Should you pass out on the couch, people will pile stuff on top of you. In this case Star Wars action figures.
And then photograph it.
And share it with the internet. Though in college it probably won’t be your mother doing that last one.
Do you know that the longer you don’t write on your blog, the easier it is to just not write anything? Blog? What blog?
Oh no, she isn’t pulling out the bullet points again, is she? Yes, yes I am.
1) The pie sale was a smashing success. Remember the pie sale? From Thanksgiving Day? Yeah, that one. All the pies sold, much to the dismay of the children who thought that they would get to eat any of the leftover ones.
2)Sunday we did another stand outside the grocery store with a can and beg for money day which also raised quite a bit of money.
3) Monday we had a pasta dinner. I was seriously surprised by the turn out and equally surprised at how nice it all was. I would totally have eaten there if I could eat pasta. My poor oldest son, he of the all fruit all the time diet, thought he was being tortured. So I bought him a diet coke. And for a special treat I allowed him to get it WITH ice.
My 9 yr old son who came with us to work the table with the raffle tickets made up for both us, finishing the night with a big cup of meatballs. Yes, a cup of them. To go. A few hours later he would sorely regret the decision to eat his body weight in meatballs when they all came back up.
The most important bullet point:
4) As of Monday night, we raised enough money to send the team to Florida. Let me say that again. WE MET OUR GOAL! I can not explain how huge this is. A huge thank you to everyone who donated.
Three weeks ago when all the parents and coaches sat together and discussed whether or not we wanted to accept the invitation and go to the National Championship, I don’t think that one of us expected that we would actually raise all of the money. We hoped we would. The need just seemed so great.
We hoped that local businesses would step up and sponsor the team. That didn’t happen. Instead the money was raised mostly ONE DOLLAR at a time. Just ask the bank tellers who have been presented with a thousand of dollars in one dollar bills on a Saturday afternoon. It was raised with pocket change. It was given by people who would apologize that they didn’t have more to give. It was raised by people who dug into their pockets and gave us all the change they had.
And every time we would say, “Every little bit helps. It all adds up.”
I think at first we said it, but didn’t really believe it. Even us as adults, maybe I should just say me here since I can’t speak for everyone. I couldn’t fully grasp over $20,000 of pocket change and rumpled dollar bills. I was a doubter. But I said it anyway because I wanted the boys to believe.
That is the thing that makes me a little teary about raising the money.
What a valuable lesson they have learned, one they would have been deprived of had a huge donation come in. They have seen how hard work pays off. They have seen first hand the kindness of strangers, those who donated money as well as those who just acknowledged their presence and wished them luck. (We won’t talk about the people who rushed passed them and refused to even make eye contact. Though I know the boys learned something from them as well.) They have seen what it means to be generous and how those with the least to give seem to give the most. They have felt a community rally behind them and they are prepared to go and represent that community in a way that would make everyone proud.
They know now that anything is possible.
We are the underdog team going to this championship. A team of only 17 boys going up against teams that are well oiled, and well funded, machines. I feel like we are the Jamaican bobsled team of youth football.
Winning even one of the games would be nice, but it would just be icing on the cake. These kids are already proud of themselves and their hard work. As they should be.
5) And now that I am feeling all warm and fuzzy I need to go beat my children with my quart sized ziploc bag filled with 2.5 oz liquid containers. These children insist that they have no warm weather clothing, have never had warm weather clothing, and in fact they don’t even know what clothing is. And they say all of this with a straight face which makes me question if their football helmets are not padded nearly enough.
