Memory Miles for Active Heroes

Saturday, May 19

Another beautiful morning to participate in Memory Miles, a walk to benefit Active Hereos. Our friend, Jerry Vest, organized a group of family and friends to help raise money for this great cause. Although it was his first year participating and putting this event together, there were about 15 people who walked a 3 mile loop, as well as made monetary donations. The walk took place in the beautiful Pioneer Park in Mooresville.

Active Heroes helps Military families in need.  It helps provide services where other funding leaves off. It is a volunteer-led non-profit charity with thousands of active individuals, like Jerry, that fundraise to help Veterans, Active Duty Military and their families. They help with financial assistance, such as mortgage payments, utilities, car payments and also accept wish lists. Monetary assistance is not given directly to applicants, instead the organization will pay the bill.

Jerry, retired Master Sergeant, Airforce, is a wonderful example of this great organization at work. His wish is to make this a larger, more oraganized outing next year and we wish him the best of luck and look forward to participating in next years memory walk with you!

To learn more about this organization, click this link-Active Heroes

Pioneer Park has several paved forest trails, an aquatic center, playgrounds geared to different age groups, ball fields, volleyball, baskeball courts, various picnic areas and shelters.  It would be a great place for a family renunion or summer outing.  

This is Hunter and Mommy enjoying watching the creek running through the park.

And enjoying the playground....

Mommy's First Mother's Day 2012

Sunday, May 13
A family tradition, thanks to Great Great Grandmother "Nanny",  is to gather at the Bluebird Restaurant in Morristown for Mother's Day luncheon. They have a great homestyle buffet with a wonderful large salad bar, fried chicken, ham, roast beef, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, green beans, sweet potatoes, lima beans, rolls, several homemade desserts and an ice cream machine. They are packed from the time they open to the time they close. Reservations are a MUST for Mother's Day, usually need to have them made several months in advance.

Here are a couple of shots from their FB page of their buffet items.....mmmmm

After we all get our bellies full, we go over to Nanny's house to visit for a while.

 

Pic added 9/5/12, Victoria Olivia's adoption day!

                                 Hunter with Great, Great Nanny and 2nd cousin, Victoria Olivia

 

Having fun with Aunt Vicki on the big wheel!

Happy First Mommy's Day, Mommy!! :o)

If you would like to try out the Bluebird, here is their information:

Awesome, Team Hunter's Heart!!

On Saturday, May 12, a group of 16 adults, wearing lime green shirts, came together in honor of the little man in the pictures on their shirts! This group of adults and that little man, formed the team "Hunter's Heart". What an awesome team they were!

Hunter's Heart team was- Great Grammy Marjorie, GiGi Jerry, Grandpa Mark, Uncle Louie, Aunt Mandy, Uncle Chris, Mommy's friends, Rachel and Michelle, Grandma (me), friends Jerry & Laura  and Laura's sister, Linda, more friends Stephanie, Tom & Sharon, Mommy (Carissa) and the little man, himself, Hunter!

When I heard, "March of Dimes", I always associated it with premature births but March of Dimes does so much more. They are instrumental in funding important research programs to help give all babies a healthy start in life.  This includes birth defects, those such as congenital heart defects like Hunter's.

When I went to drop off donations at an early drop off downtown, I was sharing Hunter's story.... like grandma does :)  and the director of the Central Indiana Chapter, Judy seemed to be excited as I was telling her about Hunter.  She asked if I would do her a favor at the walk, I had no idea what she was about to ask.  She asked if I would fill in as the speaker for the "birth defect" family representative, due to the original family was not going to be able to make it.  I was excited and said, yes.....then reality set it!!! OMG...how many of thousands of people would be there ????  She sent me some guidelines of what was going to be said by the 3 different areas, premature births, birth defects and infant mortality. 

Standing up on the bridge, next to Grace Treyhan from WRTV 6, holding Hunter, with Mommy waving the red flag for birth defects this is what I said....

