Divorce and the end of the Story

 Pretty down today. Another couple getting divorced at 60. After a lifetime of marriage. Just counting the poeple I know, and their families, these stories are getting more frequent, at least in my hearing. It hurts too much. Christian families too. Who made it decades together, before deciding now was the moment to call it quits.

How did we get here?

Our narrative is wrong.

The idea that suffering (and sin in our spouse) is a reason to end it. Somehow, by divorcing (even at 60) is standing up for yourself. Standing up for your grandchildren. Standing up for women. 

Somehow the divorce is making sure that everything wrong that the spouse has done is not forgotten Refusing to be codependent, not putting up with it. Now, finally somehow sticking it to the man. Standing up for truth. Setting the record right, in a walk out protest.

And its basically setting off a bomb in our families, grown children's marriages shaken or broken or never started. Even the “thriving, stable” kids are coping, having trouble sleeping at night. Joy robbed from beautiful days of young motherhood, brooding about the emotional angst in their birth family. Sides taken for and against. What should be a fortress, torn apart in civil war. Separation is just that---a separation. A vacuum felt even in a grey-haired child's soul.

So much is lost. So much is destroyed

Our meta-narrative we chart reality onto, is all twisted up and backwards.

This divorce and remarriage archetype is but one finger of the hand. The hand is wrong. A world based in what ought to be, and not what is.

 That by protest, that by breaking what is left, we will somehow make the world anew, into what it ought to be. Insisting on living in a world where power is never abused, where love is always healthy, where relatives only ever speak kind nontoxic words, where everything is as it should be. But this world exists only inside our own heads. Because the family reunions are shattered and never happen, people being cut off for mental health reasons. We aren't creating a better world. We are destroying what scraps of this one that we have left.

What is the narrative, the pattern that was given to us by a strange middle-eastern God, demanding absolute purity, demanding exactly how the world should be?

We failed. We broke the rules, broke the contract, trashed the place, ran up debts, and cheated on Him.

And He didn't cut us off.

He came anyway.

And then we killed Him.

Through suffering, through pain, through torture, comes the triumphant ending of the story. Through the crucifixion, through the dark night of doubt on saturday with a dead god, then comes Sunday morning. He comes, scarred and alive, to tell His bride that her debt is paid.

That is the pattern given to us.

Where did we go wrong? Where did we lose it? Despite You showing it to us, again and again and again?

God, come and save Your Bride. We are bat-shit crazy.

I'm still waiting for the end of the story, God. Where you come, and save us, Your bat-shit crazy narcissistic Bride. And somehow, make us, bright and clean, pure, holy and without blemish.

God, you've got Your work cut out for you.

Come, and save us. We are Yours. All the hot mess of us. Save us.

Surviving Phoenix Summer 2026

We got back from our monthlong epic TN-AL-TX roadtrip last week, and after a lovely under-average week of 100/70 and me deciding the desert was an awesome place after all, the next week has brought us back the 110/85 days. This morning I was desperately perusing google maps and honing in on any green point in a 3 hr radius.

I just canceled our camping trip for July 10, since the prediction said high of 96 at the campsite. It seems June 10-July 20th really isn't the best time to camp, even at 7000 elevation on the Rim. The campsites aren't booked up there, which tells you its just the hard-core campers there. Maybe we shall be them one day. But it's not yet. 

OK, Hannah, no need to re-invent the wheel.

June 10 to July 20th is kinda a deadzone for camping [being honest with myself, its probably more like June 10th to Aug 15 for us]

But  little rangers need to go a'ranging...

Living in the desert means being a Dawn Ranger. Waking to stars and chasing the twilights.

Phoenix in the summer is unbearable. Unless you chase the twilights. Live in the dawn and the dusks. Hide from the sun from 8am to 6/7pm. This handy reference helps, showing dawn times in the year.

HOW WE ARE GOING TO DO IT:

1. Wake them at 4:30 and head out to  Adventures from 4:30/5am to 7am....it starts to look beautiful 40 min before sunrise so  from 4:40 when sunrise is technically 5:20. 
2. Kids must learn to speak in whispers and travel quietly like real rangers when around Birdwatchers and Fishermen.
3. Load up to go home by 7am  
4. Siesta/Quiet Book Time at 10-2pm
5. Family Evenings with water 7:30-9:30pm//8-10pm Family Outside Time. Wet neck rags, and folk dance or soccer. Popsicles. Local Splashpads open till 10pm

Dawn Adventures---Weekday

Remember, always being a gallon of water. If Outside after 7am---Hats, sunscreen, water-bottles!!! 

