Calm Amongst the Chaos

Wow! What a weekend!
Andrew and I had a little “staycation” in Scottsdale Friday night, our anniversary was Wednesday August 18th and Grandma Cheryl was here in town to help out with Splash for a Cure. We took advantage of her to watch the kids and advantage of the awesome rates you can get at 5 star hotels because who wants to be in Arizona in August. And we had dinner and a night out on the town. No curfew, although we were in bed by 10pm. No one waking us up, except for we were both awake by 6:30am. But we had no one to feed but ourselves. And that was awesome.
Then Andrew dropped me off at a spa where I met up with my mom, sister, niece, aunt and cousin to where we had massages, facials and swim time. I thought the last thing I should do before Splash for a Cure was relax, but it surprising went well. Those ladies were on my committee so we talked a lot and planned a lot and relaxed a lot.
However when I got home, I got to work. And so did my amazing team of women who none of it would have been possible with out! Jennifer Cavanaugh, Nancy Diepstraten, Gloria Mason, Kim Dimas, Liz Beisemeyer, Ashley Galvanoni were my core team. I also had help from my nieces, my nephew, my cousins, all the other half of the women, plus a few friends went far and beyond getting me amazing raffle prizes. It practically went flawlessly. There are things that I am kicking my butt over but there is nothing I can do but just not do it next year (and yes there will be a next year!).
A little rundown for those unable to attend:
We get there at 5:10pm and they let us in to set up, event starts at 5:30pm and we did not have enough time. But those who showed early were patient and some even pitched in a hand.
Rick from Tom’s BBQ came alone and brought enough food for 200 people! He donated it all, his time, his food all for free! We got about 100 hotdogs to give to the kids and we were totally out of food at the end of the night. Since Rick came alone Andrew served food with him all night long. I was proud of him doing what he had to do to help out. And hopefully if the construction field crashes here even more than now, at least we know he has something to fall back on.
Everyone was swimming and chatting, it was probably about as hot and humid as AZ can ever get and I felt bad for those who did not want to swim and will next year see if we could do it in September. The raffle prizes were awesome and I had my niece Skylar and her friends out selling raffle tickets, Ashley and my mom working the raffle tables sweating their tails off. We sold a lot of raffles and every single item had raffle tickets in it. Some more than others, but all in all those were some pretty coveted items!
Then we sang happy birthday to the beautiful birthday girl and we had cupcakes made for everyone (Jenn, Gloria and I all made several dozen). Then we drew for the raffle and it was over.
And I kept thinking once this is over I’ll never want to do this again, just like after running a half marathon, I did that once and I pretty much stuck to that whole never doing that again, but when this was over I felt high. It was this overwhelming sense of accomplishment. We made, I don’t have a complete tally yet, but over $4,000!
Andrew’s parents did a fundraiser in South Dakota during Sturgis Bike Week and they rose over $6,000 so our team Lily will be contributing over $10,000 to IFCR (international foundation for CDKL5 research)!
And now we just know we can do more and can do better.
We are just so proud to be Lily’s parents and to have a name of something that we can beat if we really try. There is a cure out there, we just have to have enough money to get there to be interest in finding it. Sad but true. So we will keep going for Lily, for all the kids like Lily. We will fight until we find the cure and appreciate everyone willing to put up their gloves and fight with us. (or your pocketbooks, that works too)
I will be posting a video soon with the photos from the event. I’ve got one hour left of the boys nap so I will get on that right now!