Honoring Our Heroes

I was a bad Mommy yesterday. . . I completely forgot my AWESOME new camera when we took the girls on a Service Walk last night! My husband really values service, and wants our girls to enjoy performing acts of service as well. As we were driving home from service on Sunday, he came up with the wonderful idea of us baking cookies to bring to our local Cypress Creek Volunteer Fire Department. :-)

Kelly, my very helpful homeschool mommy friend lent me a great Scholastic book, I'm Going to Be A Fire Fighter by Edith Kunhardt that the girls and I read ALL day (gotta love this stage where they want to read the same book over and over and over again). I tell you, those people at Five in a Row are truly onto something because even though it was five times in the SAME day, we all knew our stuff by the time we got there!

The wonderful crew at the station come in for training and maintenance every Tuesday evening, so they had told us in advance that it would be the best time to come by. As we were pulling up, my husband told me that he hadn't thought to arrange a tour, as that wasn't the point of us going, but that it would be cool if we could look around a bit. As we were getting out of the car, a very nice gentleman came to meet us, and immediately asked us if we wanted to see the trucks!

Obviously, we first made sure to give them the cookies we had baked them, and let him know that was the REAL reason for our visit. . . to give them a thank you gift their service. We also told him about the book we were reading, and how we had taught the girls that they were Heroes. Jordan was pretty shy the entire time, clinging to her Daddy, but as soon as he led us to where the trucks were, you could NOT wipe that grin off her face!! The truck was HUGE! Gregg and I have never really seen a fire truck up close or looked around it before, either, so we both found it very cool ourselves. And we were pretty proud of the knowledge we ALL had, thanks to that wonderful Scholastic book!

Jordan recognized the hoses and the valves, got to see the uniforms, the lights and they even let her sit in the driver's seat! Cali had fallen asleep on the drive over and slept in my arms for the first few minutes, but once she woke up, she was smiling a ton, and I could tell she was recognizing a lot from the story, too!

They really enjoyed the visit as they asked to read the story again at bedtime, and twice today, along with playing fire fighter with their dress up clothes...Thanks Paran! (For those of you non-Cajuns out there, that would be their Godfather, my brother Ryan).

We will definitely be making this more of a regular tradition, baking goodies and making cards for our various "Heroes" in our neighborhoods, and I PROMISE to bring my camera next time! (Sorry grandparents!!!)