200 new friends and more

Today we arrived at Rising Star.

I'll let the pictures do most the explaining.  

On the drive this morning I saw some fun things.

A Car wash

A Model: (ha ha..yes he was posing for me)

Lots of men standing around:

a cute little family on a bike (mom is holding a baby too)

a truck load of grapes

a "Holy Cow"

some kids at school

women shifting the wheat on the road:

My kids meeting 200 new friends...

These girls loved my India toes (painted the colors of their flag)

they buried them over and over.

It was a fun day in the sun!

How time flies...

I am in India...with my family!  It is such a good feeling.

The first step off the plane I smelled the familiar Indian air, slightly foul mixed with humidity.  It made me smile.

As we left the Chennai airport for our hotel chaos surrounded us.  Hundreds of Indians lined the barricades at the baggage claim.  They stand there staring as I gather my chicks and push through the crowd. It was similar to the red carpet events in Hollywood.  

We are the celebrities.

I loved watching them look at my kids.  I loved my kids bulging eyes at them!  There is so much going on, so much noise.

We pile into 2 cars and begin our journey.

  I am in a car with Jennica and two volunteers from Utah (Trina Goodwin Wright from my HS and her sister Daneen).  I am like a kid at an amusement park giddy with excitement.  I am so happy to be back in India with my family.

I'm sitting in the front seat next to the driver, who is driving from the right (or should I say wrong) side of the car, with my video camera out the window.  

Let the madness begin!  

We are "Beep, beep, beeping..." all the way to the hotel.  

Traffic isn't bad at all, it's still early in the morning, but enough is going on to keep us all peering out the windows with our camera's. 

Jarom, my 10 year old, is ahead of us in another car with his head and arms hanging out the window absorbing the energy outside.  Men on motorcycles are zooming by close enough for him to high five the drivers,,,AND HE DOES!  

My heart swells with excitement when he turns to me in traffic and mouths 

"This is the BEST car ride ever!!"

Later in the afternoon I am riding in a Tuk Tuk with Jace (6 years) on my lap and he whispers in my ear that he thinks he will live here when he is older. 

I take a look around me and all I see is run down buildings, garbage and crazy traffic and I wonder what provoked his comment.

By 3pm most of my company is unable to stay awake.  I even heard:

"No Mom, lets NOT have dessert can we PLEASE go back to the room and take a nap?"  I never dreamed I'd hear that from my kids.

By 4pm most of us are asleep, including myself.  The jet lag won this battle today.

Now I am alone in the dark.  Everyone is asleep except me.  My clock reads 23:48.  

I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I have a gut feeling that it means I have a long night ahead of me.  It's all good though.  At least I am not in an airplane!

 Flights to India are not complete with unexpected events!  Yes, crazy things happened on the way here.  

Just when I thought we were almost here we had to make an emergency landing in Bangalore.  A poor man had a heart attack on board so we landed at the nearest airport, then we sat on the runway for an hour before we took off again. 

Once we were finally here

Trina and Daneen's luggage never showed up!!

 And since our flight was late landing we missed our shuttle to the hotel.

We started off with lots of patience at the airport!

Arriving at Abu Daubi aiport for our 3 hour layover 

 a little staring contest goes a long way

Off ALL the TV shows in the world they are watching

The Christmas Story

(the one about the boy shooting his eye out with a BBgun)

I have more pictures but don't know where to look for my camera in the dark.

I'd hate to wake up the kids while the night is still young.  If they wake up (they have been sleeping since 3pm) I wouldn't know what to do with them.

Tomorrow begins our day at Rising Star!

Oh yum!  I just found some Naan in the darkness!  Sam must have ordered room service

Fundraising Day Results

This weekend was a BIG weekend for the HobiHome!  It was our fundraising weekend.
Friday we brought all the kids to Sam's work to give them a chance to practice public speaking.  We gave a little presentation to a group of co-workers about our trip to India, each child had a turn to speak.  They were fabolous!  Jennica was a NATURAL!

