Today was our big Garage Sale / Bake Sale fundraiser for the Light the Night Walk which raises money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Most of you reading this blog should be familiar with the reasons we put this event together, but just in case some of you aren't on my email distribution list, here's some background information (part of the email I sent out to everyone):
As many of you know, John's mother Nila has been living with leukemia (CLL) for 19 years and has recently been diagnosed with another form of leukemia called MDS. My good friend Meredith Caulfield lost her mother, Nara Purcell, two years ago to the most aggressive form of leukemia (AML). Our other good friend Nicole Heid lost her father-in-law to multiple myeloma and her cousin passed away from neoblastoma. 
Last September, Meredith invited us to attend a fundraising event for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society called "Light the Night." It was a walk that took place in Hoboken and all the funds raised went toward blood cancer research. We really enjoyed being a part of the walk last year and we're planning on walking again this year. It takes place right on the water with the beautiful Manhattan skyline right across the Hudson River. Here are a few pictures of the event from last September.
Here's Meredith holding her team sign for the Naratroopers. We all carried balloons that were illuminated during the short 2 mile walk along the pier.
Here's Reagan with John and Mia with Nicole
Here I am with Meredith just after the walk was over. We were both pregnant at the time (obviously) with Avery (11-02-07) and Quinn (12-17-07).
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Meredith was talking to Nicole and me about how she wanted to work really hard to raise a lot of money this year for the event ... I suggested that we do a huge garage sale and donate all the proceeds to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. We started planning this event about a month ago and we dedicated a great deal of time to it. We sent out emails, asking people to donate items for us to sell, as well as baked goods for us to sell in our bake sale. We were so pleased with the response we received from complete strangers ... my empty 2-car garage quickly filled up with items that people donated.
Here's a picture of the garage on Friday, the day before the sale.
On Friday night, Nicole and Meredith came over so we could organize some of the items. Meredith developed a special bond with this huge stuffed Barney.
On Saturday morning, Meredith and Nicole showed up at 7 am to start unloading the garage. What an undertaking it was to unload all the boxes and organize it in the front yard! For those of you who have hosted garage sales, you know there are crazy "Early Birds" who show up and insist on walking around before your start time. We purposely started it on the late side (10AM) so we'd have time to get everything set up. But people started showing up at 8 AM. By 9:00, we realized we were losing sales, so we let them start shopping as we continued to put things out.
We had SOOOOOO much stuff! Apart from a guy that brought us the leftovers from his garage sale (total crap), most people donated really nice items. We were so appreciative of the great stuff we received, so thank you to everyone who was so generous!
Here's Meredith in one of the wagons ... as you can see, we had lots of baby gear (high chairs, strollers, about 9 car seats, bassinets, baby bathtubs, swings, etc.)
Here are Meredith and I with our friend Claudia. Claudia was nice enough to make tons of delicious cookies for the bake sale. I don't know how she found the time, since she has a 2 year old and 4-month old twins! Claudia is here from Germany because her husband works for BMW. Her son Philip was over 7 pounds and her daughter Fiona was just under 7 ... they were both bigger than Avery was at birth (6 lbs 10 oz). I can't imagine having 2 babies that size in my belly! And look at Claudia, just 4 months later ~ she looks amazing!
Thanks to Nicole Heid, I was able to hire her family friend as my babysitter for the day. Here's a picture of Nicole Keller doing a puzzle with Reagan. Nicole Keller is the same
babysitter I hired last week when John and I went out for our anniversary. It was great to have her here watching the girls so John and I could focus on the garage sale. Reagan absolutely adores her, so everyone was very happy :)
Thanks to all the ladies from our Mingling Mommies meetup group who came to support the sale! Here's a picture of
Emily Wilson who brought her husband Nathaniel and their son Andrew to shop our sale. I didn't get any pictures of Mo and her son Nicholas, or any of Lisa DeSantis. Thank you Mo for helping us get set up and thank you to Lisa for the delicious baked goods and the cup cake stand! Also, thank you to Laura Kibala for the donated items and the tasty cookies :)
Here's our friend Sandy and John's cousin Maribel ... Sandy (who just had a baby 4 weeks ago) baked lots of wonderful goodies for us to sell and Maribel came to help out for a while. Thank you to both of you!!
