Tag: Community Service

October Happenings

harkinchronicles

We have such a busy month ahead of us! I’m so excited for all our adventures!

  • We’re starting the month with a family dinner with Ashley and her husband and kids. It’s a new tradition we’ve decided to start.
  • This weekend, we’re celebrating Grace’s birthday by taking a party bus down to White Plains.
  • The next day, we’re attending a very unique fundraiser in our town…Cow Chip Bingo!
  • On the 8th, I’m going to the official Community Service Club open house.
  • On the 11th, Ariel is coming down to stay the night. Unfortunately I won’t get to spend too much time with her because…
  • On the 12th James is in his friend’s wedding! (We have the rehearsal dinner the night before.)
  • The following weekend we’re heading to Rochester for RIT’s Brick City Weekend. I haven’t been able to make it to Brick City in a few years so I’m super excited to go back! We made a stop in Rochester during our roadtrip last fall, but it was just for one night. We will definitely be going to the hockey game and hopefully James will get to meet more of my Rochester friends!
  • The weekend after that, we’re hosting a pumpkin carving contest at our house!
  • Once we finish carving pumpkins, we’re going to have to clean up quick because our friends are having a Halloween party that night! I try to do a different costume for each Halloween event that we have and need to come up with a few more ideas.
  • We have a little Halloween treat planned for our neighbors but haven’t come up with a date yet.
  • Nobody would ever trick-or-treat on our road so we’ll be going to the Bethel Pumpkin House again on Halloween. This guy decorates his yard with THOUSANDS of hand carved pumpkins and Halloween music playing and gives out treats. One of our friends helps set up decorations every year, so for the past few years, we’ve been joining them and bringing pizza and cider.

I guess Halloween technically ends the month of October but we’re going to continue celebrating into November! There are plenty of other fall things that I want to do (like apple picking) but we just haven’t planned them yet. I can’t wait to write about all the fun things we do!

Until our next adventure!

Day of Service

harkinchronicles

For the third year in a row, I helped organize my school’s annual Day of Service event. We had 900 participants this year! (To put it in perspective, last year there were 200…) It was a super awesome event and James, Matt, and Maranda got to volunteer at a church located near campus. 

I’m still in shock at the sheer number of people that registered. We changed the sign up process this year so I was keeping an eye on the website in case there were any issues. As I saw the number getting larger and larger, I started to panic. I reached out to a bunch of community Facebook groups to find more places to send volunteers. We wound up sending them to 70+ places in the surrounding towns.

The morning of the event was absolutely chaos. James was incredibly helpful and came to school early with me to help set up. He wound up helping at the group leader table while I was inundated with unregistered volunteers at the waitlist table. Once the volunteers left campus for their sites, I had a moment to breathe and reflect on the day. I’ve already decided on some big changes that we’re making for 2020! I spent the rest of the morning walking around to the various sites in downtown Danbury (include the church where James and everyone was working!). 

I’ve been volunteering on a regular basis since I was a kid and involved with Girl Scouts. After high school, I was able to do community service with my sorority and after college, I joined the Junior League in Pennsylvania. Now that I’m back in Connecticut, I’m about to join my town’s Community Service Club. North Face’s motto may be “Never Stop Exploring” but mine is more like “Never Stop Volunteering”!

Until our next adventure!