The Hand Clan: Senior High Girls: Welcoming Little Lina

For those of you who don't know, I (Mary) work with the senior high girls from our church. This is a passion of mine -- I love working with younger girls. I think a big reason is because I personally went through lots of rough times in my teeage years, but also because I would have loved to have had a woman youth leader, much less a youth leader. There is no doubt that a handful of women were pivotal in my teenage years, but it wasn't a youth leader at church (because we didn't have one). Needless to say, during college and especially since college, I've enjoyed working with teenage girls . . . and college girls.

Anyways, this past week, I planned for the senior high girls to make a meal for Shanna from our church. Shanna had led these girls prior to me, but had to step down because she just had a baby girl (her 4th child, but first girl). So, I thought this meal would be fun to keep a secret from Shanna. I thought the girls should prepare it, and then we would all deliver it and surprise her.

Well, that's what we did . . . well, sort of . . . with lots of laughs and a few bumps along the way. The meal was a little tricky because Shanna's family has a number of allergies, but we came up with: Pork Tenderloin with Apples, Roasted Potatoes, Green Beans, . . . and we tried to make non-dairy pumpkin muffins . . . but, we quickly realized no one (absolutely no one) should endure the torture of eating them. We also gave them sorbet for dessert.

The meal came together pretty quickly. I had girls at each "station" working on different things. And, we got to chat while everything was cooking. The muffin station had a little breakdown . . . accidentally way too much baking soda got put into the bowl, and in the process of taking that out, all the sugar came out too. This was not realized however until the muffins were going in the oven. Oops. The muffins were awful, but we had fun trying to get parents/siblings to eat them when they came to pick up the girls. Ha, ha.

Transporting the food was relatively non-eventful, except for all the pork juice than poured all over Hannah's leg. She really sacrificed for the team. We smelled Hannah the rest of the night. She said it was time for those jeans to get a washing though. Oh, and not to mention that pork juice had dripped onto our new carpet on the way out . . . and my wonderful husband scrubbed it out.

Here are some pictures:

The card we all signed for Shanna