good day overall, lots of work done. We're going to have a crew paint in a few weeks.
The softball team lost again Tuesday, 7-3 this time. Again, I was the pitcher. I only gave up 7 runs but I felt like I didn't do as well as last week. Walked several. I'm still having trouble finding the strike zone. But it looks like it's me pitching, Brooklynn (who was at the game but not dressed for playing) said she's quitting the team because she's not good enough. LOL. As if she didn't just see me pitch. I had a couple good hits though.
Thursday was the Heartline banquet at the church. Beth and I had tickets (a teacher gave her two free ones) so we went. It most prominently featured a keynote speaker, the star of some movie called "October Baby," that told her whoooole life story.
Yesterday Alex was nice enough to go see the "Ratchet and Clank" movie without adult supervision. He and his friend Riley went to see it. It's nice when you can just drop the kids off and pick them up again and not see a movie that looks awful to you.
Also this weekend I rented that lawn roller. I bought a couple truckloads of dirt and have used it to fill in the low and bare patches in the back yard, so I needed something to pack it down a bit. Liuckily it rained some during the weekend so I got things pretty well smoothed out, hopefully the moles don't come back (they will).