Don't Use Planet Aid Yellow Boxes

I donated a bunch of clothing and shoes to the Mason's Clothe the Children project, baby blankets and newborn outfits to Valley Regional Hospital (where both my girls and I were born) and food to our local food shelf this week (I'm in super un-clutter mode...and want to give back at the same time). During my struggle with my closet and shelves, I attempted to rally up some more donations from others. When I met up with a girl in Claremont to pick up her contribution for the clothes drive she told me she was glad I found a legitamit charity because she had dropped off a bunch of clothes to the Planet Aid box and was told that the clothes deposited in them where just shreded. She was the second person to tell me something "not right" about the Yellow Boxes. Another person told me the Planet Aid people were selling them to fatten their own wallets. I was pretty annoyed by this idea since last month I brought 6 contractor bags full of coats, backpacks, shoes, clothes, whatever and deposited it into a Yellow Box. So I decided to check it out when I got home.... it isn't good. The short of it is.....don't bring anything to the Planet Aid yellow boxes. Look for a legitimate charity locally.... there are many!


http://cbs3.com/investigations/I..Team.CBS.2.309677.html

http://www.7dvt.com/2008/planet-aid-help-poor-or-charitable-pandora-s-box

http://organizer.wordpress.com/2007/12/20/thinking-outside-the-yellow-box/

http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/investigative/051209_fox_5_investigation_planet_aid

Waaaaaay too much again

I received an email a couple weeks ago from Ashtyn's school about the Mason's doing a "Clothes for Children" clothing drive for local less fortunate children. Well, they are in for some overloading. I went through the clothes up in my attic...and filled up 2 totes of clothes to give. Then proceeded through what was piling up all over the kids' room and filled another tote of donatables. Then it was on to the basement and closet....hmmm.... I think I need a bulldozer.


My bed is somewhere underneath this mountain of clothing. I just wish they wanted clothing of all sizes not just newborn to 9-10 year old.

I just emailed the Mason (Ashtyn's teacher's father) about how much I have for them and am awaiting an oh-my-god type response. I have 6 totes full right now and I haven't found my bed yet (which I need to do before Jeremy gets home from working up in Newport on Wednesday) and I have a huge bag full of newborn footed onsie outfits, blankets and newborn hats for the hospital..... oh man. And I still have sooooooo much stuff left to go through... and in all honesty I'm totally keeping stuff I can't part with yet....first Christmas dresses and the like..... but I'm trying to be better. Its awesome that my kids are provided for so well, but I feel bad that we are so fortunate and completely spoiled. Its so hard for me to not be a pack rat....its in my blood. My mom and aunt Kathy have perfected it. They have more stuff in their houses than you'd find in 50 "normal" houses..... but they display everything perfectly and beautifully and its always dusted and spotless... and then theres my house...... more clothing than you'd find in the mall, more furniture than the biggest antique store on the planet.....enough toys, ride ons, bouncy seats and what have you for 5 kids (in all fairness its because I have at least 5 kids at my house almost all the time) and my house is itty bitty. At least too itty bitty for me....a normal person would be fine but me and my brood...not so much. Anyway the point of my rambling..... I set out to thin out and thanks to the Mason's having this clothing drive, I finally am allowing myself to thin out a bit.

The girls in C-town did it again

Another 5 gallon bucket filled to the brim and a shopping bag full of ziploc bags full of tabs for Shriners Hospital. A huge THANK YOU goes out to the wonderful members of the Old #4 FIRE & HOSE Ladies Auxiliary of Charlestown, NH and the guys in the Fire Department... and anyone else who pitched in that I'm not immediately aware of. They're TABS FOR TAYLOR campain is going strong. If they keep this up I'm going to have to visit SHC more often :) THANK YOU ALL SO VERY MUCH !!!!!!!!!