• OUR NEIGHBORHOOD PARK. technically opens at 6am--10pm but if they are quiet, I think 5am is ok. Sprinklers are rumored to go off 5/5:30am
• Take the kids to the Riparion park, it opens at 5:30am--10pm. 
• Riparion trails, at 5:30-7am (Ranger quiet, stealth)
• Breakfast Picnic at Daddy's work. 6am to 7:30am, I will need to pick up Josh from work later.
• BIGGER ADVENTURES: Get the kids up at 4am. Get your pass here America the Beautiful Pass. So we need to use it at least 12 times to make it retroactively worth it! 
• Granite Reef Recreation area, wild horses at dawn. Go on a weekday, once a week. [look out for rattlesnakes]  @ 5am--7am [fishers?  23 min, L202 at dawn]
• ?Canyon Lake @ 5am [ 1 hr away. Acacia Recreation Site]
• ?Lake Saguaro @ 5am [42 min away]
• ?Pebble Beach
• ?Hidden Valley/Fat Man's pass/South Mouuntain? [no water, just desert. Only right at dawn]
• ?Sears-Kay Ruin (Hohokam)
• Check out more on Alltrails....

Evenings in the Twilights

7-9pm [8-10pm better] you can go outside, if you are wet.... The sun is down (7:40), but it has exhausted itself in pumping its heat into the earth. Here we are constrained by Daddy having a day job. So either we frolic off without him, or we drag an exhausted man out into the heat for adventures after a long day at work.... 

• Soccer/Dance/Wet Tag at the park (plus icecream). "Wet Tag" Play tag with sopping wet rags, you need to actually get someone wet for it to count. Bring along a bucket of waters for refills. BRING A FROZEN GALLON OF WATER and a FROZEN GALLON OF LEMONADE. Bring a boom-box and do English Folk Dancing on the basketball court. (If I can time to when the sprinklers go off, that would be a great time to visit the park)
• Go on walks in the evening around our neighborhood, or our park, wearing the wet cooling towels on our necks. 
• Enjoy dusk together as a family, in the backyard, in some sort of water games. 
• SPLASHPADS and climbing towers---Go to the splashpad at Riverview at 7-10pm, bring towels, two pizzas. Get wet first, then go play in the playground area and evaporative cooling will keep you alive. Have kids stick with their buddies to cut down on the chaos. Maybe you'll pick up some spanish! 
• SPLASHPADS and treehouse slides---Pioneer park is open until 10pm as well! 
• STAR-GAZING and LIGHTSABERS----Riparion Preserve is open from 5:30am-10pm Bring cheerios for the ducks. Riparion Preserve at 7pm on a Friday or Saturday, and stay when its dark to look through the observation telescope. Bring water and snacks, and maybe lightsabers.
• ROSES IN THE DARK---Rose Garden at Dusk. Load up on Popsicles/Icecream bars, and go visit the Rose Garden in the dark 8-9. Make the kids walk the circuit of the little trail with you, maybe 7x
• ANIMALS---??Riparion Trails in the Golden Hour. Trails shut at sunset, gates lock, so this might be a little stressful.... But the Riparion Park I think stays open a bit longer. Walk to the Carl's Damaged Pet Warehouse, with carrots.
•  IKEA EVENING---Feed the kids, and head over to IKEA 6pmish for an evening of perusing the display rooms. End by buying them cookies and Mork chocolate, head home and stop at the rose garden on the way to eat the chocolate and walk the circuit a few times. 

 

 The world can still be explored with highs of 113. Go and do it!!!

UPDATE: Basically the kids really need about 10 hours of silence to sleep every night, and the kids under 7 need a 90 min nap on top of that. Aim for complete silence, let the kids sleep, from 9---6am baseline. It will be adjusted according to activities.

• KIDS MUST BE UTTERLY SILENT in their rooms at 9pm 

• If we had a morning adventure (before 6am), Allow for mid-day naps [11/12-2] for everyone (not just the littles)
• If we are planning an evening excursion (8-10pm), let the kids sleep in till 8am the next morning. 

