'most crawling reptilians, the most earthbound of all creatures, have remained unchanged for millions of years. some, however, grew feathers and wings and turned into birds, thus defying the force of gravity that had held them for so long. they didn’t become better at crawling or walking, but transcended crawling and walking entirely.'

I woke up this morning and felt like I am a part of something big. really big.

We started working with Habitat for Humanity yesterday. And while all we did most of our first day was clear trash from work sites and move a butt ton of scaffolding to different build sites, I felt like the work I was doing was really worth while. We got to see a house dedication yesterday evening and it was really heart warming.
During the day, the owner of one of the homes, Ms. Stacey, came frantically in the truck where we were putting the dry wall scraps and other trash and she needed to find the pull chain for the ceiling fan, it had been left in one of the boxes. I searched with her and ended up finding it, and when I found it she was so happy. She gave me a huge hug and just thanked me about 12 times. It was simple. Anyone would have helped her look. But she was so grateful. Ms. Stacey seemed grateful for every single aspect of her life. She looked at her house with pride, she looked at all of the volunteers with love in her eyes.

I can't even express how much I love our house. Its older and it has a history. Grant gave me a sweet Christmas ornament and a Rugrats pillowcase he found in the trash. Seems crazy, but I loved it. The people who use to own this his evacuated during Katrina and just never came back. Habitiat did a lot of work for us with cleaning and fixing a lot of things around the house, but it still feels like it was abandoned. I always felt like buildings, houses especially, reflected the emotions of the people who lived in them. Walls can talk, if you will. And this house felt sad. I love being able to bring it back to life; to add our own River 2 touch to it. Tonight is Halloween and I really hope we get Trick-or-Treaters!

I get to go home for Thanksgiving!!! Orbits keeps sending me my travel itinerary and updates for my flight and I get so excited every time! I cannot wait to see my family and my friends. Goodness.

oh. this is three blocks from my house. no big deal.