{skills}

Yesterday morning Luke and I had a neat opportunity (thanks to my sister) to volunteer for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition in Mineola! She has been working very long hours (like 12-15 hour days) from day one helping to coordinate all the volunteers. Instead of waking up and leaving the house by 4am like she has been doing she woke up early to jump in our bed with Madelyn so that Luke and I could leave the house around 5am. Our shift started at 6am! It was still dark, cold and rainy when we arrived.

When we first arrived to the site, there were several volunteers waiting for jobs. It didn't look like they were going to need us anytime soon. They kept asking for "skilled" volunteers. I quickly found myself relating to Napoleon in Napoleon Dynamite as he explains that girls only want boyfriends with skills.

Girls only want boyfriends who have skills sound bite Jon Heder sound bites

Apparently construction crews usually prefer people with skills when they are trying to build a quality house in one week. Not sure their logic, but we chose to go with the flow. (In case you could not tell...I am being facetious)

After a few minutes of hanging out in the rain...

and watching the progress...

Luke was picked to help! In the picture below he is the one behind the scaffolding, under the archway. You may just have to take my word for it :)

A little while later the volunteer coordinator utilized my mad door opening and closing skills and positioned me inside the house for the very important job of making sure the doors stayed shut as all the volunteers came in and out. I did my job well. I was pretty much a natural. Ha!

Anyway, it put me closer to Luke so I could take some close ups of him hard at work.

He hammered away for the next 4 hours with a guy that came in from Arlington to volunteer.

After about 45 minutes of "door duty", I was replaced by a bubbly 19 year old who did not want to get her shoes dirty so she needed an indoor job! Once I gave her a little on the job training (I'm only kidding), I headed outside to be of some use.

For the next 4 hours I dug through pallets of stone for just the colors the designers wanted to use and carried them to the guys that needed them. It was a messy job.

Those stones were super heavy and it was quite the trek to get them form the pallets to these guys who were putting them up on the front of the house...It was just so much fun to be a part of something for a special family and to see all that goes on behind the scenes of the show. It is unbelievable how many people it takes to get the house built in just one week! We didn't get a glimpse of Ty, but a couple of the celebrities were working hard while we were there.

Luke and I were filthy when our shift was up. We talked and laughed the whole way home and hopped in the shower before touching Madelyn!

Thank you, Rachel, for watching Madelyn so that we could volunteer!

Last night (after resting and recovering from 4 hours of stone carrying) Madelyn and I headed to the Tyler Soccer Association Coach's meeting. I am coaching my nieces U6 team again this spring. When we came home Luke took some pictures of the two of us. Can you believe how well she smiled for the camera??

She is usually pretty photogenic...

but we laughed so hard when we saw this picture because she resembles the likes of a 90 year old man...

I love this little girl.

Today has been a long but low key day. Madelyn did not want to let me out of her sight at all. She fussed every time I left the room. Needless to say, I didn't get much done. She loves to play on her back these days but now that she knows how to roll over, she does it almost instantly. The only problem is that she is not as skilled at rolling from her tummy back on to her back. She gets so mad. To try to remedy the situation a bit, my mom brought her a little present tonight.

Hopefully the little piano mat will help her to happily play on her tummy. So far that remains to be seen, but it was too close to bed time when we introduced it to her to really know.

She LOVED it when we were holding it and she was sitting up, so we will see what she thinks of it tomorrow!