I will most gladly: Kids Cure 2013...You Shattered the Bubble!

When I set a goal a couple of days ago to get 25 donations toward Team Esther and the Kids Cure for Cancer, it felt like a very far off goal. It was really one of those, that would be fun, but won't happen sort of things. I had such little faith!

As of Friday night we had 7 donations, and then the donation site was unintentionally shut down and I was really happy to have had those 7 donations. When the site came back up Saturday, I thought maybe we could get a few more, but I had no idea!

We received four more donations Saturday afternoon, we were up to 11 donations! We went to bed about 9:30, so when I fell asleep, we had a total of 12 donations.

I thought I'd ask one more time and then all of you rallied! 9:10 pm, 9:51pm, 10pm, 10:07pm, 10:13pm, 10:18pm, 10:23pm, 10:39pm, 10:59pm, 12:28am.

Well, Esther woke up about 1am hungry, so I thought I'd check to see if there had been any more donations, I was NOT expecting to see these 10 emails all in a row. We were up to 21 donations. This, of course, required a quick blog post and several facebook updates to share the news with the rest of the world who was awake in the middle of the night. I went back to sleep excited and hopeful we'd get all 25!

Then Lydia woke up and needed some comforting. Of course I checked again...1:59am, 2:01am, 2:02 am (clever, you are). Three more donations! We were at 24! I was ready to just put in the last donation, but thought I'd wait until the morning to see if just one more would come.

Sure enough, our 25th donation came at 2:49am from two beautiful women we've met at Brent's Place who had been watching the progress all night and wanted to be the final donation.

When I woke up and checked the totals another sweet gift had been given to Team Esther at 5:19am, for a total of 26.

But...it didn't stop there! Throughout the day today, three more donations have come in. Even one very special gift from a young man not much older than Esther. Thank you, sweet boy!

The 29 donations total $1,471. This is really amazing! Thank you for so generously providing for families at Brent's Place. Broken down, this equals:

Almost 16 days for a family to live at Brent's Place OR
10 nights of meals for all the families living in the building (and a few more staying in the hospital) OR...
29 weeks of cleaning supplies OR...
147 movie nights (That's almost three years of weekly movie nights)!

Even if you weren't able to join us physically, thank you for cheering us on and thanks to all 29 of you who have so generously given. I wish I had enough t-shirts to give each of you!

The race today was great, a little rainy, but maybe that's better than too hot. I am so thankful to everyone who was able to make it out today (even our mystery team members...Brittni K. and Ryan G., email me so we can meet!). We were blessed with the kindness of each person who came! I hope next year we can win the biggest team prize...who's in?!

Ready to go!

Along the route there were signs. We thought the girl in this one was pretty special!

We stayed at Brent's Place alongside these sweet faces!

After the race we enjoyed pancakes, fruit, sausage, and lots of fun. There was a train, a bouncy castle, lots of booths with info and games, and music.

We stayed at Brent's Place alongside these sweet faces!