Busy, busy, busy....

Before I forget, Youth Football Night at the Races is Saturday, Aug. 9th at Occasions Party Center. Tickets are $40 each or $75/couple. Email me & I can get tickets for you.

The Teacher Appreciation Luncheon went so well! We had an empty kindergarten transformed into a fiesta complete with an outdoor dining patio. Casa Perez brought enchiladas, chips/salsa & rice. We served the slushees & fried ice cream w/ chocolate syrup. The teachers had their pictures taken with a sombrero on & we posted them on our bulletin board. It was really fun & great to give back to our wonderful teachers. Thanks to Dawn Wyles for lending us her music and decorations. Thanks to Michelle Glauthier, Tiffany Craney & Megan Flickinger for helping me!!

I have to say I was a tad bit nervous for our Munchin With Mom dinner but it went better than I could have expected. We served about 550 moms, grandmas & children. I had over 50 high school students work as servers in the high school cafeteria & practice gym. They worked so hard & I really appreciated their enthusiasm. Alot of the servers were football players & it was so funny to see them with their little notepads & taking orders. The photographer, Studio Rhodes, came w/ two camera stations and the pictures turned out so cute. The food service staff of our school district worked so hard helping me plan and running the event that day. They are awesome! We had some really nice baskets donated and our dads did a great job selling tickets for those and the 50/50. Teachers came and helped set up as well as made all the desserts. Seemed like everyone had a great time! We hope to do it again next year.

Ryan's breakfast went so well. I have to say we really have some wonderful people in this community. Julie Barkey worked her fanny off collecting donations and running the event. She is truly amazing and an inspiration to me. We had over 70 raffle items & over 20 silent auction items. We collected over $15,000 that day. The Knights of Columbus kept up with the large amount of people & did such a nice job. There were over 500 breakfasts served. I would recommend eating at SPJ's some month for breakfast. One nice donor bought a signed Cavs ball for Ryan. The Trewins were quite overwhelmed by all the support and donations. We just really wanted them to know how many people are praying for Ryan and wanted a way to support him. Tons of bake sale items were donated & sold too. Please continue to pray for Ryan and Shelbi Martin as well.

My goals for Jacob's Gift continue to be to help promote volunteering in our community. I've been very lucky to have the support of the high school students in events and I hope I help inspire them too. We are helping Echoing Ridge again October 5th for their Pedal for a Purpose event. I'm going to ask for football players again to come volunteer at our booth. I'm hoping to publicize the event more for them to have more support to help them buy that bus they desperately need.

I have some other events in mind for next year and I'll get them posted when we can work out the details. Thanks for those of you who were able to support us and continue to be kind to our cause. We've donated almost $7,000 back to Northwest kids of all ages so far!

All for now,

Joanna