Day Trips with Daddy (sat morn)

Only downside is we need to wake up pretty early for this. 4am/4:30am/5am for most of them. Daddy's work maybe just 5:30... 

• Daddy's Work Breakfast Picnic. The little gardens around ASU. 5/6/7/8am there are no students up yet on Saturdays, We have the world to ourselves. It is beautiful.
• Water Wheel Falls Park. Aim to be there from 6-10. [starts filling up at 9] So need to get up at 4am and start driving. Then come home at 9:30/10 when its getting really hot and crowded, and the UV index soars. Come home, eat, and have a siesta
• ?Canyon Lake @ 5am [ 1 hr away. Acacia Recreation Site]
• ?Lake Saguaro @ 5am [42 min away]
• ?Granite Reef @ 5am [fishers?  23 min, L202 at dawn]

7-24-2026 UPDATE: I just had to cancel our July 24th trip as well. The problem is the heat spikes in July mean that even up on the Rim, the highs can be anywhere between a nice 81, or a high of 98 (unbearable). The only way to camp up on the Rim in July, is not to reserve in advance, and swing it depending on the weather. So, note to future self, don't reserve campsites from June 10th--Aug 15th

Books about Reality: How to write Reality?

I perused a library, its young adult section brimming with books. Books set in the past and future, but mostly set in fictional universes in which our hero discovers she/he is the Chosen with great powers and given some important purpose.

(Here is ChatGPT's cover to a "YA novel in a medieval fantasy world with a teen who is the Chosen One)

In that they are not wrong. In fact, the cliche works because there is so much truth in it. It resonates with some part of the unjaded little souls because the resonant frequency programmed into them senses some truth.

Each of us is breathed in by the Breath of God, created for a mission and a calling, sent forth into a world at war between Evil and Good. Evil beyond our comprehension and Good beyond our wildest imagining.

But what struck me was how young a lot of the authors looked in their back-jacket pictures. It may be simply photoshop or judicious use of sunscreen, but a lot of those authors looked to be in their twenties. In your twenties, writing books that teens read that will shape their understanding of the structure of reality. 

As far as the book-jackets could show, these young authors didn't seem to be war veterans, or peace-keepers from soup kitchens, coming out of the trenches of war or humanitarian aid, with lots to tell of what they had seen. A lot of them seemed like just young people themselves who gathered their ideas about the world from other young adult novels they had spent the last decade reading.

The serpent is eating its tail. 

The AI is creating answers based on its own answers. 

The computer program is stuck in a loop, recursively spitting out its cyclic version of reality.

George R. Martin, comic book nerd and draft dodger, tells other comic book nerds what true gritty war is like, from a lifetime of consuming novels and comic books.  

In contrast, by the time J.R.R Tolkien wrote The Hobbit he had fought in a world war, grieved his best friends, convinced his teenage crush to marry him, held down a job interacting with other humans, raised 4 kids, and then was sending The Hobbit in chapters to encourage his son fighting another world war. 

He had seen a lot. He had experienced a lot. He had interacted with others who had experienced a lot.

He'd lived. 

(It's possible George R Martin maybe based his stories on actual stories of his fellow men who did go and fight in wars that he didn't believe in. I don't know, I haven't read his novels. I know he did consume a vast amount of fiction & comics, by his own account. But if I had a choice of hearing about war from the minstrel, or the soldier, I'd rather pick the soldier. Guns Up or something by a man of George's generation who actually fought)

When people write to escape their lives, their works by definition are all conjecture. The brain must draw on something.

The Bronte sisters, stuck on the moor in a small village, consuming a lot of gothic novels, wrote of what they didn't know. Thus we have fantastical stories woven mostly of threads from other gothic novels, forgettable works like Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" which felt like sticking my head into an AI simulator or a surreal nightmare. A simulator in which an introverted pastor's daughter wrote what she thought it might be like to be embroiled in a tormented paranormal gothic romance.

And then we have her sister Charlotte's more enduring "Jane Eyre" in which she blends a lot more of her own experience into the gothic nightmare. Now we have a very real childhood friendship as one of them dies of consumption (her sister),  the warm mission-minded family with the driven Greek-studying boy in love with the idea of India, the gossipy maid, the real people woven into the strange nightmare. And thus, Jane Eyre has just enough realism in it to maybe make the gothic nightmare worth it. 

