The Kiatah team spent the morning at The Echelon of Tucson, which is a senior living complex. We were prepared to make valentines and play games with the residents. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any of the residents interact with us, but we did make Valentines to leave with the director to give out to the seniors.

We partook in the service learning day by visiting an eastside assisted living community, Arizona Homestead, and the Humane Society of Southern Arizona’s (HSSA’s) no-kill shelter. At Arizona Homestead, we shared card tricks and artwork with the residents while residents shared their life experiences. Prior to our departure from Arizona Homestead, we sang a few rousing songs where we put our whole self into the song and then shook it all about. The all-you-can-eat pizza lunch at a local eastside park refreshed us before the HSSA tour. This tour followed the path that a dog or cat would take and showed us all of those steps from intake through adoption. We learned that we can get involved in making the world a better place for animals and people by becoming involved in the HSSA’s Hand-in-Paw Club like one of our clan members. Check out HSSA’s website (www.hssaz.org) for more information on how it rescues, protects, and saves in our community.

We traveled to two locations on the east side of Tucson for our community service trip. Our first stop was at TROT (Therapy Riding of Tucson) to help out around the ranch. We pulled lots of weeds using hoes and shovels and scooped tons of horse manure all morning long. We heard a brief talk about how important volunteers are for the operation of TROT; only a few people are actually paid to work at the non-profit organization. We learned about horse therapy and saw a therapy session with a beautiful Norwegian Fiord horse at work with a woman working on balance. We headed to Udall Park for lunch and trash pick-up in the afternoon. You can learn more about TROT and opportunities to volunteer on the TROT website, http://www.trotarizona.org/.

We had a fun-filled day of helping that started with making sandwiches at school to bring to Casa Maria. Thank you for donating the sandwich-making materials for this. Once we had the sandwiches made and packed up, we headed over to Casa Maria where students did a variety of jobs--more sandwich making, packing bag lunches, sorting clothes for the clothing bank room, cleaning up trash on the premises, cleaning weeds from the garden and yard area, and chatting with the good people who rely on services from Casa Maria. We kept busy for two hours and accomplished an amazing amount of work for the good folks at Casa Maria! If you'd like to know more about Casa Maria, check out their website at http://www.casamariatucson.org/. They can use donations and volunteers every single day, so think about volunteering as a family.

After having a pizza lunch at school, we ran a "Kindness Car Wash" at Miles, with donations going to the Community Food Bank. We lost track of how many cars we washed, but we were busy the entire time! Everyone did a great job, though I know the first cars were a bit more shiny than the last cars. Thanks to all the families and staff who supported our efforts. We even had some people from the neighborhood stop to get their car washed and a few other people who were just driving by. It was a great success with $153.45 raised for the Community Food Bank. And to top it all off, we got to celebrate 3 clan member's 14th birthdays, all on the same day. Happy birthday again to Bailey, Celia, and Connor!