Hanging Out With Hockey Players For A Good Cause

So it's a Wednesday, hump day. Let's see....I could go to work and sit around the office wondering who is getting shit canned this Friday (please not me...please not me) or I could go and do manual labor with some of the Atlanta Thrashers. NO BRAINER!



Every year Niclas Havelid did a Habitat for Humanity build. Niclas is going back to Sweden but the program still remains and now is called Hammers and Hockey. Today we got to hang out with Marty Reasoner, Chris Thorburn and Atlanta Thrashers' Assistant Coach, Steve Weeks. (former goalie woot woot)



The chance to do this came via the official Atlanta Thrashers Fan Club. They had a contest, which I lost. I thought it was over. They sent out an email Tuesday saying that if you could get of tomorrow, the first 2 people to respond to the email could go on the build. I was one of the lucky ones!



Here is the house that we worked on. Habitat for Humanity puts these houses up in SEVEN work days (not 7 days straight, they have one build day per house per week)








Here are me, the other fan club members and the new home owner. It was really cool to work with the new home owner. You felt much more responsible for your work when you know that the person that would be living there was in the house.

Here Sally from the fan club and Atlanta Thrashers' Chris Thorburn work on building a railing for the house. Thor cut his hair...YAY!

Chris and Sally worked super hard out in the heat. They did a great job.

Atlanta Thrashers' Center Marty Reasoner climbs up the ladder. He spent most of the day on the roof doing work with his brother who was nice enough to come.

We got a special treat when one of the children who were going to live at the house showed up. Marty is meeting the little guy here. You can't see the child's face, auntie's arm is in the way. I like this picture because you can see Marty's missing tooth. Notice the fancy duct tape name tag Marty is wearing. We all had them...except Chris.

Group shot. There were four people from the Atlanta Thrashers Fan Club, two people from the Thrashers and then the players. the rest of the people in the picture are either build leaders or UPS employees. UPS sponsored the event.

Fan Club Members and Thrashers. Don't know why I look so confused.

Supah Stah Sally doing her interview with the Thrashers TV people. You can see the interview with her, the players and some others here: http://thrashers.nhl.tv/team/console.jsp?catid=656&id=43175

Marty looking a little anxious about coming down that ladder.

Marty was kind of giving me the evil eye here.

Marty: See that chick down there.

Marty's brother: The cute one with the camera?

Marty: Yeah, that's her. Remember me telling you about the weirdo that takes all the pictures at warm up?

Marty's brother: Yeah.

Marty: That's her.

Marty's brother: No way!

Marty: Yeah, I'm sick of it. I'm gonna go hit her with this board.

Steve Weeks and fan club member Toni. Steve worked his butt off and stayed longer than any of the other players. Part of that might have been that he rode in with Thorburn, but Thor had to leave early and Sally volunteered to take Steve home. He busted his tale the whole time though.

Weeks and his chauffeur, Sally.

Toni and Sally get the hot ex goalie and what do I get???? Happy Can port-o-let. Actually I was quite taken with it because the name "happy can" just cracked me up.

So I came home COVERED in paint. My husband was baffled at how I got paint on the backs of my arms. I was exhausted but very excited to have been able to participate. I even bloodied my knee. I wish it were something exciting, but I smashed it when I sat down to take the picture. The players were impressed with my bloody knee. Bleeding and sweating my ass off with hot hockey players for a good cause...does it get any better???