Playhouse

A while back our friends, Elyssa and Matt (baby Wesley's parents) told us about a program going on with Blue Star Moms and Habitat for Humanity and how they were teaming up with other large corporations here in the Bay Area to make playhouses for military children to show their appreciation for everything that military families sacrifice. While I know that being in the Coast Guard doesn't have nearly as many sacrifices as all of the other branches since we don't deploy or anything like that, all branches do make one huge sacrifice: being away from family. So it was nice to be shown that appreciation and love and know that they appreciate everything that we give up to keep all of us safe. Some of the big names that built houses with Habitat for Humanity were Google (they built little Wesley's Finding Nemo playhouse) and Yahoo. Our playhouse was made by SanDisk.

It was quite the experience picking up the playhouse. When we first arrived they sent us to the front to wait until they finished the playhouse and gathered everyone around since they wanted us to suprise the volunteers and wanted us to let the girls play with the playhouse so that they could see who the house was going to and who all that hard work was for. Once they opened the doors, there was about 30 people standing around and clapping as they introduced us and let us know how much they appreciate everything that we sacrifice and as a gift to show that love, they were presenting the playhouse to the girls. They had asked me what the girls' favorite characters were and I told them Spongebob and Bubble Guppies and they drew those on the house! It is super neat! They also got the girls a Dora the Explorer play kitchen which they love as well!

The girls ran around and played while the photographer took their pics and luckily I was able to get some pictures he took because he was there when they first started building the playhouse and took pictures  throughout the whole process so I have some really cool behind the scenes snapshots to share with you all thanks to him. The funniest part was when they presented the house title to the girls. Like they do with all Habitat for Humanity houses, they present you with the title that says "Paid in Full". Well they made one for the girls too! It is so sweet! :)

The girls love it and it has such a great story behind it that I will remember forever. I only wish Travis could've been there but he was away at school in North Carolina. Here are some pictures:

And here is a picture that I snapped of the girls playing in it: