You would think we would be far less nervous the second time around. After all, we are practically old pros at this fundraising thing now aren’t we?? I wish it was that easy. Truth be told, we were all nervous wrecks in the days and hours leading up to our Monday night beer and burger event. Would anyone show up? Would we actually sell more than 80 raffle tickets? Would people bid on our silent auction items???

Addison was the most confident out of all us. She kept asking, “When is the burger night?” And she spent several days carefully picking out her party outfit. She also took a couple of hours to create a work of art to be auctioned off at the event. The night of the fundraiser, she quipped, “Well the party can’t get started until the star gets there!” Ummmmm, at least it’s kind of precocious and cute for a 6 year old, right?

Well, thanks to all of our amazing supporters, we did it! You guys came, you ate, you drank, you played trivia, you generously bought (or were coerced by a tenacious 6-year old into buying) many chocolate bars, you filled out raffle tickets, you laughed, even those of you who couldn’t come did what you could to be part of our event, and most importantly, you made us realize just what an incredible circle of love we have surrounding us.

So I am sure you all want to know just how much money we raised for pediatric transplant research?? We are so excited to announce that we are over $4000 and still counting!! The big bike ride is this Sunday so we’ll wait until after that to tally up the final number.

We had set a slightly lower goal this year because we knew we were distracted from full-on planning with the McYongs in Spain for a month. But we are already working on our next fundraiser. We have been talking about changing things up to try and grow the event. Key to that will be moving the date out of the summer to spring or fall. We hope this means even more of you can come and join us, and ultimately raise even more money.

We’d also like to give a huge thank you to our long list of sponsors. We had so many business owners, friends and family donate wonderful prizes for our raffle and auction. We could not have done it without you.

You know the saying…it takes a village. And you guys are an awesome village!!

Love,
Sheena and Adam
Elaine, Aaron, Addison and Charlie