Do You Volunteer with Your Children?

This empty nesting phase of life has all kinds of changes. The house is quiet and boring.

Yes.

The laundry pile is smaller, and grocery bills are less.

Yes.

I expected all those changes, but one change that I didn’t anticipate is with volunteering.

The six of us used to volunteer for all kinds of committees and organizations as a family–at church, with the Veterans’ Celebration, for the public library, with Girls Scouts and Boy Scouts, for the marching band and soccer teams. Whenever I volunteered for an event, I usually mentally added ten extra hands for the job.

Here’s a picture of us in November, 2005, when we joined a group for a week in Mississippi helping with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This was our Christmas card picture that year. No you can’t see our faces because we’re wearing breathing masks.

 

Here’s one when my sons and I helped erect a ramp for our ramp ministry at church last year.

 

And my daughter reading at Story Time in her Space Camp suit.

 

 

I’m still volunteering with my husband, but I miss all those extra hands!