Ronald McDonald House

Two years ago we took Lily and Jack to Cincinnati Children's hospital where they both had surgery and recovered for 17 days. Jason and I had to spend each night at the hospital and we also had a room at the nearby Ronald McDonald House. Six months later we had to return to Cincinnati for some followup appointments and spent another 10 days living in the Ronald McDonald House. One of the highlights was the groups of volunteers that would come in and make dinner for the guests every night. They were always great people who we enjoyed getting to know. They provided such a great service and we were so appreciative. We both commented that sometime in the future when our lives settled down a bit we would like to do the same thing at our local Ronald McDonald House.

Our bishop asked me to organzie a few service projects that we could do as a ward and the Ronald McDonald house was the first thing that entered my mind. Our first time preparing dinner was Thursday night and it was so much fun. They only need about eight people and since the scouts need 8 service hours for a merit badge they are working on we decided to let them have the first shot. It was a total success. We had our ward members donate the ingredients for Enchilada Pie, Salad and Rolls. Dessert was Texas Sheet Cake. Everything has to be prepared on site so we put the boys to work chopping onions and opening cans. Eli and I made the sheet cake since he likes to help make it at home. The houseguests kept coming in to check on dinner and we met a cute little boy who is undergoing chemo for Leukemia. It was so sweet to watch a member of our ward whose wife recently finsihed chemo interact with this cute little boy. We met several parents who had premature babies in the NICU. Everyone was so appreciative and devoured our dinner. It was such a great feeling and put everything into perspective. I was absolutely giddy the whole night and couldn't believe that we pulled it off so flawlessly.