Sam's Year of Service Adventure

 Today I got up early and ran over to the house and got my bed sheets to wash.  When I got back, we had breakfast, then headed out to a toy store to do some shopping for Adopt a Family.  We were shopping for a family with three little kids, so we found lots of stuff they would enjoy.  After the toy store, we went to Target to get the kids some clothes and some other toys we could not find at the toy store.  After Target, we had to run to Walmart to get them a gift card since that was the preferred store.  When we got back to the house, we ate some lunch and then got to work wrapping gifts.  While we were wrapping gifts, Sophia and Dad went back to the toy store and got some books for the kids since we thought we should include those.  Wrapping gifts took quite a while, but it was fun.  After the gift wrapping, we went over to the unit house and baked some pies and some peppernuts.  We also took all the wrapped presents over.  Baking...

 Today we made pancakes for breakfast and then finished a movie from the night before.  Then we headed out and went to Walgreens to get some shots that didn't happen.  Then we headed to the thrift store to do some shopping.  Then we went to another thrift store to do some more shopping.  After that, we went to the hardware store to get some pieces for my bike's kickstand.  After the hardware store, we went to the park and rode the pike ride bikes around for a while.  While Simeon and Dad were riding the bikes, Janessa and I went to a coffee shop where she got coffee, and I got a croissant.  After the coffee shop, we went out to eat at La Casita Mexican Grill.  It was some good food.  After lunch, I showed my family Bentley and VSR.  Then we headed back to the house.  When we got back to the house, we watched movies the rest of the evening.  

 Today I slept in late and then spent the morning with my family.  Around 1, we headed to the church for the friendsgiving meal and had lots of good food.  After Friendsgiving, we came back to the house and started watching Christmas movies.  For supper, we just had some snacks, then watched more movies to finish the evening.

 Today was pantry day.  We started by taking some food from the office over to the pantry and putting it away.  Our nonperishables room was overflowing, so we had to stack a lot of stuff in the back rooms.  When some help arrived, I went and did the Trader Joe's pickup, which was really good today.  When I was back, we put everything away.  When we got everything put away, we had lunch, and then we opened up.  I was in charge of the nonperishables room today since Kary was gone.  By 12:30, the rush was over, and I went back to the office to pick up some more food that was donated.  When I got back to the pantry, we put all that food in the back room, and then my family showed up.  I gave them a tour of the pantry and introduced them to Jenni.  After they left, we finished out the day with not much action, and then got everything packed up at the end since it was a short week, and we couldn't put much stuff out for the people at the ...

 Today I was with maintenance and resources.  We started with a couple of evictions at VSR.  After the evictions, I went with Posh over to the Ridge to install a dog station.  We first had to stop at Home Depot and grab some quick crete.  When we got there, we found out that the dog station had a stand on it, so we had to modify our bucket so it would fit.  Then we realized the dog station was missing pieces, so we had to go back to Home Depot and get some pieces to modify it.  We also grabbed a shovel for digging our hole.  When we got back to the Ridge, we got it put together, and then I dug the whole while Posh worked on the cement.  We started mixing the cement, but then realized we had to seal the bucket back up where we modified it.  By this point, it was time for lunch, and then after lunch, Doug came to pick me up for the mobile market.  The mobile market was very cold, and we even had some flurries of snow.  They were ...

 Today was another crazy day.  I started by going to the pantry and picking up some of the leftovers for the Thanksgiving baskets from Saturday, and bringing them back to the office.  After that, I did the Sprouts pickup and got everything put away in the pantry.  Then I cleaned the pantry and dropped off bread at Westside.  After that, I went back to the office and ate my lunch while we waited for more Thanksgiving baskets to be delivered.  Right when I was done with my lunch, 150 baskets showed up.  I helped with the unloading by hauling dolly loads of turkeys into the office.  At 1:00, we opened up so the residents could come and pick up a basket.  We also had a Colorado housing group come by and take 25 baskets.  By about 4:30, we had given out 100 baskets to our residents, and then Westside came and got a bunch of the baskets for their food pantry.  I stayed late to help give out baskets.  When I got home from work, Trilby...

