What have we been up to!?

I work with Albertsons and collect all of their food they would THROW AWAY that day and bring it to my house, I get food from every department, meat, deli, fresh deli, bakery, produce, floral, & dairy--I typically will get 18 banana size boxes of food--my denali is PACKED top to bottom, front to back & thats WITHOUT the 3rd seat in--quite often its overflowing to my 2nd seat even!

I do it every day except wed/sun--i leave my house at 9:30am to pick up tracy and we drive 12 minutes to get there, load my truck up and get back home by 930am to my driveway lined with friends/families that need the extra help with food-we quickly unload it then tracy & i get to go thru it 1st to pick out what we want for our families then i open it up to everyone else who is there...
THIS WAS TUESDAYS RUN:









I ask them to donate 2 dollars to cover my gas going back & forth--everyone is SO good about paying and often want to donate more--you typically will walk away with ATLEAST 30 dollars worth of groceries EACH PERSON if not more...

The food is stuff that is out of code, ie close to the due date, stuff they've ordered too much of or it has a dented box etc--its all GREAT EATABLE food! I tell people to just take what they will eat for dinner that night, what they will have for lunch and anything else like milk, bread, eggs, cheese, yougurt etc..it works really well..I tell everyone to be done by 10:15am so I can go on with my day--

This program is called Fresh Rescue & was started only with Albertsons in 2005..you have to have a NonProfit Organization with at Tax ID # to do it--all of the stores in Cali are taken & they are moving the program eastward--
THIS WAS THURSDAYS RUN:





It really is SUCH an easy thing for me to do everyday--it doesnt take a lot of my time and i LOVEEEEEEEEEEEE helping all these families--i have about 25 families that Im helping--1/2 of them arent LDS--just friends of LDS families that come because they heard about what I was doing--

I havent even gone to the grocery store since i started this--Im not even using the church food program either--that gives you an idea of seriously HOW MUCH food im getting--

i wanted to take a photo of my ALWAYS STOCKED fridge--

EVERYTHING literally was free from albertsons...the food run has just been fabulous!

we drove to lake hemet on saturday to meet up with some friends-here are a few photos from that..the girls didnt catch anything only our friend russell did--the guy with the white hair is our friend named jeff--he taught them how to fish..so he had the girls reel in the SAME fish for each girl--too cute...





jeff bbq'd us some burgers & hot dogs, it was complete with smores too--its about an hour drive from our house and was WAY WAY fun for the girls--

Is it cute or what! Jon wants me to now get a license plate that says "Beauty & The Beast"--




We are STILL WAITING to see if we get any bites on jons book-so far about 7 or 8 no's...patience...patience...patience...

LASTLY --you may remember last year how Rachel was nominated to attend the National Young Scholars Program (a camp like thing that you have to have excellent grades, be a leader at the school & be nominated by a teacher..she was able to go to a LA college for a week & earned a full ride scholarship to go)-she was nominated AGAIN to go this year to Washington d.c!! it will be in June--we tried for a scholarship but she didnt get it this time (probably because she got one last year) so we will have to work on raising money for her to go..its not cheap 1880 for her to go & thats JUST the camp part...
on top of that a few weeks ago she was ALSO nominated to attend a program in which she will get to go to the 2009 Presidential Inaguaration!!!! As an Inaugural Scholar and special guest on the National Mall, Rachel will not only bear witness as the President of the United States is sworn into office, she will also meet a major presidential candidate, White House officials, congressional staff, political experts and special VIPs such as Lance Armstrong. Ive already spoken to a few of our friends here that own their own business to see if they can help sponsor her to go..I've got 1k so far (its 2500 to attend)--again we're hoping we can pull this ONCE in a lifetime opportunity for her--we keep telling her SEE what happens when you work hard at school!!

SO this is what we have been up to!