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

Then the team and individual awards were presented.  Amber’s Awesome Angels won the top family team!  Our team raised over $21,000!!!  Thanks to all of you who donated or helped us raise money!  We were awarded with a plaque, as well as a Circle Of Excellence pin from LifeScan, who makes the OneTouch meters that we use.  The lady in the green shirt is Kristy Slining, who is our LifeScan rep, who presented us the award.  The lady on the right is Mary Hunter, our JDRF Executive Director.

The Pioneer team won a platinum award, with over $34,000 raised! 

Each of us also received a Golden Sneaker award, for having raised over $1,000!  I had Austin talked into going up on stage to announce his total himself.  Last year, Kim went with him, but he was too shy to actually speak into the mic.  Well, he got restless this year (go figure) and went to a back corner to play a little basketball, so he missed his turn.  Darn it!

But he got another opportunity to go up on stage, for the very last award of the evening.  The final presentation was for the Volunteer of the Year award.  It recognizes the person who goes above and beyond for JDRF, and who participates in all JDRF’s activities.  When they started reading a description of who was being honored with this award, it began sounding very familiar. 

They honored our whole family with the award! How cool is that?

Here’s all the awards be brought home from the evening!

 

 

 

 

 

 

So to wrap it up, there’s just one thing to say to all of you:

Anyway, because of severe weather, our usual emcee, Ed Wilson, was unavailable, so Andy Fales stepped in, and did a great job.  It’s too bad that we didn’t have more lead time, because it would have been fun to do a spoof of “What’s Bugging Andy” on the topic of diabetes.  I think he was a little nervous, but he did an outstanding job, and Kim thinks that JDRF should get him as emcee more often.  I’d be ok with that.

One of the first things they did was announce the total raised for the walk.  $1.6 million is awesome, but it was less than our goal of $1.8 million.  Oh well, we’re that much closer to finding a cure, and we just have to try harder next year.  Mary Hunter, our Executive Director, presented an award to Dr Stevenson, this year’s corporate chair, and noted that Paul Schickler of Pioneer would be the corporate chair for next year!  Looking forward to that, it’s going to make for some good challenges for us at Pioneer! 

At our table was Jeff Olson, from Thrivent Financial, who sponsored our team again this year, Mary Ann Clark from Pioneer, and her mother, Janis Foote from Pioneer (who is our “Walk mentor”, as she got us to our first walk in 2005), and Scott and Jasny Brentano.  Jasny is the same age as Amber, and they are good friends.  Jasny’s mom, Jennifer, was on staff at JDRF. 

See the next post for the awards we won that night!

 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 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.

Our organized fundraising for this year started last fall, when we sold game programs at Iowa State footballs games.  We worked at two different games, and with the help of a few friends we managed to raise about $550! 

We also have our can and bottle redemption fundraiser going on year round as well, and we make hundreds annually from that.  Our annual Christmas/New Years neighborhood can drive was this weekend, we had a good sized donation!  Our neighbors are awesome with helping support us!

 In July we had our yearly garage sale, where we put all the profits to our walk team. 

Kim also hosted a Pampered Chef party in November, and she donated all of her host proceeds to our walk team as well. 

 So as of today, 5 January, we currently have over $1100 raised, with more to be deposited!

But we need your help.  Diabetes sucks, and we need to do whatever we can to raise money to find a cure!  Please be part of our family for Walk Day!

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. 

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.

But we still had a great time.  We got different inflatables, a different emcee, a different anthem singer.  Even though my parents couldn’t make it, and Kim’s mom couldn’t make it, among others, we still had a blast.  Whether Kim and I were happy with the amount of hair coloring that our volunteers sprayed in Austin’s hair is another issue, but Austin loved it.  Amber loved hers, and letting the kids have a day of fun was what it was all about.  The Walk raised over $1.6 million, and our family team exceeded all expectations by raising over $21,150!  A great day all around.  Until we got back to Ankeny, at least.  Kim had put an order of 5 pizzas in with Casey’s, as we were going to have people over to our house afterwards for lunch.  When she showed up to pick up the pizzas, they didn’t have an order.  Uh oh.  So we bought as many individual slices as they had, bought all the individual slices that another Casey’s had, and made them make some pizzas for us yet.  We had to scramble, but we got them.  Crisis averted.  Then I had to leave on a flight at 3:40 to go to Washington, DC, for JDRF’s Government Day.  All the Government Relations leaders from all over the US met there for some training and then to lobby our members of Congress.  Made for a long weekend, but it was worth it!