 Today I made breakfast.  I made French toast and eggs with sauteed peppers and onions. We also had cinnamon rolls from yesterday.  After breakfast, it was time for church.  After church, I went and had lunch with my host family, and we had waffles and eggs, and sausage.  My host family's son joined us for lunch, and he has Down syndrome and brought one of his friends from his housing community with him.  His friends taught us a lot about bowling alleys over lunch.  After lunch, we were going to go for a hike, but it was raining, so we decided to go to Costco instead.  We bought some shrimp and beef for the unit.  After Costco, he took me home.  Once at home, I did the dishes from breakfast and caught up on some other stuff around the house.  I had time to relax until it was time for supper, and then after supper, I started a game of Terraforming Mars with Christian and Leigha.  When we were done with the game, I headed to bed....

 Today we went to an escape room.  The place was called Escaped in Time, and the theme of the room was government-controlled birds.  We had an hour to get out, and we were in three different rooms throughout the time.  We escaped with 8 minutes to spare.  The room only had a five per cent escape rate with no hints, and we were in that five percent.  We had so much fun escaping that we decided to do it again in a few weeks.  After the escape room, I relaxed until lunch, and then after lunch we were sparked to make cinnamon rolls.  We decided to make a big recipe so we could freeze it for another time.  While we waited for the dough to rise, we played a board game, which I was very close to winning, but Christian beat me.  When we were ready to roll the rolls out, we realised we didn't have any cinnamon and barley or brown sugar, so I took a quick bike ride to the store and got the ingredients.  When I got back, we got the rolls out a...

 Today, I did a variety of different jobs.  I started with leasing in the morning at Bentley, making sure we had identified as many demands as possible. When we decided we were finished, I joined the maintenance crew, changing filters at Bentley.  We had all the filters changed in about 30 minutes, and then Doug recruited me to help with Thanksgiving baskets, so he came and picked me up at Bentley and took me back to the office.  When I got there, I went over the plan with Jenni and then took lunch.  After lunch, I started by doing some organising in the office and then taking some books over to Woodbine.  From there, I went to Santa Fe and dropped off our moving stuff at one of the sheds there.  From there, I went to GoPuff and picked up some stuff for the pantry.  I had to put that stuff away in the pantry, and then I went back to the office and moved a lot of chairs out of the way so we could set up tables for the Thanksgiving baskets.  Si...

 Today we started with a potluck breakfast at work.  I brought some muffins, but there was a lot of good food there.  The main topic of discussion was changing the work hours, which I don't know how that will affect me yet.  After the meeting, I met with Brian and Carolynn to talk about how I would be helping out with leasing today.  I headed over to Bentley with Sal to get started.  I began by reviewing a number of files to identify missing demands.  This took most of the morning, and then after lunch, we had to figure out how to get into a previous employee's email account.  We finally got into it, but then we had to wait for all the emails to update.  This took multiple hours, so to pass some of the time, I went and helped Josh and Frank do some filters.  When I came back from doing filters, it was still not up to date, so then I wrote my blog post for the day up to that point.  The emails finally loaded, so I was able to extract...

 Today was pantry day.  We started by going to Trader Joe's pickup and then putting everything away.  We got a good amount of food this week, and thanks to the food drive we had at the office, we had lots of canned goods for our non-perishables room.  When we had everything the way we wanted it, we took lunch and then opened up.  Thankfully, everybody was in an excellent mood today, so that was just a bonus.  It was also nice to not be so busy and have time to do some little things around the pantry during the slow times.  While we were at the pantry, Doug was looking at a new van for us, which we heard is a very likely purchase for us.  When we were done at the pantry, we packed up and headed back to the office and unloaded.  Jenni and I took some muffins and coffee cake from the pantry to make our contribution to our breakfast potluck the next day, so when I got back to the office, I found a platter to make them look fancy.  When I was...

