Help Us Feed Starving Children

For the past two years our family, as part of Nathaniel's birthday celebration, has volunteered for the organization Feed My Starving Children along with some friends and extended family members each year. We will be volunteering to pack food again this year for his 4th birthday.

This year I decided to create a fundraising page so that our friends and out of town family that can not participate physically packing food with us can participate by donating money to get the packed food to starving kids around the world.

If you would like to donate you can do so here at https://give.fmsc.org/nathanielslegacy.

Nathaniel Day 24 - Birthday Packing Party

We decided for Nathaniel's birthday party this year to volunteer with our family at Feed My Starving Children. We spent the afternoon packing meals to send to starving kids around the world. Grandmas and Grandpa and Dave's sister and brother in law and their kids were able to join us for the afternoon. I signed us up as a birthday party so there was even a sign saying happy birthday to Nathaniel. It was a little awkward when they were looking for the birthday people and we said Nathaniel wasn't there. We got there late so didn't have a chance to tell anyone beforehand. But if we had talked to someone about the situation maybe they wouldn't have announced his name.

I think everyone enjoyed the packing. Abby did all the jobs. She scooped and weighed and labeled and helped box. She was one tired girl after the session was done. 

I have no idea how much our little group of me, Dave, and 5 kids packed. We weren't very good about keeping track of how many boxes we did. The whole big group ended up packing 125 boxes which would be enough to feed 74 kids for a year.

After the session we bought Nathaniel a bird and a giraffe at the FMSC shop to decorate his grave. We have been meaning to get him some new decorations, but hadn't found anything we liked yet. This way we got something fun and provided 140 meals for starving kids.

After the packing we picked up some mexican food. Most of us went over to Grandma's house for some dinner and birthday cake. It turned out to be a really fun day.

Nathaniel Day 21 - Packing Food for Kids

You can read about the idea behind Nathaniel Day and the activities of previous months by clicking on the Nathaniel Day Activities tab at the top of the page.

On November 6th Dave's work group was doing a team building day packing meals at Feed My Starving Children. Abby is now old enough to volunteer and there were spots for us so we left Felicity with Grandma and joined them for the afternoon session. 

Abby had so much fun and was exhausted by the end! She helped scoop ingredients for a while until her arms got tired and then she joined Dave in packing the finished meals into a box for shipping. She was in charge of keeping track of how many boxes we packed. I think our team (Dave's work group plus me and Abby) packed 16 or 17 boxes. 

The whole group that session packed a total of 132 boxes which will make 79,200 meals for severely malnurished children. That is enough to feed 72 kids for an entire year!

Nathaniel Day 4 - Museum and Food

Nathaniel Day 4 came quickly for me. May was busy with the start of this blog and my parents visiting so June was here before I knew it.

I had a hard time coming up with something to do for Nathaniel Day this month. It needed to be fun for me and not something that we can do all the time like go to the pool. We had gone to the train museum with Grandma and Grandpa while they were here so that was out. This month I also was thinking I might want to volunteer somewhere, but Abby's not old enough to do that most places. I decided to try to do both. June 6th fell on a Friday so Dave could participate in the evening and we didn't need to get home at any particular time. We just needed a place to volunteer and a babysitter.

On Wednesday I still didn't have a plan. I happened to look on the website for Feed My Starving Children and they had 14 spots to fill for Friday night. We called Dave's mom. She could babysit. We decided to all go to dinner beforehand. Evening activities planned.

I decided to check and see what museum passes were available at the library on Thursday. That way Abby and I could do something fun for possibly free. The Lake County Discovery Museum pass was available and we hadn't been there for a long time so I got that. Daytime activities planned.

Eating lunch with the mastodon
outside the museum

Friday was a beautiful day so I decided to bring a picnic lunch with us to the museum. It is at a forest preserve so I figured we could find a picnic table and maybe play a little before going into the museum. It's not a very big museum. It was not going to take all day to look at even if we read every sign there.

Abby's favorite picture

We had fun at the museum. I think we were the only people there for a while. There was a kid's play room that we hadn't been in before. Abby had fun playing with buffalo on the prairie and building bird's nests. Some of the time she was in there I was able to look at the photography exhibit that was right outside.

Playing with the buffalo

Building a nest

After we looked at everything in the museum we decided to see if we could find a playground to play at for a while. We found some baby swings. From there we could see the big trucks working on the road. We watched the trucks digging for a long time. Then it was time to go home so that we could go to dinner with Grandma.

Highlight of the day for Abby. Watching the construction
across the street.

We met Grandma for dinner at Red Robin and then Dave and I left them at our house. We had a great time packing meals for about an hour. There was a fairly small group of 75 people there that night. Together we packed enough food to feed 45 kids in Haiti for a year. I will definitely keep it in mind for another Nathaniel Day activity. I can do it any time as long as I can find someone to watch Abby for a couple hours. That shouldn't be a problem. We have a long list of people who would love to play with her for an afternoon.

I had fun with Abby. I helped feed kids. I hardly even cried. Nathaniel Day was a success once again. I already have the next one planned. It's on a weekend so Dave can join us all day for the fun.