Happy Martin Luther King Day - Michael Helps Kids Turns Two!

Today marks the 2 year anniversary from when Michael decided he wanted to do something - anything - to make a difference in this world. After reading a story about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Michael was inspired to help his fellow humans. He didn't have a firm grasp on what he wanted to do yet. After all, he was six years old.(I'm 44 for crying out loud and I still don't have a firm grasp on what I want to do yet either... um... but I digress.)  As I was saying... Michael just knew that he wanted to help. We kicked around a few ideas. Eventually he decided he wanted to help kids, being that he is a kid, that made sense to me. As we chatted to try to figure out an organization to help I asked him, "okay, but how do we raise the money?" And he came up with the idea of making bracelets and selling them. And the rest is history.


At first, I have to be honest, I thought, "Who is going to actually buy bracelets from us?" I mean, I know I'm of the female persuasion, but I had never actually made a real bracelet before. Admittedly, our early bracelets were not great. But people bought them. And then more people them and then the police got in on the action, and now Michael's teacher and librarian and his classmates have even bought some. Before the school year began we had raised a whopping $200!  T
hat is quite a pretty penny for selling $2 bracelets.

As we continued to discuss different options and ideas, we finally decided to donate the money to Sick Kids... it seemed the best way to reach the most children all at once.  I wanted to make the day special for Michael, so I decided that we would gather up all the cash and bring it down to The Hospital for Sick Children on Michael's 8th birthday. (Then we went to Canada's Wonderland, saw some dinosaurs and ate a lot of ice cream... but again, I digress).

At Sick Kids Michael was given one of those novelty cheques to hold onto. OMG - Michael couldn't have been happier! The cheque was as tall as he was standing up! Also, I didn't realise that we could make a donation to a specific department or campaign at Sick Kids. Michael, being ever so brilliant, decided to donate the money in memory of his big brother David to the Sick Kids VS campaign. This way it will distributed to where the hospital needs it most.

http://www.sickkids.ca/index.html

We are already hard at work making more bracelets and selling them for next year's birthday drop off! We are also thinking of hosting a fundraising party at some point in the Spring.

Hopefully I will update this blog more than once every six months, but I also hope that you will all understand and forgive me if the updates are few and far between. Rest assured, there is always a lot of work going on behind the scenes.