 Today started with helping Jenni with a pickup at Care and Share.  We picked up a bunch of canned goods and some boxes of eggs.  I helped her unload at the pantry, and then I went over to Attrium to help Posh with a make-ready.  The previous tenant had decided to do their own touch-up and painted most of the trim, a couple of walls, and the doors the wrong color.  I spent most of my day painting the trim, as it is a tedious job, and then painted some of the doors.  I enjoy working in the make-readies because I can be by myself and just listen to my music.  When I was done painting for the day, we headed back to the office and jammed out on the drive back.  When I got home, Cindy came over and gave me a haircut, which was awesome.  After my haircut, Trilby had supper ready.  When supper was over, I relaxed for the rest of the evening.

 Today I was with resources.  Jenni was gone today, so Doug and I went to Sprouts for the pickup.  We did not get a whole lot.  When we got to the pantry, Doug helped a little bit, but I put most everything away.  When I had everything away, I got the pantry clean and then emptied one of the closets in the pantry.  This closet was full of paper, toys, and games.  It was an Amazon donation that we had just stashed and forgotten about.  We decided to use the toys and games for some of our Christmas stuff.  I unloaded some of the paper at the office, but just the stuff we would use.  After a lunch break, I took the paper we didn't want over to Goodwill.  When I got back from Goodwill, Doug sent me over to the shed at Plaza to get the materials for building new doors for our little libraries.  When I got there, I discovered that there were not very many materials at all, but some wood had already been cut.  I made myself a Hom...

 Today we started with a continental breakfast before we had to watch the kids again while the adults had worship.  I got lucky, and I only had to be responsible for Naomi, so we went outside and walked around the pond, and played by the creek.  After that, it was time for brunch, which was absolutely amazing.  After brunch, we remade our beds, got packed up, and headed home.  When we got home, we had lots of time to relax.  For supper, I grilled some pretty good elk burgers.  They barely got done because my grill ran out of propane.  After supper, there was more time to relax before heading to bed.

 Today, we started out with breakfast at the lodge before breaking off to do childcare at the chapel and the nearby area.  It started off fine, but ended with lots of defiance and a fist fight I had to break up.  We only had to watch them for an hour and a half, so then we had some free time before lunch, which I used to play a game with Christian and Leigha.  The game continued into and through lunch.  After lunch, I took a quick nap before we had to watch the kids again.  Thankfully, this time went much better, and we just hit ping pong balls around the chapel.  After another hour and a half, we had some more free time, which I used to relax some more before supper.  After supper, we played sign, which was absolutely hilarious.  After that, we played moose master, which was equally as funny.  Then I headed back to the cabin and went to bed.

 Today was another maintenance day.  I started the day by going over to VSR with Tony.  We started by checking out all our make-readies, and then we did a property walk and picked up trash and changed out bags at pet stations.  After that, we had to make the long drive over to one of our new properties, where they had just topped out, and there was lunch for everyone there.  A nice Mexican restaurant was catering, so we had some really good food.  There were around 50 construction workers there who also got fed.  When we were done with lunch, we headed back to VSR. On the way, we stopped at UT to drop off a demand.  When we got to VSR, we tackled changing the filters for the heating and AC.  I spent most of my time cutting out the filters, but when I was done joined Tony in installing them.  When we were done with filters, I got to work on a make-ready.  I started by taking all the brackets and tacks off the walls that the cleaners ...

 Today I was with maintenance.  We had a lengthy morning meeting, and then I headed out with Frank.  First, we went to UT and looked at a clogged toilet that was clogged further down than we could get, so we called the plumber.  Then we went to Alexander Court, where we met the leasing agents and did inspections.  The apartments were all in pretty good shape, except that a lot of outlets were bad for some reason.  When we were inspecting the laundry room, we found a whole bunch of furniture, so after the inspections, Frank and I hauled it all out.  When we were done at AC, we went to one of our MOP properties that I had never been to.  It turned out to be really close to the house.  We had a few things to do when we got there.  The first thing we did was turn her heat on for her.  Then I cleaned out her bathroom vent while Frank fixed one of her cabinets.  Then we worked together to try and get her screen door to shut better....

