January 13, 2007: A Celebration in Service

After taking a bit of a break to get thru the holidays, we reunited in January on a rather warm winter evening at Jay & Tina's home to celebrate our first year of Rovering. At first we thought it would be nice to have a sit-down dinner with crew members and spouses, but then we thought, why not just throw ourselves a birthday party and invite lots of people? Of course, not just any party would do. Since Rovers are all about service, we thought this would be a good opportunity to put our motto to work. Rather than having a pot-luck dinner, the Rovers would do the cooking. In exchange, the guests would be asked to bring non-perishable foods to be donated to a local food pantry at a time when people were not thinking about stocking soup kitchen shelves. And while we were at it, why not make it a bit of an open-house to show our friends what we had been up to during the year?

Everybody chipped in to help out. Jay and Tina provided the venue and various side dishes. Dave brought along meat to grill and a fabulously decorated 3rd Charter Oak birthday cake. Erik brought paper goods, and Jeff made another legendary pot of soup. We had a photo album of all our event snapshots, plus a colorful poster showing off our crew and accomplishments. As a surprise to the crew members, Dave presented them with their Squire certicates they earned at Brownsea that previous July. We rouned out the evening with a bonfire out back. A great time was had by all, and for the record, we collected 10 boxes or 140 pounds of food with was donated to a nearby pantry. Not bad for just a small group like ours. Year one has been quite a ride. Here's hoping for many more!