Hunger Walk

This past Sunday, Joe and I walked in the Chicago Food Depository's 5k Hunger Walk. We walked to raise money for the St. Vincent dePaul Food Pantry located in our church.

Needless to say, I wasn't in a good mood on the day of the walk and things kept going wrong to frustrate me more. ha ha. First of all, I was super tired from being out/up too late the night before at the Taste of Chicago with my friend, didn't get much sleep. No sleep = crabby Mindy. I should have known better!

Also, to make my mood even better, I couldn't find the bottle of sunscreen the morning of the walk and spent the morning on a mad goose chase in the apartment to find the magic disappearing sunscreen that never turned up... I knew Joe and I would get sunburned. Arg.... Then, the "team" we were supposed to walk with decided not to wait for everyone to arrive before they started walking. They told us to be there at 9:30 and we were...we assumed we would all be walking together. We called the guy in charge when we arrived and he told us that they started early and were half way done already. What? Hmmm. Oh well, so Joe and I were on our own walking...lucky Joe getting to deal with crabby tired and hot wife. Sorry Joe! ;-)

Anyway...so aside from my crabbiness the walk was fine. It was a hot and very humid day, but we survived. We walked from Soldier Field, south along the lakefront path. We hadn't seen that part of the lakefront path before. It was really pretty and well groomed, the paths were nice and the landscaping around the path was very nice. There were cool yachts and boats in the marina which was nice to see. The best part was the awesome views of the lake as well as the city as we walked back north along the path.

After the walk I went home and took a nice long nap!  I think I overdosed on volunteering that day. I've been doing too much of that this past couple of weeks. ;-)

Here are some photos from the walk...

D4D - Garden Planting

This has been a busy couple weeks of volunteering for me! On Friday I volunteered to help plant a garden with Designs for Dignity at the Madonna House. D4D is a local organization that provides interior design services to area non-profits. With the support of manufacturers, vendors and volunteers they are able to transform environments for those in need.

I signed up to help plant from 10-2, but when I got there at 10, they had a lot done already. I still helped plant a bunch of day lilies and also helped spread mulch and clean up a bit. I ended up being done by about 12:30 or so. In total they ended up planting a bunch of perennials and several trees in the backyard and creating more of a landscaped yard which was only grass before.

The Madonna House is a place for women and children that's affiliated with catholic charities. Recently D4D redesigned the interiors for them. They created a video showing the interior project as well as a couple other projects they have done... I LOVE the video, seeing it inspired me to get involved with them. This was the first thing I have done for them, but hopefully I can do more in the future.

I am posting the video below...the music is perfect and the designs that they did are amazing because they work only with donations. Watch the video and be sure to turn your sound up! :-)

Chicago Cares

On Saturday, June 12th  I spent the day painting a mural for the Chicago Cares Serve-a-thon event. The Harrington College of Alumni Association formed a team for this event...even though it was a small team, we still did a great job. Chicago Cares helps Chicago schools year round by using volunteers to do projects that help to spruce up the schools. The serve-a-thon is the biggest event of the year. I think I heard there were over 6000 volunteers and 150 buses this year!

We checked in at soldier field at 8am and we were assigned to a bus that drove us to the Elem/Jr High school to do our work. Teams were sent all over the city to do work in at many schools. They are able to get SO much work done in one day, its amazing.

The school we went to had lots of jobs to be done, painting walls in classrooms (lots of rooms) and painting murals. We (of course) jumped at the chance to paint murals, being designers and all.... :-)   The murals were painted on canvases, not on the walls at this school. The schools choose which murals they want, and they picked a really detailed sports themed mural and a couple other simpler murals. We jumped at the chance to do the complicated one. We traced the template design onto canvas using an overhead projector, then traced over that with a sharpie marker. Then we began to paint using a reference image. It was a fun day and our painting turned out great! The Principal and other women from the school loved it!

This was the first time I had been into a Chicago public school. I was very sad to see the condition it was in. The exterior was decent, but the interior was just really old and dirty. I don't even think it was one of the worst schools, but it was still sad to see how poorly kept up it was. It just seemed so run down, like a really depressing place to try to learn...

Here are some photos from the event... Thanks to everyone who donated to support our team! Click on the images to enlarge.

Happy Father's Day!!

Happy Father's Day to all of the Dad's out there! Especially to our favorite Dads, Greg and Dan!
Chloe and Louie think Joe is a pretty good Dad too! Happy Dog-Father's Day to him! ;-)
Hope everyone has a great day!

Yay, Dad!

Recently, my Dad got very sick with whooping cough... apparently older adults and young kids (due to not getting vaccinated) are catching this more frequently. At first the Dr. thought it was pneumonia, but it turned out to be whooping cough. I was alarmed when his wife texted me to tell me that he had been really sick. Apparently, he was coughing so hard that he would black out several times a day. Not good! He passed out at work and fell on his nose and got all cut up from his glasses. I am sure he gave his co-workers a good scare. He has been through several rounds of antibiotics, but his Dr. said it can take a while to clear up in older adults. Thankfully he stayed home from work for a while and rested because he was completely exhausted, which was hard for him because he is such a work-aholic. He does seem to be getting better though, so hopefully he will be back to normal soon! I am glad to hear he is feeling better, I was worried about him!

Some good things did come out of him getting sick though. He had all kinds of tests done on his heart, lungs, etc, and everything is looking OK. That always makes me feel better....I was wondering how "healthy" he was, so at least now we know.

AND.....

The BEST thing that came out of this is that he QUIT SMOKING!!!!!!
My Dad smoked when I was a kid, but quit "cold turkey" when I was around 7 years old. He picked it up again (unfortunately) when we were much older and has been smoking since. He wasn't ever a heavy smoker, but he did smoke. Everyone knows how I feel about smoking,... I have never been accepting of it for anyone, I'm just not cool with it, especially for my close friends and family because I worry about them too much.  I was always sad that my Dad smoked, but I am so so so glad to hear he has finally quit. I know he will feel much better and I will definitely worry less about him.

He has been smoke-free for 7 weeks now!! Nothing makes me happier than this.
Congrats Dad! :-)  I am so proud of you for quitting!
I love you!
He just turned 62 this past Monday...so Happy Birthday to him too!