Dollars and Cents

I love that Georgia wrote, "Survivor" on her coin box!

Hello Friends of Georgia! We are coming off of a banner week of fundraising around Peachy Keen headquarters, especially considering most of the funds raised were in coins. For the past three weeks, Parkside has been running its Pennies for Patients campaign, and the results are in!

The grand total is .......... $4,132.86!!!!!!!!!! See, every little bit really does add up! Incredible numbers for a small but mighty (and mighty loving!) community. And so, to reward the children for all their hard work, EIGHT staffers each took a pie in the face, including Ivy's teacher (and huge Georgia supporter), Ms. Camille:

She still looks beautiful!

I hated to get the whole school all riled up first thing in the morning and then LEAVE, but I had to get prepared for our next event of the weekend - the Second Annual Blood Drive and Party in honor of Georgia, now featuring a Lemonade Stand for CureSearch!

Once again, Aunt Kate and Uncle Trent were such amazing hosts, opening up their home for this wonderful event. Georgia and Ivy were inspired by Lemonade Day and Alex's Lemonade Stand to set up a stand benefiting childhood cancer research, so they juiced 80(!) lemons with Trevor and whipped up Paula Deen's lemonade recipe (which, surprisingly, does not call for butter). They added in a few sweets and were open for business. By the end of the party, they earned $114 for CureSearch - woohoo!

As for the main reason we were there, we added 21 units of blood to Georgia's donation tally, with a few potential donors planning to try again later this month, after loading up on some iron-rich foods. Low iron is a very common reason for otherwise-qualified donors to get turned away on a particular day, but thankfully, it's something that can be easily remedied, so don't give up!

We got to use the new big rig - pretty!

Also pretty? The guest of honor!

All in all, it was a great day, a great week, a great month. We so appreciate all of you making our cause your cause - you're helping us help so many other families on their own cancer journeys, and it means the world to us. Thank you, thank you!