2008 Walk to Cure Diabetes

I have to comment on this picture. The police just went by and told everyone to move to the sidewalks, I guess Aunt Debbie didn't feel she needed to! haaaa

Michael's Crew participated in the Walk to Cure Diabetes held at the state capitol on Sunday, October 5th 2008. We kept our pirate theme from last year and man am I glad that we did! So many people came in all out pirate costumes. Harry and Carol, your family was amazing! Great job Carol on finding all the costumes, I think everyone loved the striped socks. It's so much fun to see people get into the pirate theme. I can't tell you how many comments were made to us regarding our team. All good!

Ranse and I were overwhelmed with emotions many times through out the day. To see 130-150 people there decked out in pirate attire and wearing shirts with Michael's picture on the front of them was unbelievable! Once again, we were very impressed with all of the support we are given. We hope everyone enjoyed themselves and will continue to join us each year for such a great cause. We are still receiving donations and will post our total probably next week.

Thanks again for an absolute fabulous day. We truly are grateful for each and every person that has shown support to our family. Michael's Crew will continue to do it's part through fundraising and awareness to fight this disease. We pray each day that Michael will one day be diabetes free along with millions of others and you all should be proud of yourselves for all that you've done to help fund research and show support! YOU ROCK!!!

Bigger and Better things!

So, with our first walk behind us, we decided it was time to shoot for bigger and better things for our second year. We raised our goal to $7,500 and with doing so, thought we should do some added fundraisers to help reach it. In May, we sent out emails and collected people's unwanted treasures for a multi-family yard sale. This was a great success with raising $520 to go towards our team goal and anything that did not sell was donated to goodwill. We'd like to put a shout out to everyone that donated items to our yard sale and a special thank you to David and Kori Harris for letting us borrow their driveway. You guys are awesome, not only did you donate your prime location, you also had to deal with the whole Gale family for the entire day! Yikes, that's a lot to ask.

Be sure to start saving any unwanted goodies because I'm sure we will do this again in the spring:)

Unfortunately I was not thinking and didn't take any pictures.

As a last minute idea to try to bring in more funds, we decided to have a walk kick off party at Steve's Pizza. We figured everyone needs to eat and why not donate a little to the cause at the same time. We sent out emails asking everyone to join us and spread the word and little Ranse made up a flyer to pass out to his entire football team.

We weren't sure what to expect, we hoped for a good turn out but you just never know. We were blown away when the entire pizza place was packed with our friends, family and football team. We counted around 130 people that showed up to support Michael's Crew. Steve's Pizza donated 20% of the sales before tax and we were very pleased to pick up a check for $275 the following day. The owner was very pleased and invited us to come back and have as many fundraisers as we would like.

Thanks again to everyone that came out that night, when I know it would have been so easy to just stay home. Let's just say we have the absolute best friends and family in the whole world!!!

Here are some pictures I took that evening.