 Today was pantry day.  We have a returning volunteer who has started doing the Sprouts pickup for us, so now I only have to do the Trader Joe's pickup.  We had a good day at the pantry.  We had a lot more food than the last couple of weeks, and we had many fewer people.  We had the typical issues that we always have, but it was interesting to have our new HR person in the pantry with us today.  There was enough food for me to make myself a box this week.  At 3:15, we packed up and headed back to the office, where we put stuff out for people to take, then I headed home.  When I got home, I made some banana bread with some of the bad bananas I had taken from the pantry.  I did not think it was my best work, but other people seemed to like it, so that's good.  After I made banana bread, we made our normal Wednesday meal of mac and cheese with peas and brats.  After supper, I did some dishes and relaxed for a while before we finished t...

 Today started with our morning maintenance meeting, and that's where I learned I would be putting a desk together.  It was a desk from IKEA, I think.  This meant that many of the pieces didn't fit together as well as they could.  I spent the whole morning and some of the afternoon working on it.  It was a big L-shaped desk.  This was for one of the newer employees, Olivia.  It was a long morning of reading instructions.  After lunch, we got the desk moved into her office, and then we learned that I had messed up a drawer slide, so I had to fix that.  I still considered it a win to only have messed up one out of 50 steps.  After I was all done with the desk, I picked up some trash around the office and then took the old desk to Goodwill for donation.  After work, I went home and we played Terraforming Mars on Leigha's phone.  It was almost time for supper, and then Amy, a lady from church, stopped by to tell us what we would be...

 When I got to work today, we started with our regular morning meeting, and then my first task was emptying the dishwasher, which, when I started, I realized had not actually run.  Next, we headed to Spouts for our pickup, and it was much better than the last few weeks, which was awesome.  We headed over to the pantry, where we found Kary checking out her new fridge.  Kary loves her new fridge.  After we had unloaded everything, I went back to the office and picked up some of the food donated for our office food drive.  There was a lot of good food at the office.  While we were working on putting stuff away, I accidentally dropped a big box of eggs and then had to spend 20 minutes going through all of them and pulling out the broken ones, which were a lot of them.  We also spent some time moving a fridge and a freezer around in the pantry since we had gotten rid of an old fridge when we got the new one.  We changed the layout of our backroom ...

 Today we had church, and it was a pretty normal service.  After the service, we had cinnamon rolls served by the youth, and we were lucky enough to get a couple of plates of rolls for the house.  After church we didnt do much until later in the afternoon when we played a card game.  It was pretty fun even though Leigha and I lost big to Christian and Trilby.  After the card game Christian and Leigha made pizza for supper which was really good.  During supper we had our weekly business meeting.  After supper we watched Severence before heading to bed.

 Today I got up early and made biscuits and gravy for everyone because my meal day got rescheduled.  After breakfast, we headed up to camp to make cinnamon rolls with the youth group.  When we got there, we first learned how to make the dough and then had a long break while it rose.  While the dough was rising, I got recruited to tear up flooring in the berm room to help with the renovation project.  I was eventually interrupted to go help beat down the dough.  Then I went back to tearing up the floor until it was time to roll the rolls out and cut them up.  There was a lot of smack talk between Service Adventure and the youth group as to who was faster at making the rolls.  We won by a long way.  After that, we had a bunch more downtime while the rolls baked.  We decided to go check out camp, and we found that there was a little bit of snow on the ground and that the pond was frozen over.  Michael and I decided to try walking on th...

 Today we had the mobile vet at the office.  I think I explained what it was and how it worked in a previous blog.  I managed to convince Doug to let me take an office chair outside to sit in while I called people to remind them about their appointments and visited with people.  I did manage to sit in the chair pretty much the whole day, with only having to help with one dog.  The very last dog of the day peed on my chair, though, so I had to explain to Doug that I didn't keep the chair in perfect condition.  I was done at work just after 2, so I was home by 2:30 and actually saw the construction workers doing work on our street.  I hung out at the house for a while before heading over to Adrian's for supper club around 6.  We had taco salad, and I brought the brownies.  After supper, we played fish bowl, which was extremely entertaining.  After our game, we headed home.

