Awesome Support

WOW what a fast weekend this was! I'd been planning a benefit dinner in honor of Brooklyn for a couple months now. Originally I was just going to have the dinner but a friend stepped up & volunteered to be in charge of the auctions, if we decided to do that. What an amazing team we made! She (Jamie) did the auction part of it while I focused on the dinner part. Both were HUGE undertakings but we worked quite well together & we got it done.

The dinner was Sat night 11/13 at 5pm at our church here in Lewistown, MT. Originally I was going to get enough food to feed 250 because I wanted to have more than enough. Well once we had all the flyers out, a newspaper article, & radio ad's on we knew it'd probably be a bit bigger than that. I ended up ordering enough food for 300-350 people and believe it or not we served 350 people! (We had a clicker counter thing so we're fairly accurate with that number.) I'm still in awe at how many people came to show us their support!

We had probably 30'ish silent auction items and probably about 40 live auction items. (I could be off a little, but I'm probably kinda close.) Unfortunately at the last minute we were auctioneer'less so Jamie's dad stepped up & helped us out. It was a fun night of auctioning I think! We had some great items that individuals and businesses donated to us out of the kindness of their hearts. I even had total strangers call me up at home asking if they could donate stuff! Amazing how people want to help.

We were exhausted by the end of the night but we were SO happy with how things turned out. We filled the place twice, fed 350 people, sold everything in both auctions, & ate great food! We had family come from out of town as well, which was such a treat. I'll post pictures as soon as I get them!!

I have already thanked people, but I can't do it enough so here goes again: HUGE thanks to Jamie for co-planning the dinner; to Steve for the clicker-counter thing; Dan Gill for auctioneering; Harry's Place for offering to get the food for us; Dave Murray at the News Argus for writing a great article & helping out at the auction; Terri Hall at the radio station for doing interviews; Ian, Tracy, Kimo, & Dona for cooking food; all the volunteers for helping serve food, get drinks, & do dishes; the MANY individuals & businesses for donating items for both the live & silent auctions; & of course all the people that I'm forgetting. I know there's probably people out there that I'm forgetting & I apologize! I really do thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

We ended up making enough to cover 2-3 of our 5 trips to Chicago. It's a HUGE start & we are so thankful! I still have 2 1/2 boxes of cookbooks left & I have another 20 boxes coming in a few weeks! We won't stop selling cookbooks until the last surgery is over so if you know of anyone that doesn't have a cookbook yet please let them know! :o)

Thanks again to everyone who made the dinner possible. We're so thankful to have you ALL in our lives!