SHrINE ON SPRINGFIELD

Some how, no one knew or informed us of Springfield having their alumni parade at the same exact day, same exact time, starting at the same exact location as our walk for Shriners. I was really kinda mad about not knowing due to the fact there were some Shriners at the parade!! That, and the fact that a couple of walkers drove down from Burlington to join us and couldn't find us due to NBC's parking lot being full of floats! And the traffic detour crew weren't going to let our water guy return to our location when he returned from the store. Aside from all the headaches and hassles and changes in plans, we pulled it off. The weather was awesome! And we all walked and sweat and sweat some more and then headed back to Ron and Sue's for a celebratory cookout and refreshing swim in the pool. And we raised a decent amount for a very quickly thrown together event. And no help what-so-ever from any of the sources I had sought out for publicity...... you know who you are....and if you don't, you will...... All the things that worked against us this year were good though. It has shown me things I need to plan for and take into consideration for next year. I'm still hemming and hawing about a motorcycle run this year but I'll have to see how things go still..... that might take a lot more preparation than I can give. So far, we collected $1392 and some change...(2 donations were done online....and are basically separate from our collections...but I am still counting them due to they were because of our SOS fundraiser). This collection is potentially incomplete at this time as we have a few people who have asked to still give a donation, but were unable to do so by Friday, and since I'm not going to Shriners until July 8th, I told those people to just get it to me by the 7th, so I'm hoping they come through. I also have a 50 gallon trash bag full to the spilling point of nickel cans that I still have to recycle and will be adding that money to the pot. And we also received a lot of "goods" donations. Between the stickers, the banner and the shirts, that was about 500 dollars worth of stuff. And Ron and Sue spent a ton on food for our post-walk party. We also collected about 6-7 pounds of soda can tabs!!!! That's an insane amount of tabs. I am sad we only collect $1400, but considering we just did another charity drive 8 weeks ago and this one was planned and pulled off in 5 weeks, I'm definitely thrilled we were able to collect what we did. I may have also stumbled upon a corporate sponser for SHC too. There is a company near me that is looking for a new charitable organization to donate to....we are currently looking into it and I'm hoping for the best. I will keep everyone updated as I learn more. Thank you to everyone who walked, everyone who donated and thank you Shriners Hospital for Children.

SHrINE ON update

The support and donations are coming at us like wild fire. Some shirts and car stickers have been donated. The monetary donations are still coming strong and I'm dying to know what everyone has raised so far but I want to wait until the end so you all have to wait too......We've got tons of soda tabs....although I found out it takes a whole lot more than I thought to make 1 pound.... a coffee can full.... holy crap!!! And the word is getting out there. I've uploaded the flier to a few local news channels and I just wrote in to the local paper. So hopefully we get some feed back from them. I have a bunch more local businesses to talk to and hopefully I get some donations from them. This is such a good cause.....I wish I had realized what the Shriners did for people before I needed them to help my little girl....I would have started this years ago. I'm just so happy people are willing to help. Thank you everyone who has or is continuing to help us with this wonderful cause.

SHrINE ON Springfield

My friends and I are going to give it a whirl. Its not the fundraiser I wanted to do but at least we can do one. And we did raise a lot of money in no time for the March of Dimes, so hopefully we have similar or better results for Shriners. We're putting together a walk-a-thon and we'll most likely have a pot-luck barbecue for the people who participate after the walk, either at my place or at some other local/neutral location. All money collected will be going to the Shriners Hospital in Springfield Mass. I'm not spending any money on door prizes or whatever so there is no start up money to be deducted from the collections. If I get some freebies to offer, great! and if not, everyone who participates will just have the feeling of knowing they did something for a wonderful cause as a souvenir. Pray for nice weather, lots of walkers and donors and that Springfield Shriners remains up and running.

How awesome!!! "Arms for Kids"

What a wonderful way to say "Thank you". Justin and Jeramie you guys are an inspiration to everyone. Good luck Justin. I send you wishes of safe passage and a roof over your head this weekend.


