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! 

Saturday was our JDRF Hope Gala, the theme of which was “Here’s looking at you, kids”. Amber was one of the kids asked to help, and a couple of months ago she got her picture taken in movie star fashion. JDRF had people do up all the kid’s hair, and the kids dressed up in tuxes or their best dresses and they had their photos taken. We also had to provide her signature, and the picture and signature were used as part of the program, like an autographed head shot. JDRF also taped a red carpet interview with each kid, and that was played during the Gala. It was really cute, and if I can get a copy of the video I want to post that, too.

So we got all dressed up and went to the party!

Last spring, Mary Beth Goeser, who is our MiniMed pump rep (and a really great lady who also has type 1 diabetes), asked if Amber wanted to help her on a sculpture that she wanted to do for the Gala.  It would be included in the silent auction.  Mary Beth took Amber out to Saylorville Lake to look for wood to use for the concept she had in mind.  They found what they were looking for, and a couple weeks later we all went back out there to take a few pictures.  Amber went over to Mary Beth’s house to help paint it and put it together.  To the left is a picture of Amber at the Gala with the final product. 

The base reads “Adversity is a terrible thing to waste”, and here is the story that Mary Beth wrote up to go with it.  It’s really cool, and Amber wanted us to buy it.  Very much so.  But we had a problem.  Mary Beth did a sculpture last year that sold for about a $1000, and this one was valued at half again more than what that one was.  Plus, it was a really cool piece that a lot of people were looking at.  When I warned Amber the night before that we may not be coming home with it because it might go for more than we could afford to pay for it, she started crying.  Nothing like a little pressure, huh.

Luckily for us, and unluckily for JDRF, the patrons to the Gala weren’t doing a lot of bidding, so we wound up being the one and only bid on the sculpture.  So, we now have a 4 foot wooden sculpture at our house, and we need to find a place for it.  Swing by if you want to get a better look.

One of the neat things about the Gala is that you get to meet with all kinds of people you don’t normally get to meet.  I met the Head of Medicine at Methodist Medical Center, of which Blank Children’s Hospital is part, which is where Amber’s endocrinologist’s office is.  I met CEOs and other executives of many of the companies in cental Iowa.  I get to see other families that are dealing with the same disease we are.

But this year we had a special treat. Shawn Johnson, the current US and World gymnastics champion, and Olympic hopeful from West Des Moines. What a sweetheart. She’s 15 years old, and Amber’s got a good 6 inches on her. She’s amazing, for everything she’s been through, she seems surprised that people think so much of her. For everything she’s done, she was most happy to carry around the Brittany Spaniel puppy that got auctioned off at the Gala.  She was so happy to just be a kid, and that was neat to see.  I don’t like it when people have a little success and then let it go to their heads.  She is totally not that way, she’s as normal a kid as can be.  That says a lot about her and her parents and what they value, and I made sure to thank them.  Color me very impressed, and our family will be cheering her on come the next Olympics. 

The Gala itself was fun.  Open bar during the silent auction, I had a few glasses of pino grigio, and spent a lot of time socializing.  We had a ton of cool things to bid on, including this really neat oak dining room set that was made by an Amish family whose son was diagnosed 3 years ago.  He called JDRF out of the blue and offered it.  A lot of things sold for much less than they should have, so the total was about 20% lower than what we’d hoped.  The videos of the kids that I mentioned above were played during the live auction, and a dad of one of the families that we’ve known through our support group got on stage and told their story.  I love events like this and I love to hear other people’s stories, but I hate it at the same time.  They get me so excited about JDRF and finding a cure, but it’s so hard to see Amber’s picture come up on the screens, and it’s even worse to hear other’s get so emotional telling their story.  I don’t know if I could ever tell our story in a setting like that, I have a hard enough time telling it in groups of 10 or 20.  I hope I get asked sometime, but I don’t know if I’d be able to do it.

Here is the full set of pictures from the evening, there are a couple that I didn’t link to yet.

Amber and I finished off the evening with a bit of dancing.  We danced to 4 or 5 songs before we called it a night.  That was a lot of fun, and seeing the smile on her face and knowing she forgot about diabetes for a precious few minutes made it all worthwhile.