While down in San Diego this weekend visiting with Grandma Beep (it was her birthday weekend, yay!), we had a chance to visit with some of our friends one morning over pancakes. But this wasn’t just any pancake breakfast. This was the La Mesa Firefighters’ Local 4759 Pancake Breakfast in support of local Boys and Girls Clubs of East (San Diego) County.

Now while pancakes are a big draw for little kids, fire trucks and firefighters are an even bigger draw, especially for T. (Remember this post where T got to shoot off the fire hose in Livermore?) Yes, we went for the grub… everyone’s gotta eat, right?! But obviously, a fire house is an excellent venue for taking the entire family for a fun and educational morning out.

We spent about two hours at the breakfast eating (yum!), visiting with friends, and watching the kids have an absolute blast climbing on and inside of all kinds of trucks. Fire personnel also were on hand cooking the food, handing out stickers, and teaching kids and adults alike about the different equipment on display and answering any questions about their jobs in general.

There were several other organizations on hand helping out and educating the public, too, including Trauma Intervention Programs of San Diego County (TIPs). That’s worth my mentioning not just because of all of the wonderful work they do as psychological first-responders, but it also brought back many memories for me because of an article I wrote about a TIPs chapter in Temecula back in 1994 when I interned at The Californian newspaper. I was happy to see that TIPs has grown far and wide since my writing about them almost 20 years ago (wow, yes, that long ago!).

While held at the Fire Station 11 on Allison Avenue behind City Hall in La Mesa, a mix of additional personnel were on hand to help and join in on the fun from Heartland Fire & Rescue, which is a network of fire services and first-responders from El Cajon, Lemon Grove, and La Mesa. It was great not just to see neighbors and other citizens join together in fundraising support of the Boys & Girls Clubs, but wonderful to see the cooperation of all these cities and stations working together at this function just as they do on a daily basis while serving these communities.

I strongly recommend taking the family to your community’s next pancake breakfast. Events like these are a wonderful way to introduce the kids to how fundraising works on a grass-roots scale, not to mention a fun and tasty way to spend a morning. And if you can count on a group of folks to cook and dish up a hearty, delicious breakfast, it’s the firefighters.

Thanks to our first-responders for all they do… and thanks for the pancakes!