Fundraising for Finn

Early May was full fundraising season.  There were two different big events and the walk.

Event 1 (May 5th):  Last year's Krispy Kreme doughnut day was such a success that I wanted to repeat it.  I was not anticipating the response that I received, however, which was amazing.  Last year I left the post up in a local FB group for about 2 weeks and sold over 70 dozen doughnuts.  Which was fantastic!  This year in just over 18 hours I had to shut the post down as I had sold over 150 dozen doughnuts and it was still climbing.  With just one week of presales (and most of it done in just a 24 hour period) I sold 200 dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts!  I needed to call a friend and ask for help picking up the doughnuts from the store in Lone Tree and bringing them back to the Springs.  And then I ended up with 2 additional friends joining us to meet people at the pick-up points throughout the city.  I had our schedule done to a science and lists, totals, and payments being tracked.  And then....

at 4:30 on the morning of doughnut day I recieved a call.  The doughnut machine had broken down.  The store had just been able to get it up and running but they were hours behind and were not going to be ready for our 6am pickup.  The manager told me that 6:45 so work and so I texted my friend and then used my extra time to pack lunches and get treatments ready for the morning as I was now not going to be able to be home for that.  My friend and I ended up on the road at the same time and I followed her up there and when we arrived the doughnuts were not ready.  We paid for the doughnuts and took the ones that were ready and then waited.  While we were waiting my friend noticed that they were making a lot of boxes of doughnuts that were all the same kind.  We had ordered about 80 dozen "assorted" doughnuts and so I assured her that those boxes could not be ours.  When they were done we took our doughnuts and headed back to my house.  As we were sorting doughnuts into different cars for delivery we opened the boxes of "assorted" just to be sure and found that they were most definitely not assorted.  We had some boxes of all chocolate, some all chocolate sprinkles, and my favorite--a dozen maple doughnuts.  AHHHH!!!! No one wants a dozen maple doughnuts!  We set up a doughnut factory in the back of van and began "assorting" our "assorted" doughnuts.  It was stressing me out as our cars needed to get out for delivery but we couldn't deliver the ridiculous assortments we had.  After a good 45 minutes of playing doughnut factory, we were ready to go.  For the most part, most people showed up to pick up their doughnuts, but we did get stood up by a few people.  By the end of the day, however, I was able to sell most of the doughnuts and ended up just giving away 2 or 3 dozen that I had not planned on.  But not too bad.  And because of the delay in the morning, the manager took $150 off of our total, which meant $150 more to the CFF.  By the end of the day we had raised $1,250 selling doughnuts.  It was awesome!

About 140 dozen doughnuts fit in my mini-van

Event 2 (May 13th):  The tennis event.  Well, as if having drama on doughnut day was not enough, the day after doughnut day we found out that 2 of our tennis pros for the tennis event that was being held the next weekend were not going to be able to make the event.  So, we began to scramble.  I even sent an email to the tennis team at the Air Force Academy to see if they could send in some help.  That unfortunately didn't work.  But what did work was that those two pros were nice enough to look for others to cover for them.  One of the pros is the high school tennis coach and so he was able to send in one of his best guys to help us run drills.  And the other pro sent us one of his old, long-time students, who attended college on a tennis scholarship and is now a pro in her own right.  Awesome!  And then while I was talking up the fundraiser to a father of a girl in Finn's tennis class on Wednesday the dad volunteered on the spot to help out.  He is a retired pro (he's retired due to his own health issues) and is from Utah with some extended LDS family.  He is also Italian and his family comes from Bari (one of the cities I served in).  He's a fantastically nice guy and I had gotten to know him a bit over the previous weeks, but was blown away when he volunteered so quickly and easily to help.  Which was perfect!  Because then we knew we had 5 pros and only 4 courts.  Fantastic!  Tennis day arrived and as participants began to show, we noticed that our other two pros who had committed weeks earlier were still no-shows (including Finn's tennis coach and the manager of the club).  Eventually, we had to go ahead without them.  And as if we hadn't lucked out all week, we actually had two high schoolers show up.  So, we ended up with exactly 4 tennis pros and all of them were ones that we asked just days before the event.  Now, Finn's coach (and the manager) likes to claim that this is typical in the tennis industry and that tennis pros just are scatter brained and very laid-back (aka non-committal).  I don't know if I believe it's the industry, but there's definitely something going on.  I guess I can just say that I'm grateful the Lord was watching out for us and provided what was a seeminly impossible request--4 tennis pros at our fundraiser.

Our attendance was down at the event this year (it was held a bit later than normal and May weekends are busy) but we still managed to raise about $1,000 (mostly through business donations).  And as always, it was lots of fun!  My friend, Renee, who does most of the organizing for this event every year is already talking about next year and the idea just stresses me out already.  If it didn't bring in good money for the CFF, I'd be so over the drama and stress of this tennis event.  But as it is, it raises important for research.  So...sigh.  I'll take a break and hopefully find some excitement for it again.

I had a YM from our ward help out this year which was SUPER helpful.  He made us this sign, as well as helped on the day of with just a lot of logistical stuff.  I'm so glad we had his help! (He also took the pictures for me.  I don't know why I always assume that teenagers know how to take pictures.  This is probably the 3rd time I've had one do that job for me and the 3rd time I've been disappointed with the results.)

Finn went out for a bit on the courts to hit with these beginner-ish teenagers.  He was eventually intimidated by them and didn't want to go anymore but the reality is that he was better than them (had a better stroke, etc.), but he wasn't used to using the adult balls.  He has been training with the kid balls which bounce differently and so he was getting frustrated with how much he was missing the ball.

This is Nicole and she is awesome and amazing!  She is going to school to be a pharmacist and she worked with CF kids at the hospital for a bit and fell in love with them.  She is also a tennis pro!  Score! (The person walking away from the camera is my friend Renee.)

See that cone in front of Nicole?  The kids are trying to hit it to win a prize!

Me watching and making sure my other two were staying out of trouble.  I was on the courts almost the whole time calling rotation times and helping Bree and Kai (and eventually Finn) pick up the balls.

Finally May 20th--Walk Day!

Our walk was moved from the 2nd weekend in May to the 3rd weekend this year.  The main reason for the move was because in the past the walk in the Springs has been the same weekend as the walk in Denver which has resulted in the CFF chapter being stretched thin at our walk as most of their effort and work go towards the bigger, Denver walk.  I was so glad that they separated the walks this year.  Hands down the walk this year was one of the best organized I have ever seen, and I'm sure that had something to do with having full staffing.  We had so many great vendors and volunteers as well.  Our team had about 19 people walking, which was just perfect.  Finn had one friend from school come with his entire family which was perfect.  We also had three families from our ward show up (including one that had another little boy for Finn to play with and a little girl for Bree).  We were a good-sized group and we had a great time walking, talking, and playing.  The CFF had Einstein's for breakfast at the start of the walk (which I had helped to pick up the day before) and then after the walk Noodles and Company provided full lunches for everyone!  And Freddy's was there handing out full-sized custards.  Yep, great sponsors, great fun, great music and entertainment.  I'm glad the walk was so fun because after all of the stress and drama that happened with the fundraising, I needed something to be easy.  Yay for walk day!

Finn and his classmate Andy

Two of my friends--Karen (on the left) is in our RS presidency and is the owner of Ruby who we dogsat last year, and Rowan (on the right) is my British friend now in a different ward, but we still go out for lunch once a month to catch up (she was my VTing teacher when the ward split)