Tags for Charity!

In August when Kennedy was recovering from her open heart surgery we were blessed to stay at the Ronald McDonald House in Salt Lake. We were impressed by this charity, and the amount of good it can do for a family going through difficult times. It was an emotional time for us. We were blessed to have Kennedy's surgery go well and her recovery was speedy. We felt great love from our family and friends at this time and we were blessed. Kennedy is doing great, she had a cardiologist appointment this week and the doctor said he could not be more pleased with her progress. We couldn't love her more!!After we returned home from Primary Childrens Cody looked into running as a charity runner in the Chicago Bank of America Marathon for Ronald McDonald House. It was something he really wanted to do. He was lucky to be accepted late into the Ronald McDonald House team of runners. We committed to raise $1500 for Ronald McDonald House.
And so we set out to raise the money. At first it was slow going. Cody worked hard and turned in forms to large companies, talked to countless people, and even arranged for a climbing wall to be set up at a corn maze to raise the money. Eventually things fell through with the city we were trying to have the climbing wall at and we realized we needed a new plan. Last year I made about 250 tags/ornaments as gifts, I felt good about the response I got when I delivered them to friends and family. I prayed to know how we could raise the money and this idea came to me. So we got cRaZY enough to donate our time to making and selling these tags to raise the money.

It went very well! Within the first day I had orders coming in. We contacted Home Depot and they donated about half our materials. We sold tags through Facebook, family, and friends. My mom sold over 350 at her school for us. We also sold them at Sugar & Spice (a craft store in Hyde Park).We were fortunate to have help from many family members. My siblings, their spouses, and kids all helped with tags AND with BaBiEs while I made tags. We made them for teacher appreciation gifts, a relief society dinner, for trees, stockings, & packages. We made them with just pictures, just names, we made some tan, & we made some with blue vinyl. We made the last tag last night.
In the end, we had 33 orders, made around 850 tags, and (with a lot of help) donated $1650 to Ronald McDonald House!!!We are grateful for the help we received with this project. It was an amazing experience. I have never done anything like this. I realize our donation is small but we are excited we made a difference! It was an experience I won't forget! THANK YOU for your orders and encouragement even if you didn't order. THANK YOU to my FaMiLy for their help, my MoM especially spent a great amount of time taking orders at her school and then even helped me make the tags!
In the end Cody decided not to run his race. The race is run on Sunday. As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints we believe in keeping the Sabbath Day holy. Cody signed up for the race thinking he could make an exception just this once. He had a flight scheduled and a place to stay. He attended the Priesthood session of General Conference the week before the race.  President Monson gave a talk about making choices. He told a story of a man who was scheduled to play a championship basketball game on a Sunday. He chose not to play. Cody was inspired to make a difficult choice and not attend the race. We are all very proud of him for having the courage to make this decision.