 Today we started out the day with an eviction at Moreno.  The only thing to take out was a TV, so it was pretty easy.  After the eviction, Tony and I stayed there and did some work orders.  We started by going and pulling a broken plug out of an outlet.  They needed us to do this since the breakers had to be shut off.  After that, we went and looked at a thermostat that wasn't working, and we decided we needed to call Theyer.  Then we went to another apartment and fixed a garbage disposal and a faucet.  Then we went back to the thermostat and we found out that the heat was stuck on.  Once we got that fixed, we were done at Moreno, and Tony took me over to Bentley, where I had to finish picking up trash for the event on Saturday.  This took like 4 hours, and it was really boring, and it made my hands hurt from using a trash grabber a lot.  I just put my earbuds in and knocked it out.  I did get back on the hoverboard to ride ar...

 Today was pantry day.  We started with our pickups as usual and got everything put away.  For some reason, one of the residents decided they were going to try to job-shadow me and tell me what to do.  Jenni did not stand for that.  Once we opened, people came in with a very selfish attitude, and I had to tell multiple people that they were taking too many items, and I even had to raise my voice at one lady to get her attention and then show her what she was doing wrong, even though she knew exactly what she was doing.  We had 70 people through the pantry, so it was pretty busy the whole time.  It did eventually slow down at the end, and we got packed up.  When we got back to the office, we unloaded, and then I headed home.  I tried to go to the grocery store after work, but I guess a car crashing into the store means it will be closed.  When I got back from trying to shop, I got ready to go eat supper with my host family.  We had f...

 Today, when I got to the office, all the maintenance guys had left me to go on an eviction.  They were all over at VSR, so I cleaned up the office's exterior, then asked Doug what I could do, and he sent me to Goodwill to pick up books.  After I picked up the books, I dropped them off at our library at Woodbine.  When I got back to the office, Bill informed me that we needed to clean up all the sand that had washed into the parking lot, so I shoveled for a while, then ran the leaf blower for a while.  Since I didn't have a metal shovel, there was only so much I could do, so I shoveled all the loose stuff and then gave up for the morning.  Bill and I then headed over to Pikes Peak because we had to open all the doors for the new owners to come in and do some work.  After that, Bill took me over to Bentley, and I worked on picking up trash for a while.  Josh had a hoverboard there for some reason, so I rode it around the property while I picked up ...

 Today, when I got to the office, I saw that someone had thrown a bike into the bushes in front of the office.  Then I started by doing some random jobs around the office.  Then we headed to Sprouts for our pickup, which thankfully was much better than last week.  We listened to the Jubil Show as usual.  When we got to the pantry, we found out that someone had crashed a car into the Plaza apartments over the weekend.  We got all the food unpacked and then had to sort a bunch of meat that we had bought last week.  I also tested out the temp gun to see how accurate it was, and I found out it was very far off.  Then I did my cleaning tasks, and we headed back to the office for lunch.  After lunch, I was sitting in the office and found out that a bunch of the chairs had loose legs, so I tightened them all up.  Then Jenni and I went and did a whole bunch of libraries.  I'm not going to list them.  When we were done with libraries, I...

 Today we had church.  Since Christian had to go early to do music, he left on his bike and left Naomi with me.  She "helped" with some chores around the house and cheered me on while I ate breakfast.  She did help unload the dishwasher and tell me who all the dishes belonged to.  We eventually headed to church and we had a childrens story for the first time since I have been here.  After church we had donuts as usual and then the kids had sunday school.  After church we headed home and had some lunch.  After lunch I spent a long time trying to figure out where to go roller skating on a Tuesday and eventually had to give up.  Chrsitian and I had our one on one in the afternoon and since it was such a nice day we biked to Josh and Johns for some ice cream.  When we got our ice cream we biked over to a park to have our one on one since we had Naomi with us.  After the one on one we went home and I made some eggs for the week and I tau...

 Today I slept in since it was Saturday.  When I got up, I made myself some scrambled eggs with sausage and cheese.  After breakfast, I didn't do much all morning besides some chores.  After lunch, I didn't do much else besides some chores.  After supper, I at least did something exciting, and we went and played some night pickleball with our new paddles.  After our pickleball games, we went back to the house and finished The Birds, which we had started almost a month ago.