MOOSEHEART, IL - Talk about classy. Who sits down to a lunch of freshly boiled lobster?!

But that's what the boys at the New England Home at Mooseheart did on Friday, June 12, and what's more, they participated in the cooking as well as the eating.

"The boys love it," New England Home Family Teacher Lisa Johnson said. "They're really excited about it."

Thirteen live lobsters came courtesy of Patti Serpa, the Recorder from New Bedford, MA Chapter 7, and stemmed from a conversation she had with the New England Home boys when she visited the home during Mooseheart's May 23 high school graduation day festivities.

"(Serpa) talked to the boys at graduation and she was asking the kids what their favorite part about the trip was," Lisa Johnson said. "A few of them said the seafood and the lobster that we had the first night we were there. She said 'we can send you lobster because we live right by the coast.' She called us and said she would be shipping them overnight."

And as soon as they arrived, Family Teachers Philip and Lisa Johnson got big pots of water boiling in preparation for a feast.

"The lobsters arrived and the boys weren't going to wait for dinner to eat them," Mooseheart Executive Director Scott Hart said. "I told them that this was certainly the most elegant meal at lunch ever for the Mooseheart kids."

New England Home and its Family Teachers took a week-long trip to the New England states a year ago, and met many members. A trip from July 16-Aug. 3 is planned this year, and the lobster delivery did plenty to whet the boys' appetite for more fresh seafood.

"I didn't think any of them would come and see us at graduation time, but they did it," New England Home member Paul Thomas said. Thomas will be a high school freshman this August. "It was kind of shocking when they said we were going to have lobsters. They sent it from all that way to us and that's kind of shocking. It's kind of reminding me of the stuff that we did last year. I can't wait to go see what we're going to do this year."

The lobster delivery was just one part of an ongoing and growing relationship between the New England Home and the men and women of the Moose fraternity in the nation's northeastern corner. New patio furniture was donated to the home in the past year, and a fire pit to sit near that patio is also planned courtesy of further donations that have been gathered.

The expansion of the trip to two weeks will enable the boys from New England Home and their Family Teachers to see members from all the states in the area: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

"You think sometimes these are once in a lifetime trips," Hart said. "They had a special time going to New England last summer. And now a little bit of New England came back to them, and I know they can't wait to go back out there in just a few short weeks."

There are other trips planned by Mooseheart students this summer. The boys from the James J. Davis Home recently traveled to Moosehaven in Florida to help with some Community Service projects and to meet the residents there. Other groups of Mooseheart children have traveled and returned from visits to Lodges in Oregon and West Virginia. Still planned are trips by other groups to North Carolina and Pennsylvania.