hello again

Once again, hello everyone. Yesterday the one thing I failed to mention was that all of this couldn't have happened without the help of my dad. He planned it, he set in action, and he went through with it. He's the one who has all of the friends who donate blood. Any ways, stuff about my everyday life. I now go to school until 2:30, just half an hour away from a full day. I went to a movie without any adults for the first time ever, and I'm just doing amazing overall. I hope you're all doing as well as me, talk again soon

       Princess pants👸🏽

Bent But Not Broken Blood Drive Update

As Jodi mentioned in her last post we're having a blood drive in an effort to give back some of what Avery needed to get her through the surgery. Sign-ups have been slowly trickling in, but we're still a few people shy of getting our target number of fifteen donors.

My company has one of these old-timey looking popcorn machines that they let employees use every Friday. The company buys the popcorn, all you have to do is set up shop and pop the stuff (and clean up everything after) and you can sell popcorn for $2 a bag. The only conditions are:

• You can only send one email to the office promoting your event and one email afterward thanking everyone (so as to not spam / pester everyone)
• The money has to go to a registered charity

So, in an effort to drum up donors and donations we held a Popcorn Friday in support of Canadian Blood Services today and Princess Pants and The Dude came to work with me this afternoon to help sell popcorn.

My introduction email explained a bit about Avery and how she needed so much blood for her surgery and that we were looking for six more donors to round out our list or cash from popcorn sales to donate to Canadian Blood Services. 

Last night, Jodi got this awesome idea to make up t-shirts with pictures of Avery's x-rays on them promoting the blood drive. The kids wore theirs to school and I wore mine to work. They looked awesome and they were a big hit! 

I took the kids out of school around 1:00 and brought them into work and we started popping popcorn a little before 2:00. Someone had already given me a $20 donation because they were out of the office for the afternoon so we were off to a great start. Once the smell of the popcorn started wafting through the office it didn't take long for the donations to start rolling in. 

By 3:00 we had sold a lot of popcorn and a co-worker suggested that we take some upstairs on the rolling table and see if the office on the 3rd floor wanted any (he tipped us off that they were always in the mood for popcorn). 

So we trekked upstairs with eleven bags of popcorn and visited another company and less than 10 minutes later we only had one bag left! 

We sold a few more before the day came to a close for us (around 4:00) and the final tally was nothing short of amazing:

• $238 ($245) if you include the 5€ note someone gave us
• Two blood donors for the drive on May 14
• One blood donor who can't make the 14th but will donate at another point in the week

 I even had people tell me they would be away on Friday but would bring in donations on Monday!

All in all, it was an amazing success. The generosity of the community is quite something. I am very fortunate to have such wonderful and caring neighbours.

In case you didn't do the math, we're still in need of 3 donors! 

Please email me if you can donate on May 14th in Waterloo (6:35pm, 7:05pm, 7:10pm spots available). 

If you can donate but on a different day, or if you're out of town and you'd like to donate, just book your appointment with Canadian Blood Services (http://blood.ca) and let me know and I'll add you to our list of Bent But Not Broken Supporters. 

Thank you, all!

~ Andrew

It's in you

hello everyone. I'm really sorry that I haven't posted in a while. I'm about to make up for it. Right now I'm at Canadian blood services in Waterloo, meeting new people, and taking MILLIONS of pictures with everyone I meet. Don't get me wrong, it tons of fun. It's a really amazing feeling seeing all of these people come out to donate donate blood because we asked (and for other reasons too). We have people who haven't donated in years coming out to donate, people who've never donated before, and even one person who's tried three times and passed out at all of them trying to donate again. We got about 15 people in total, and just being here makes me feel wonderful even if it is tiring. I'm writing this  at 8:12 Thursday night, so I'll post another tomorrow morning. But before I stop for the night I would just like to tell you what it feels like to have something this nice happen to you. OK, close your eyes and. Wait never mind don't close your eyes. Imagine walking into your house one day and smelling all of your favorite things, seeing all of the people you love, and then having fireworks happen and candy falling from the sky, and THEN everyone in the room gives you a million dollars each. That is what it felt like to be me watching everyone donating blood to give back. It also feels like I'm about to explode into happiness. Talk to all of you lovely people tomorrow!

             p̤̈r̤̈ï̤n̤̈c̤̈ë̤s̤̈s̤̈ p̤̈ä̤n̤̈ẗ̤s̤̈😜

The one where going to McDonald's makes me cry

Today is McHappy Day and we will be going. It is possible I will make multiple visits. On any normal day, this is not anything I would do - we maybe have McDonald's a half dozen times a year, normally on the road or otherwise in a pinch. But today we are going for McHappy Day, and that means the money will be going to support the most wonderful, amazing, kind services of the Ronald McDonald Houses (RMH) and other children's charities. 

I don't know how much we discussed RMH in relation to Avery's surgery, but there is one just across from McMaster. We were provided an application form, I even filled it out - but the idea that we might take a room from a family who was dealing with something worse than back surgery (major back surgery, but we knew she would be coming home once she was able) made me feel bad. Plus, we were something like 2.4 km over the minimum distance - and Dude was going to be home. What I didn't know until day 2 at McMaster was that there is also a Ronald McDonald House room, which has comfortable furniture, always hot coffee and other snacks and food (and aside from the coffee, none of it was from McDonald's ). This room was a godsend. This room had hot tea and fresh fruit, and just a place to sit that didn't have beeping monitors and call button alarms. This place was an oasis in the middle of the hospital, and I for one will do something as trivial as buy a Big Mac - maybe twice - to help make sure that room and the RMH are forever available for people who need them.  I really hope you never need them.

And one other little plug - whatever politics you may feel about blood donation - the blood bank always needs your help. You know Avery needed 15 donors worth of blood. You might have a friend who has had cancer treatments and needed blood. If you can, please donate. My Princess needed it to safely make it out of surgery - if you could help another parent say the same thing, wouldn't you want to?