4th Annual Blood Drive and Bake Sale

Our 4th annual Blood Drive and Bake Sale in honor of Colby went really well!! I love doing this event each year, because I am always inspired by the goodness of family, friends, and complete strangers.

The Bake Sale was once again filled with LOTS of delicious baked goods! We are always amazed at the amount of cookies, brownies, pies, cakes, etc. that are donated. Thank you to everyone who baked for this sale, bought treats from the sale, or made a donation! A special thank you to Sarah Farley, Kate Witherington, Maggie Hobrat, Shelly Calonge, Cecili Smith, and Marye Rowell for volunteering their time and running the bake sale. You guys did a great job, and we really appreciate you!!

As of today, we have $2,139 in bake sale proceeds and direct donations!! I have had several people, that were unable to attend Saturday, tell us they would like to mail us a donation. So, Jason and I have decided to wait 2 weeks before donating the money to Vanderbilt CHD Research. If you would still like to make a donation in honor of Colby, please send us a check by Friday, March 2nd. If you need our address, please send me a message and I can get that to you. Checks should be made payable to "Monroe Carell Jr Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt." Write "CHD Research" in the memo line.

The Red Cross did an excellent job of keeping the blood drive running smoothly. I don't think anyone had to wait longer than 15 minutes to get started, which is great! A big thank you to my mom for helping me with the sign in table! We signed in 71 people wanting to donate blood! Out of those 71, the Red Cross was able to collect 67 units of blood!!! Six people chose to do the 2RBC donation this year, which meant 2 units from each of them!! Thank you to everyone who came out to donate blood. I know that donating blood is not exactly a fun way to spend part of your Saturday, but it is so important! We appreciate all of you, and I know the Red Cross does as well!

Thank you Jason Rowell, Marye Rowell, and Jay Watson for helping us clean up afterwards. It went much faster with you guys helping! Thank you to Steve and Carol McClure and Tim and Wendy Hinton for letting us borrow your bounce houses. The kids that came throughout the day were very happy and had lots of fun! Thank you Joan Dell for bringing us lunch.

It was a long day, but we are happy that it was a productive and fun day!! Thanks again to everyone for helping make this event successful for the 4th year! We are very excited about the Red Cross having 67 more units of blood in the blood bank and about being able to donate some much needed money towards CHD Research! We will plan to do it again next February!!