Then there is Jane Austen, another nerdy pastor's daughter, who in her own words "writes on 2 inches of ivory." She knew she was limited to write what she knew, and she did it so well that those people she knew still come to life in her pages. You can even chart the same characters, as she looks back on them with older eyes, change and morph throughout her novels. I found her "Pride and Prejuidice" penned at 21, to have the flattest characters. Her later books, reincarnations of those same characters become every more deeper. She finally forgives Mrs. Bennet and gives her a whole book as the protoganist (Emma). 

L. M. Montgomery's genius was writing her own village church people....Anne of Green Gables, Rilla of  Ingleside...all the side characters, all the real people she wove into her stories....now, nearly 200 years later I can love her nosy neighbor, and laugh and cry over the struggles of this small town in the throes of being the homefront in WWI. The most forgettable of her stories are the ones I suspect she strayed most from her lived experience "Anne's House of Dreams", where as the romantic writer proposes to the girl with the floorlength hair of swirling gold, it feels like we really have wandered into one of Anne's dreams. Give me Ken and Rilla's awkward date on the porch while Old Susan crashes the party and starts sharing embarrassing stories of them as children. One of those scenes felt so much realer, because I would bet $100, it was.

Can young people write good books, my son asks? Is it required to actually live everything you write about? No. Tolkien didn't become king, or destroy a ring of power. 

But on some level the stories (and people) we write must come from somewhere. 

1. Your life of the life of someone you know [primary]
2. The life of someone else who wrote about it [secondary]
3. The novel of someone you hope got it from reality, or at least, another novel based in reality.

Obviously, even 1 & 2 have some level of distortion, in that we are interpreting reality all the time, trying to make sense of it. That's what writing is.

Books about reality

In no particular order

Autobiographies---Primary Sources

• The Word Came with Power
• Search for the Source by Neil T. Anderson
• ?Mission Possible by Marilyn Lazlo
• Guns Up, Johnnie M Clark
• ??Korean War book
• ?book by Amy Carmichal? Mimosa?
• The Cross and the Switchblade
• Through the Valley of the Kwai
• Guadalcanal Diary
• Laura Ingalls Wilder books, Farmer Boy
• Caddie Woodlawn
• First 2 Ralph Moody Books [Little Britches, Man of the Family]
• Water by the Inch
• Cheaper by the Dozen
• The Hiding Place
• ?Surviving the Angel of Death by Eva Moses Kor
• ?Leap into Darkness, by Leo Bretholz
• ?Diary of Anne Frank
• In God’s Underground/With Christ in the communist prisons by Richard Wurmrand
• Pastor’s Wife by Sabina Wurmbrand
• Between Hammer and Sickle by Mihai Wurmbrand
• If Prison Walls Could Speak & With God in Solitary Confinement by Richard Wurmrand
• ?Gulag Archipelago
• Son of Hamas
• Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus
• ??Unbroken, Louis Zamperini
• Joker One 
• Guns Up by Johnnie M. Clark
• The Search for the Source by Neil Andersen
• Yoneko, rice child, daughter of happiness by Yoneko Tahara
• ????Daylight must come.
• ????The insanity of God

Biographies

• Joan of Arc: Her Story by Regine Pernoud
• Kit Carson by Ralph Moody
• ?Christopher coulubus by Fernando Aresto
• ?Mary Lincoln by Ruth Painter Randall
• ?William Wilberforce, by Eric Metaxes
• William Wilberforce by Belmonte
• ???TO the golden shore, [adoniram Judson] by Courtney Anderson
• Never Say Die (Gladys Aylward) by Cyril Davies
• Sundar Singh by Cyril Davies
• Vanya: A True Story by Myrna Grant
• Rees Howells Intercessor
• ?[something about Francis Xavier]
• ?[Something about John Donne]
• ?Wounded Tiger by

Epics & Legends & Ballads

• Illiad & Odyssey
• Beowulf
• Song of Roland
• Silmarillion
• The Lord of the Rings
• George MacDonald The Golden Key
• Fairy tales (Lang, irish one, etc)
• ???Viking Sagas???
• Demon Lover, Wanderer, [Medieval Ballads]
• Ballad of the White Horse

