November Events

Obviously my best intentions on writing to this blog on a regular basis were just that...intentions.  As with most non-profits, the holiday season is always a little bit crazy and it all starts with Thanksgiving.

Actually, it started before Thanksgiving.  The Springs at Sunnyview Retirement and Independent Living Center planned and cooked an awesome fried chicken dinner with all the fixings here at HOME.  They also brought over a wonderful assortment of items and gift certificates that are very useful here.  Here is the Chef and her assistants:

Then our "Crew", a group of HOME youth who meet weekly and plan community service projects, spent an hour - or two - raking up ALL the leaves in front of our house and our neighbors.  About 10 bags worth plus a big yard debris bin. Here are the bags.

And here is the Crew raking.

Our neighbor, Lady Web Pro, who also helps with our website maintenance and does an awesome job by the way, appreciated having her sidewalk all swept off, and brought over several boxes of the always popular fried chicken and salads.  Lucky us to have fried chicken twice in one month!!  It's way too labor intensive for us to prepare here so we very rarely serve it.

We were closed for Thanksgiving Day and Friday, but planned our big Thanksgiving dinner here for Wednesday.  We were very fortunate to have our neighbors at First Christian Church prepare our meal here for about 35-40 teens plus staff and volunteers.  Here's a picture of the tireless church folks cooking the meal

We also had members of the Willamette Soccer Team do some cleaning for us on a Saturday.  Since we hire one of our youth to do our cooking and cleaning, we rarely get any heavy duty deep cleaning done.  So the guys really tackled the floors and dust for us.  And here's a picure of them on our front steps:

The Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend usually marks the beginning of our holiday season at the Capitol Forum's Charity event.  HOME and the Women's Crisis Service have been lucky recipients of this fund-raiser for about 10 years now.  Quite often businesses and clubs like to rotate their giving and it seems rare to be beneficiaries like this for so long.  Even during this tough economy, the event raised about $1,000 for each of us and we are VERY APPRECIATIVE.

Three Cheers for all of the above for your help and support!!

THANK YOU SO MUCH