*** click on the pics to enlarge them***



article from The River Record

Its over....finally

I had almost no sleep last night and am currently running on the 15 million ounces of caffeine I poured down my throat today. Team Chaos and Mayhem pulled off our goal and then some for the March of Dimes March for Babies fundraiser today. Travis and Sam were undoubtedly hungover but they were in brighter spirits (and shape overall) than I was today. I was late...big surprise..... but we did it. Our initial goal was $500, which Jessi killed her first day of donation seeking, so I raised our goal to $800 (I didn't want to go too high since donors were starting to lag)... but we doubled that today too. We raised $1576!!!! Not too shabby for only 2(ish) weeks. I was pretty surprised. The walk was from 10-12 and then it was back to the homestead for final steps in the pre-party process. And Ashtyn's birthday party went very well. Part of the reason for no sleep last night was because Julie and I were up until 1:30am decorating Ashtyn's cake which tasted delicious and looked pretty good for 2 girls who have no idea how to decorate a cake. The weather was awesome... a bit too hot, but we finally got to use the swimming pool we got her 2 years ago which the kids all loved. Pepere and Nonna gave her a wonderful playhouse. My dad.... aka Pepere, built it to resemble our camp. It came out awesome. She got tons of kitchen and fake food things to put in her new house. And a beautiful princess ball gown with shoes from Grandmama and Papa. I still haven't even actually scene half of the gifts since I was dealing with Taylor and everything else but she is spoiled spoiled spoiled. There were so many kids here today and I don't think there was a single episode of bickering, whining, fighting, nothing. Everyone was completely awesome. This one little girl, who I met today for the first time, completely blew me away. She was absolutely in love with Taylor's little hand. She kissed her "smiley" a bunch of times and acted like it was the coolest thing she'd ever seen. Yet again reassuring me that Taylor will be fine. I'm still waiting for the day some little bully picks on her.... I'm really waiting to see how bad she pummels anyone who dares to pick on her, but either way...it will someday happen. Just not today. Today would not have happened without all the help from my family. They tied up all the loose stings I forgot about or just couldn't pull off and helped out so much. Lisa, Mom, Dave, Ryan, Julie, Dad, Jess, Bryan and my hubby Jeremy Thank you all for your help. Thank you everyone who Marched today. Thank you everyone who donated. And thank you to everyone who joined us today. This week has sucked, today was awesome and finally...its over.....now I can get some sleep

I'm going to be an aunt....and other things that happened this week

Now that I've got your attention......Its not Julie!!! Jeremy's half-sister Crystal is expecting. Congrats Crystal!!! (Jolene and GG, I saw you both jump, and I'm giggling to the point of wetting myself.) Team "Chaos and Mayhem" (March of Dimes) has grown to 8 members (and 7 baby-members).... and we've raised almost 500 dollars so far (not bad for 10 days).....we've got 15 days left to rally some more funds but 4 people joined us yesterday and I don't know yet how much CrownPoint is donating for Travis. Now if only I can pull something similar off to help Shriners. Depending on how this vote of theirs goes in July, I may be attempting a community wide party to benefit them. I'm still in the pondering stages and finding out what I can for info on how to go about this project. If all goes as planned it shouldn't be a big deal and it could actually get a lot of donations for them and be a ton of fun. Here's to hope. For those of you completely confused as to what I'm talking about, you apparently somehow missed the 8,000 posts of news clips I put up, but the hospital Taylor goes to for her prosthetics and Orthopaedic needs might close, along with 5 of their other locations due to lack of funds, stock market losses, decline of donations, etc. If they close Taylor and lots of other kids will either have to trek thousands of more miles away for care, or they may not even be able to receive care anymore. That's not an option in my book. I'm currently trying on much smaller than community-wide-party scale to rally some donations and at least light a fire under some people's tushies to donate. I've got a million and one ideas, I just need to figure out how to make them work. Hmmm other stuff that's going on... Jeremy got his engineer's license, so he can now drive the train without someone holding his hand:) Woo-hoo! And a raise:) Super-WOO-HOO! and a cut in hours :( Not so woo-hoo. But back on the ups, one of my ex-daycare families might be a re-enrolled daycare family!! Yippee. Apparently "Mom" and her mom and step-dad are going into a Tri-ownership of a new restaurant. Super! And my current part time fella might become a full timer in May. Its about time something changed for the better around here. I hate not having a ton of kids around, I get all out of sorts when its just my two. When I've got a bunch, I've got a schedule, I've got rhythm, I've got some sanity. When its just Ashtyn, Taylor and myself, there is no schedule, there is not rhythm, its full of indecision and destruction, or a doctors visit that will undoubtedly be accompanied by a HUMONGOUS BLOW OUT TANTRUM FROM HELL...in other words, not as fun as it should be. Speaking of my tantrum-haver, she's in love with her dad this week?!?! She had a complete break down when he left to go to Sam's tonight. She ran to the door behind him and just screamed and cried and yelled for her daddy. It was so sad but nice at the same time. She's not usually (at least for the past year) very lovey. She is generally happy just doing whatever with whoever until she gets in trouble and then she wants anyone who isn't the person scolding her. But the last couple days, she's been a total Daddy's girl. And when she's not glued to her dad, she's trying to help me with anything and everything. I don't know what happened to her or if she's been switched with an alien, but she's a total different kid this week. On that note, I've have caught you up on the good, the bad and the in general happenings of the homestead and now I'm departing to my bed.... my mind is jumping around like a kid with ADD after drinking a 12 pack of redbull.....I'm sure you've noticed......waaaaaay past my bedtime. Goodnight