"Good morning, my name is Debbie and I am walking today in honor of my grandson, Hunter.  This is Hunter's mommy, Carissa, and this beautiful little, happy guy is Hunter. He will be one year old next Wednesday. Hunter was born with a severe congenital heart defect. Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome is the under-development or absence of the left side of the heart.  Approximately 1 in 100 babies are born with a heart defect.  Without the support and research that March of Dimes provides, improved technology would not be available for our babies to survive and mature. Please raise your red fan if your are walking today for someone with a birth defect!"

And somehow I managed to get through it all without stammering too badly, or Hunter grabbing the microphone but as soon as I walked away, the overwhelm of emotions took over. Thank goodness it wasn't in front of  that sea of  people!

It was a beautiful day to walk the canal and honor that little boy and all of the other babies that have had such difficult starts in life!  Team Hunter was a wonderful success and raised in excess of $2,000 for March of Dimes!!

I will say it again..... OVER $2,000!!!! AWESOME, I must say!!!

It was great to look from the bridge and see our team waiting for us below!

Some of our team on the walk

Hunter was "chillaxin"!

Families of all kinds out for the day!

 We are kind of partial to this place! Thanks for the support St. Vincent PMCH!

This was Hunter's reaction to having to get up early for the walk!

Looking forward to creative fundraising for next years walk!

WAY TO GO TEAM!!!

To learn more about March of Dimes click the link

All For The Babies....

In December, Hunter's Mommy, Carissa and I decided that we were going to participate in the March of Dimes, March for Babies on May 12, 2012.  We wanted to get family and friends involved and walk as a team.  Team "Hunter's Heart" was born.....

Because I work for one of the St. Vincent hospitals, I decided that I was some how going to involve my fellow associates in the this all important and very close to my heart, endeavor.  So I decided to approach the leaders of our Senior Administration with the possibility of this being an "approved" charity drive, especially since St. Vincent Women's Hospital was a sponsor. :)  It was approved and I had the go ahead to distribute information and the opportunity to recruit additional walkers, as well as donations.

I started my "Did You Know" series during Congenital Heart Defect (CHD) Awareness Week, Feb.  7-14th.  I shared facts concerning CHD's, and shared pictures and a little history about Hunter and included a small heart shaped sucker in the first edition, just in time for Valentine's Day.  Our first donation, one of the largest, came shortly after I sent out the first edition!  That was quite exciting! I sent out a new edition approximately every 3 weeks.  It was almost 2 months before we received another donation.

Twice a day I passed by the McDonald's in New Palestine and noticed that they seemed to have quite a few evenings where they did fundraising for different school groups. Hmmm, I wondered if we could do that for March of Dimes, too? After a few attempts, I was able to finally make contact with the manager of fundraising and we were approved to have our evening!  It was set for May 6, the Sunday before Mother's Day.  McDonald's would give us 10% of all sales for 4 hours.  We made copies of flyers from March of Dimes, and created donation envelopes to place on every table and  folded change donation boxes.

Several weeks before our date, we went door to door at several of the businesses in New Palestine and hung flyers to alert people to our special evening at McDonald's.  We had family members place the information on their facebook pages to get the word out to our friends and family, hoping to bring in a good crowd.

Because our fundraising date was close to the walk date, and Carissa had designed a team shirt, we were able to wear them for our fundraiser.  To help spread our reason for walking we greeted guests and thank them for coming in and supporting March of Dimes.  Most customers had no idea and looked at us quite strange when we thanked them, but once they understood they seemed to be pleased to help us.
Hunter was with us,of course, wearing his team shirt too and met many of the customers and quickly put a smile on their face.

We had a great turn out of customers, friends and family members.  Our fundraiser check was $118 for the evening, but from additional donations from customers we raised a total of $575.13!! 

Here are a few pictures from our evening at McDonald's-

Here is our team accepting the check presented to us from McDonald's

And He's Off!!!

April. 22, 2012

The little man is officially on the move and hasn't stopped!!

As you can probably tell, GiGi was just a little excited for him!

Not only was he on the horizontal move, he decided it was also time to climb up! This was a baby with a mission....but the mission was not accomplished without a little frustration....

But with a little perserverance..... mission accomplished! :) 

Just getting so big, so fast!