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This past week, the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition team has been right here in Warwick, building a new house for a very deserving family who foster kids with disabilities, and also have two biological children with autism, and three adopted children with other disabilities. The family recently learned that their children had high levels of lead in their systems and their home had dangerous levels of lead in almost every room, and were facing the possibility of having their foster children taken away if the situation was not remedied.
On Friday night, Chris and I had the privilege of volunteering a few hours of our time on the project. We were assigned to the meal tent to help the Chelo's catering team serve food (but they did borrow Chris for a few minutes to help with some construction activity outside the garage of the new house). It had snowed and rained all day, so it was a cold, wet, icy mess out there, but we fared pretty well. I wore two layers of pants, and four layers on top: a long sleeved shirt covered by a fleece pullover, my coat, and my official blue Extreme Makeover volunteer t-shirt on the outside. I also had two self-heating body warmer pads between the first two layers, over my kidneys. All of that kept me pretty warm, with the exception of my fingers, toes, and nose, despite the melting snow leaking through the tent on me the entire time.
After our shift was over, the president of Oldport Homes, which was the builder on the project, found us waiting for the shuttle back to the parking area. He knew we'd been there for several hours and out in the cold the whole time, so he gave us a ride back himself - and even helped Chris scrape the ice off of the Pathfinder. Even though I'd felt plenty warm, I was in fact pretty wet by the time we got home. My coat and pants had to go in the dryer for a few minutes before we could go back out to get some much needed dinner.
During our time on site, we did meet one of the Extreme Makeover cast, John Littlefield. We caught a glance of Ed Sanders engaged in a snowball fight from a distance, but to my disappointment he didn't come through the food line. We didn't get to see Ty Pennington... he was in Boston at the other build they were doing this week (yes, they actually do them two at a time). But we did manage to get on camera as part of the audience when they shot some footage to send to the family on vacation at Disney World. It was toward the end of the shot that they panned past us, so it very well may get edited out when the episode airs, but you never know. It is expected to air sometime in May, and if I know ahead of time I will give everyone a heads up.
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