Free(ish) labor

Saturday was Super Saturday around here and when you're on the Relief Society Committee, that means Saturday was Exhausting Saturday.  It was also fun because I like the other committee members (saving grace!).

8:30 AM found us at the church, setting things up.  It is really convenient that we all live within minutes of the church.  I went home twice and everyone else went home several times as well.  We'd also swing by each others' houses to pick up stray items.

When you live this close to the church do you lose the ability to remember things because it's so easy to go home?  Kind of like not using muscles?

I don't know.

One of my trips home, I called for Mark to put two long tables in my car while I went to hunt up a power strip.  (We had run out of long tables at the church.  How is that a thing?!?)

When we were all finished, I went home a third time.  This time to retrieve Mark to help with all the putting away and cleaning up and lifting and loading.  Adam had recently left to go to a referee meeting or I would have enlisted his help as well.  I told Mark that good news!  I had a few pieces of pie leftover.  He said, "It's OK.  Dad and I just went to 5 Star BBQ."

They had worked all morning. Adam and Mark had put away all the deck furniture, Mark had mowed the lawn and done who knows what so Adam took him out for ribs (which is mainly Mark's currency).

Mark did tell me that later, he would indeed feel like eating and maybe I could take him to Red Robin.  Last Thursday I had promised Mark a trip to Red Robin at some future date if he would deliver fliers to houses in the neighborhood (advertising Super Saturday).

Michelle's two teenage sons were there too and we were commenting about how great it was to have the help of our sons and their free labor.  She told me that she had promised them to go out for ice cream.

This all made me think, maybe this free labor isn't as free as I thought....

I still appreciate it though.  Especially when Mark could lift the overstuffed garbage that none of the rest of us could lift.

We were standing around chatting at the end and Cortney suddenly said, "Mark, I must not have looked at you very closely lately because suddenly you look like a man!"

It's true.

Mark said, "Maybe because I haven't shaved."

Also true.