Kismet

The Catholic high school my daughters attend requires the kids do a specific number of volunteer hours as part of their Theology grade every year.  The junior high requires 12 and the high school expects 16.  My kids?  Over achievers.  J(15) had 125 last year and plans to aim for the same this year.  K(12) is just starting her first year there and her goal is 50 hours.  They're both over 10% of the way to their goal and they still have 11 months to go.

J(15) with her various end-of-year awards, including her Gold Award for 100+ hours of community service.
There were tears - Proud Momma tears.

In support of their efforts, I mentioned their goals on my Facebook page.  I have a bunch of friends who work for non-profits or who are teachers or principals - exactly the kind of people I want my children to be around.  Just a quick note about the girls looking for service hours opportunities and it was met with several offers for later in the summer as friends are setting up classrooms (and also when the girls are going to be on baby overload, so that works perfectly.)

Then my friend Jim dropped me a line.  Jim is the director of development for Olivia's House.  Olivia's House is an organization for children dealing with grief.  It's probably where I should have taken the kids after we lost Andrew.  They needed something more than just a fairly dysfunctional, grief stricken mother and a father wo was holding everything together while still working 50+ hours a week and commuting like a mad man.  But I didn't because I couldn't get out of bed, let alone think about helping the kids face their grief when I was barely able to function through my own.

So Jim dropped me a line.  Olivia's House needs help with yard work and office cleaning - exactly the kind of stuff the girls can do.  The kind of stuff we can do as a family, really.  

Maybe it's time we find a way to honor Andrew in some way other than by remembering him and dusting his urn every few days.  And maybe this is the first step toward doing that.