Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Carley Hoffman Benefit II

Last Saturday was the Carley Hoffman Benefit which is the 4 year old daughter of one of Jen's cousins. She is fighting stage 4 Neuroblastoma of her spine. I hadn't volunteered for anything on the day of the event since I wasn't sure if Jen had to work or not. Also my mother in law had told me that my father in law had volunteered me for some stuff. I called him Friday night to find out that he hadn't signed me up for anything, so I just decided to show up in the morning to help with set up and do whatever I could. I showed up to a madhouse of people so I just kind of stayed out of the way waiting for direction for whatever needed to be done. The bake sale was HUGE with all sorts of stuff to buy. They let everyone set their own price so it was quite a range from $3 for 3 (1/2 inch by 1/2 inch) small cubes of fudge to $4 for a whole apple pie. There was some deals to be found, and everything went half price in the afternoon. There were a ton of auction items to bid on (almost too many). There was a couple things that I would have loved to bid on if I would have had any money. The 3 foot Repalla fishing lure would have looked fantastic in my sea shanty basement. I started off slow just folding T-shirtsand moving tables,but when they started toward the stage to set up the sound equipment I felt a little more at home. They had three auction items near the stage (a cd player, a vcr/dvd combo, and an xm satellite system) that they felt the need to pull out of the boxes and plug in. I didn't understand why, but just did as I was told. I helped set up the sound system and talked to the guy who brought the equipment. When he found out I was an old radio guy we talked about old equipment and stuff that he used to have and just general sound geek talk. My father in law also runs a sound system at his church so with all of us we had the sound up in no time. After that I headed outside to help set up the kids area. They had a couple of moon walks and some other kids games to keep the kiddies entertained. I noticed that they had an old cotton candy machine too. I had used one of those many years ago at a radio promotion, so when they found out that I had some experience with the machine they dubbed me cotton candy man. I spent the next 5 hours outside making cotton candy. Don't get me wrong it was a fantastic day, but dang it was hot out on that parking lot all day. After a while Jen showed up with the boys. William had a blast in the moon walks, but Andrew was extremely cranky (we found out later he has an ear infection) so we spent most of the time carrying him around. We tried to get him into a moon walk but he wasn't too keen on that idea. Around 5:00 the crowd had really died down and there wasn't any kids ouside so I thought it would be a good time to take the family home. I felt bad that I wan't able to donate any money to the cause, but felt that I was doing my part in volunteering. Jen did end up buying some stuff at the bake sale so we did contribute a little bit. The event went well into the night with a live band and some other stuff to make money. Overall they made $21,000 for the family to help pay some of their bills. It's probably no where near what they will need when everything is finished, but at least it will help out a bit.







1 comment:

CAQuincy said...

Jage should have tried to auction off some of her Disney stuff.

Or maybe save that for the spectacular new Ebay career WHICH COULD BE YOURS!