As the picnic got underway, so did the playing in the park. We managed to round up a few of the kids who arrived right away and get a group photo before they headed off to the playground! (Well, not the baby... she obviously couldn't play on the playground. Next year though!)
The organizers of the picnic picked up hamburgers, hot dogs, and buns and then we asked each family to bring a $10 donation to cover the cost of all the meat. We figured it was just easier to pick up the meat and buns instead of having everyone bring their own. Everyone else that attended brought a dish or beverage to pass based on their last name. The builders of our development, Mayberry Homes, were so generous to donate a Melting Moments cart with chocolate chip ice cream cookie sandwiches. For those of you not familiar with Melting Moments, it's a local ice cream shop. They have these fabulous cookie sandwiches that they sell at the shop and at all MSU sporting events and E. Lansing events. Very delicious! So guess who jumped in by the cart while I was trying to take a picture? Yes, that would be my daughter there hanging out by the Melting Moments cart!
My friend Nico (the coordinator of the Time Bank) did a lot of work to put all this together and a huge thank you goes out to him and his wife Susan for making this all happen. Nico continued working at the picnic and manned the grill serving up some yummy hotdogs and burgers. Here's Nico and Matt who were in charge of the grilling.
The picnic turned out to be a great time and a great day for our neighborhood. We probably had 70-80 people there, and we got a lot more people interested in the Hawk Nest Time Bank. Susan planned an activity to get us going on some more Time Bank exchanges. We had to right something on an index card that we would offer to do for someone for an hour. I offered babysitting and the card I chose happened to be from my friends Carmen and Tony. They offered to teach Spanish so I'm excited to spend an hour with them and have the kids learn a little Spanish! The picnic was a great way to spend time with some old friends and meet some new people in the neighborhood! The kids also made some new friends and had a blast playing with the other kids. Here's a few more pictures from the picnic!
Here's part of the group sitting down enjoying some picnic food!
Here's Evan and some of the other kids playing. Evan became fast friends with Kaden who is Matt's son (Matt is the one Evan is running towards) and Evan's already made plans to ride bikes with Kaden!
And here's Emmaline who quickly became friends with Matt's daughter
Haley. The two of them hung out together for a lot of the picnic!
A huge thanks to everyone who came out to the picnic and made it a success. Also thanks to everyone who helped pitch in and clean up. I personally would like to thank Greg for taking the pictures at the picnic. Nico asked if he would and he stepped up and chipped in. Also a big big thanks to Greg also for watching many of the kids over at the playground while many of us were at the picnic area talking Time Bank stuff or just chatting! I'm so lucky to have my husband! He's absolutely wonderful with kids and the kids just seem to gravitate towards him and he goes with it! I think he's definitely earned some Time Bank hours for all his time spent with the kids during the picnic!
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