Thanks to our Angels!

10/24/09, our grandma came into town, for the JDRF

hope gala! But, the thing was, Austin is still sick!

 On May 6th, 2008, the Walk Awards banquet was held at Hy-Vee Corportate Conference Center.  Our family won a couple of awards, and we want to thank you for helping us achieve that. (more…)

On May 6th, 2008, the Walk Awards banquet was held at Hy-Vee Corportate Conference Center. One of my favorite things about that building is the bricks right outside the main doors. I’ve always liked that “hard” recognition of Hy-Vee’s national sponsorship of JDRF.  Hy-Vee has been an awesome sponsor and partner for our chapter, they raise about a million dollars a year for JDRF, and that’s just awesome. (more…)

Walk day this year was a lot better than last year, simply because there hadn’t been a blizzard, and everyone on our team could make it! 

 And as you can see, a whole lot of other people did, too!  We estimated that we had over 8,000 people at the walk this year!  We had more inflatables, more exhbitors, more food from the vendors, It was a great day!  There were hundreds of people still there when we had to shut things down for the day. 

Our team fundraising goal was $10,000.  With the help of a few new people on our team, we were able to exceed that.  We got Amber’s YMCA after school teachers on our team, and they raised over a thousand.  One of my friends that I met through JDRF joined our team this year, and she raised almost two thousand.  Plus we’ve had more of our friends raise even just a hundred dollars.  My fundraising was even more than last year, and Thrivent Financial is going to do another team matching gift of $3,000!  Thanks, Jeff Olson!

The Walk Awards banquet is May 6th, we’ll see how well we stack up with all the other walk teams.  Until then, thanks to all of Amber’s Angels! 

The JDRF Walk to Cure 2008 will be held on March 1st, and Amber’s Awesome Angels are going to be there!  We’d like you to be there, too!  Walk day will be pretty much like last year, from 8 to 11:30, with food and drink in Capital Square and play stuff in the Convention Complex.  You can join our team by clicking on Join This Team on  Amber’s walk page! 

The theme is this year is High School Musical, with the slogan, “We’re all in this together!”  It’s one of the lines from those two movies that has really stuck with us.  We are all in this together, helping each other out when we need advice or when we just need someone to complain to.  We have to live with the daily management of this disease, and we understand the frustrations of trying to figure it out.  We are a big family, and that’s the best thing about the walk, it’s more than 7,000 brothers and sisters, all in the same family for just a few hours of one day. (more…)

We walked in the Omaha JDRF Walk to Cure with friends of ours from Omaha. 
They were on our walk team in Des Moines, but couldn’t make it because of the
snow storm that closed all the roads.

Between Jana and Heidi (the two in the middle), they raised about
$1000 for our walk team, so we wanted to be there with them at their walk. 
It was fun, it was held at a really large park by the University of Nebraska
Omaha’s campus.  They had some games to play, a couple inflatables, and
a stage where they had a DJ.  It was cool to see how other chapters run a
walk.  I got a few really good ideas for our walk, we’ll see what we can
get implemented. 

Here’s a picture of Amber and Maya, who is one of her best friends, taken at
the Walk.

Our Walk awards banquet was held in May, and for the second year in a row our
family team was recognized often. Our team results were outstanding. As a team we raised $21,944, and we had about 120 walkers on our team!! Thank you to everyone who donated and thank you to everyone who was part of our family that day. 
We were the #2 family team fundraisers, for the second year. 

We each received individual trophies for having raised over $1000.  After
complaining last year that he didn’t get to go up on stage and get his trophy,
Austin was too shy to go up on stage to get his this year.  Oh, well, he
still had a trophy to bring home!

A big reason we raised the amount we did was because we received a $5000 matching funds donation from Thrivent Financial. Jeff Olson is our personal financial advisor, and he’s a friend, being a member at our church as well.

Here’s a picture of Jeff with Jenn Howieson, Special Events Manager at JDRF, as she presents him with Thrivent’s plaque, recognizing their support of trying to find a cure.