Saturday our morning started early with Jennica's swim at the YMCA.  I was so proud of her effort!  She was focused the entire time!!  30 minuets is a long time to swim!!
Right after the swim we went to the high school track to have Jace run his laps.  He was so funny about it.  He didn't want us to cheer for him, talk to him or even run with him.  You can see in the video he turns his head when I am close to him or he would stop running when I would video tape him.  A 6 year old running 9 laps in 30 minuets is AWESOME!!
At 1:30pm Jarom had his basketball game.  That was a lot of fun too.  The kids playing had a fun time and they seemed to understand "Time is Money!"  They played so hard.  We didn't anticipate the score to be so high!!  The teams were neck in neck most of the game!
Sam's friend from HHS donated team shirts for the game.  They were perfect!!  Jarom wears his with pride!  I am so proud of all my kids and their efforts to organize this.  They all put in the work to make it happen.  They each made phone calls to get sponsors and take care of the details that involved their event.

The fundraising was a HUGE success!  Our family goal was $1000.  If all our pledges are collected we will have raised $2647.00!!  All donations are given to Rising Star Outreach to help families with leprosy in India!   We leave for India in 5 days!!!

Little Pot of Gold!

Today Jennica (and the Hobi's) were very LUCKY!
Jennica's Activity Day Leader showed up at our door with a pot of GOLD!

She is one amazing lady.  Very creative.  I aspire to have "Mommy Magic" like her.

In her note to Jen she explained that her family has been emptying their pocket change and making donations to this jar for sometime-with plans to give it away when the right moment came.
When she heard of Jennica swimming laps to earn money to donate to Rising Star Outreach she knew her pot of gold had a home!

This brings tears to my eyes!

Jennica was very excited about this.  She dumped the money all over the floor the second she saw it and began counting.  It took a long time to count.  She defiantly got her "Math Time" in for the week!
(I have video footage of this and will post it soon)

This donation was BIG time!  Who knew that much money could fit in one jar! WOW!!
THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!

Read her blog post about it here.

We are defiantly going to start this tradition!!

"Project India"

I’ve learned something about myself!  I can’t blog and create videos at the same time.  They both require ALL of my creative juices.  There is no splitting them.

So, the past two weeks I have been working on “Project India.”  It has been so fun, stressful, scary and uplifting.

Now I get to sit back and watch what happens.  Amazing things are happening already.

For FHE this week we held a fundraising telethon.  Each child picked family members to call and ask them to be a sponsor.  I was totally entertained by this.  As a child I hated making phone calls- my kids are NOT like me.

The best was, 6 year old, Jace’s FIRST phone call to Grandma Trena.  It went something like this:

“Hi Grandma, this is Jace.  I am calling to ask you how much money you want to donate to me to run laps?  Our family goal is to raise $1000 to donate to Rising Star Outreach to help leprosy in India.  I’m going to run laps, how much do you think you want to donate?”  (Yes, it was all one big LONG run on sentence!)
I can’t hear Grandma, but I think she said she would sponsor $5 a lap.
“$5 a lap?”  Jace repeats.
“Umm...Grandma, I think you can do more than that.” He answers unsatisfied.
After negotiating a bit longer Jace seems satisfied with $10 a lap!!! (crazy grandma!)
Then he went on to tell her he is going to run 60 laps... maybe.
Grandma is getting worried she needs to find another job!

Now I know when we need to get something done Jace is the boy!

That night was so fun for me to see my kids reaching out to our family for support.  Everyone we called was so kind.  Every time one hung up the phone they had a huge smile on their face and gave each other “High Fives!“

To add more sweetness we had a bag of jelly beans.  After each phone call the caller got to put 5 jelly beans into a bowl to see if we could fill it.  After all the calls were made they got to eat them.

This experience taught my kids they CAN talk to adults and be heard.  I think that’s important.  Thank you to everyone that helped with that lesson!

We are still accepting Sponsors...wink, wink.

http://www.hobihome.info/HobiHome/Our_Goal.html