Novels

• All the Trailblazer books (Dave and Neta Jackson) especially “Bandit of Asheley Downs” and “Listen for the Whippoorwill” and “Captured by the River Rats”
• God King by Joanne Williamson
• The Lantern Bearers by Rosemary Sutcliff
• Narnia Books CS Lewis
• CS Lewis’ space trilogy
• Till We Have Faces by CS Lewis
• The Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
• Roll of Thunder, Hear my cry
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Tell me a riddle, by Tillie Olsen
• Chesterton’s Father Brown Mysteries, Four Faultess Felons, Man Who Was Thursday
• George MacDonald something
• Bronze Bow by Elisabeth George Speare
• Rolf and the Viking Bow by Allen French
• Cry the Beloved Country
• Crime and Punishment
• Number the Stars 
• Allegiance & Choices of One by Timothy Zahn [Star Wars]
• [The Giver]
• Anne of Green Gables series by L. M. Montgomery
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma etc by Jane Austen
• Enemy Brothers by Constance Savery
• Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• Mark Twain's Joan of Arc
• ?Jane Eyre? mixed feelings on this. It's a Christian response to a gothic novel, but it's still a gothic novel....my favorite characters die
• ???Starship Troopers
• ????something by Isaac Asimov?
• The Eighth Arrow
• Strangers and Sojourners & Plague Journal by Michael D. O'Brien
• Sophia House by Michael D. O'Brien
• 
  

MORE BOOK RECCOMENDATIONS from a friend. ( I haven't read all of these yet)

For kids and teens to read:

Peter Rabbit

Charlotte's Web

Trumpet of the Swan

Tom Sawyer

Little Women

Little Men (others if desired, Jo's Boys, Eight Cousins, and Old Fashioned Girl are among the next best) 

Alice in Wonderland 

Through the Looking Glass

Mrs. Frisby and Rats of Nihm 

Treasures of the Snow, other St. John

Peter Pan

The Secret Garden

The Little Princess

Treasure Island, other Stevenson

Mother Goose

Aesop's Fables 

Heidi

Robin Hood, Arthur, myths, fairy tales

Sherlock Holmes

Father Brown

Caddie Woodlawn

(Black Beauty)

(Black Stallion) 

The Princess and the Goblin 

The Princess and Curdie 

Narnia

Hobbit/LotR

Wind in the Willows 

Old Yeller

Where the Red Fern Grows

Little House on the Prairie 

Phantom Tollbooth 

Just So Stories or other Kipling

Winnie the Pooh

Sarah, Plain and Tall 

Skylark (other sequels, too, if interested)

Little Britches 

The Great Brain

Penderwicks and sequels

Anything by Robert McCloskey 

Dr. Doolittle?

(Pinocchio)

The Railway Children, other Nesbit 

Pollyanna

Witch of Blackbird Pond

Cheaper by the Dozen

Boxcar Children, first 19 only

Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys? At least one each

Sadako and the 1000 Cranes

Frindle, other by Clements if desired

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Anne of Green Gables, sequels and others if interested

Christmas Carol

Scarlet Pimpernel

All of a Kind Family

Brighto of the Grand Canyon, other Henry if interested

Captain's Courageous

Johnny Tremain

The Bible

The Westing Game

Little Pilgrim's Progress by Taylor

Original American Girl books

Chronicles of Prydain

The Little Engine that Could 

Velveteen Rabbit

Wizard of Oz

101 Dalmatians 

Mary Poppins

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Carry on Mr Bowditch

My Side of the Mountain

Call of the Wild

White Fang 

Incredible Journey

Tale of Despereaux

Jules Verne

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

Understood Betsy

Older kids (~10+):

Huckleberry Finn 

Jane Eyre

Watership Down

Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Other C.S. Lewis

Cry, the Beloved Country

Any Jane Austen

Tale of Two Cities 

Anne Frank

Ender's Game

Pilgrim's Progress 

Agatha Christie

Dorothy Sayers

Robinson Crusoe

Swiss Family Robinson

To Kill a Mockingbird

Three Musketeers 

Count of Monte Cristo

Crime and Punishment

Frankenstein

Shakespeare

Gulliver's Travels

Importance of Being Earnest, other Wilde

The Giver and sequels

1984

(Animal Farm) 

Brave New World

Lord of the Flies

The Great Gatsby

(Grapes of Wrath) 

Uncle Tom's Cabin

The Scarlet Letter

(North and South) I've read another by her that was good.

