it all begins somewhere

Tonight Joel is at a hockey game and I (Heidi) am at home working on the web site. Joel doesn't know, but he'll be really happy when he sees it. . . at least I hope so. We have no idea where this bottle thing might go. The web site isn't up, but that doesn't really matter. The kids keep collecting bottles and we keep talking about people who don't have money and they get it.. sort of. They get really sad when they see a guy on the street with a sign. The other day they mistook a lady holding a "Ceasar's Pizza" ad sign for a homeless person, but at least their eyes are open. I was going to say that it must be hard for kids to fathom homelessness or real poverty, but the reality is, it's hard for me too. I have no idea what it's like to sleep on the streets. One night I arrived at my brother's house before he did. I had my jacket and backpack and had to sit outside in the cold for an hour. I had no keys, no phone, no way to contact them or anyone... that's about the closest it gets for me. I've never even been close to homeless. Camping is often even something that I complain is too difficult and uncomfortable. Anyway, this isn't about me, it's about a journey we are on. The garage keeps filling with bottles. Our car keeps filling with bottles. Today we collected a milk container, two water bottles and one juice bottle on our walk. We dream about giving thousands of dollars to charities, but for now we're probably at ten's of dollars, which is fine. The biggest deal is that our kids have something they are passionate about and we are running with it and supporting them, as well as teaching them AND learning a lot ourselves. A friend has given us a trailer to pick up bottles... now our car needs a hitch and we need a place to put a trailer. We're working on ideas of how to store pop bottles. We're talking about having friends and businesses donate bottles and we pick them up one Saturday each month. We know a small town that has no place to recycle and in the summer when the highschool grad class quits their recycling fundraiser, everyone starts throwing their recyclables away. We want to go there next summer with our new hitch and trailer. We'll see where the journey takes us. For now, it's enough to begin.