Cranford

Pygmalion (My Fair Lady)

(Last of the Mohicans)

00000000000000

recommended by random ppl on the internet

Gay girl good God (Jackie Hill Perry)

Prison saved my life (Louis Dooley and Heidi Gruber O'Very

The Insanity of God (Nik Rripken)

Patrick of Ireland (Michael AG Haykin)

?????https://www.kevinhalloran.net/best-christian-biographies/  literally googled this, have no idea who this guy is

Cousins!!! Christmas memories

Coming back from Christmas we stopped by "The Cousins" house in Texas. 

Much fun was had. Braums icecream has a mythical status in our house, as it is only in Texas and Oklahoma. On the drive out, the kids were begging me at 10 pm when we crossed into Oklahoma after 14 hours of driving, to stop and get them icecream at the Braums. I told them they were shut. And we'd stop on the way back

Stopping on the way back, with an envelope of cash from the Great Grandmother with the instructions to eat icecream with it, here we are.

BOTH of these kids know how to pose. And she's only 6 months old....

This one looks like our babies did. Keziah, to be precise.

Trying to juggle 2 babies who wanted to be held, and were desperately hungry for Banana. On looking at the photos now, it seemed the 6 month old rallied herself to smile at the camerakid.

My kids using Photoshop after the vacation

The little peaceful grumpiness <3

Making hamburgers

Note how the 6 month old manages to maintain eyecontact and smile at the cameraman (me, I think) through almost all these pictures.....

Distracted only because she is smiling at someone else.

 Good memories....

Thankful for....

 Irene's shenanigans...

She is a little goofball, chuckling at her own wit

Our New Era---trying to transform our family culture *be* the Morning People

I want to do more than keep my kids alive.....I want to teach the kids how to actually live.

I told the kids this was our new era. We are going to run a clean household, and actually invite their friends over (after me promising 'when the house is clean...' for the last decade)

Each Tuesday in Lent, I will expand on one of these points, which I will hyperlink here.

 OUR NEW ERA

God our strength : put on your own oxygen mask!

Make prayer, worship, and Bible-study the rhythm of our lives

1.      Morning Prayer 

2.      CircleTime Intercessory Prayer

3.      Worship

4.      Bible at night with Daddy (focus, absorb, discuss)

5.      Life Skills

a.      Bible Study

b.     Intercessory Prayer

Now that your oxygen mask is on....

Outward Focus: Be a blessing to others

1.      Intercessory Prayer [Think of others]

a.      VOM prayerlist

b.     Prayercards of others in our lives

c.      Circle Time Prayer style [draw cards out of the deck]

2.      Social Skills [Kindness] Teach it to them rooted in scripture, in real life stories

a.      Think of Others before yourself

b.     Spread Kindness with your mouth

c.      Seek to find why God brings ppl into your life (humility, openness to listening etc)

d.     Christian boundaries, etc.

3.      Functional Sanity---the car needs to run, to be able to go anywhere

a.      Food

b.     Chores

c.      Laundry

d.     Homeschool Basics

4.      (Be a net plus on the world)

a.      Project sanity/youre ok….especially of the little ones!!!

                                                              i.      Appearance---grooming: hair, smell, clean face

                                                            ii.      Appearance—clothing [nice enough or looks on purpose]

                                                          iii.      House---like the family that hosted the dance---their home was amazing. It exuded little house in the prairie vibes. Or medieval cottage vibes. Because everything was clean, organized, and beautiful even if it wasn't fancy/expensive/fixed. FUNCTIONALITY and USEFULNESS and BEAUTY

                                                          iv.      Outside of House---even more important

b.     Try to bring more food to events than we take

c.      Give generously

5.      Joyful Charity

a.      Go with them to Donate to Foodbanks, buy socks, etc

b.     Visiting those in Prison//for kids: Visit hose home-bound, older people, nursing homes, hospitals, and in hospice

c.      Packs for Homeless people, Feed my starving children, etc

d.     Help them donate money to cool charities (like buy a goat, etc), where they get to put money toward it, by doing various chores for us, etc. So they are working to help others.