This is Marion. She's a 78 year old fire-cracker who fell in love with my husband! Marion was Nicole Heid's neighbor growing up, so she was like a grandmother to Nicole. Nicole asked her to come work the bake sale for us and she happily obliged. As soon as she arrived, Nicole said to me, "she's going to fall in love with you guys and by the end of the day, you'll have an invitation to go to her house for dinner." Sure enough, John and I had a dinner invitation by about noon! She was hilarious ... she told us all about her recent "15 minutes of fame" because she was in a music video. I found the video on
You Tube, so go ahead and check it out!
Here's Meredith's friend Patricia. She came and helped us with the "merchandising." She works at Pottery Barn on the weekends (just to receive the discount), so she was good at making sure the items were displayed properly. She came across this hat and called it her "Raspberry Beret!" *** Nicole's husband Chris found this piece of bling amongst the sale items, so he put it on as a joke. He quickly forgot that he was wearing it and then he and John went to park their cars with signs in them on the busy road to attract more customers ... apparently, a policeman stopped to talk to Chris and when Chris told John he talked to an officer, John asked, "were you still wearing your necklace, or did you take it off?" Chris had completely forgotten he was wearing it, so we all thought it was pretty funny!
Here's Nicole with Avery, outside checking out the sale. *** This is Diane McTigue and she was SO incredibly helpful! She had her own fundraising garage sale the weekend before, so she donated all the leftovers to us. She donated more than 500 children's books, most of them brand new! She also came over on Friday night to help us organize the items. Then she came back on Saturday with her kids to shop the sale! Her son JP was in Reagan's preschool class and I feel so lucky to have met her. She is such a kind person who goes out of her way to help people. THANK YOU Diane!
Here is Meredith and her husband Kevin. They were both so helpful in making the sale a huge success!
This is another one of Reagan's preschool friends Harry and his mom Jen. They were so sweet to come over to support us! Jen made a generous donation online, so we were very appreciative. *** The next picture is of Jessica and Reagan. We met Jessica in River Vale First Friends and then she joined Ms. Lisa's Thursday preschool class for Spring Semester. Her mom Tina helped in numerous ways; Tina forwarded my email to all her friends and we received TONS of items from them. Tina donated items for us to sell and then she brought her family to the sale and supported us by shopping. Thanks Tina! We had help from one more preschool friend: Amanda's mom Karen made delicious brownies for the bake sale :)
Nicole was tired, so she parked it in one of the car seats ... I, of course, took a picture of her, then thought it would be funny if the 3 of us sat in car seats for a photo op. Pictures cannot portray just how miserable it felt outside. Here's
proof that the high for the day reached 90 degrees, with humidity between 50 and 60 percent! It actually felt a lot more humid than that ... we were so hot and sticky. It was really gross!
Here we are in our matching outfits (Nicole, Meredith, Amanda). We were wearing Light the Night shirts from last year's walk and fanny packs for the dough. None of us bothered to put make-up on or do our hair, since we worked our tails off all day in the brutal heat.
John's mother Nila came outside to check it all out.
We were so gross, that Chris, Meredith and John decided to take a shower. Just kidding ... they got caught in a crazy thunderstorm! Immediately following the sale, we loaded up 3 SUVs full of items to take to the Vietnam Vets in Bergenfield. When they got there, the storm was in full swing and the Vets informed them that all items needed to be in bags, not boxes. So Chris, Meredith and John were stuck with the job of sorting through items in their cars and putting them in bags, all while standing in the pouring rain! John hates to be damp, so he was pretty miserable. While these 3 were dropping off goods, Nicole, Kevin and I stayed behind to move all the leftovers back into the garage. We were moving as quickly as possible since the storm clouds were rolling in and we were frantically trying to avoid getting caught in the rain. Actually, Nicole and I kept thinking the rain would be a welcome refresher, but we didn't want the leftover items getting soaked.
So there you have it. The sale was a huge success and we made around $1,500 to give to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. It was a TON of work, but it was also fun to unite with my fabulous friends Nicole and Meredith for such a wonderful cause that was meaningful to us all. We are so appreciative to all of those who helped in some way or another. If you would like to make a donation to the cause, feel free to visit my donation page at any time between now and September. Also, register for the walk, since it's a wonderful family event!
Last night was the 10th Annual Light the Night (LTN) Walk, benefiting the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS). It was such a nice way to end the fundraising efforts to which Meredith, Nicole and I have dedicated our time. Our fundraising efforts began back in May when we started planning the big garage sale. Once that was over, we planned the night out in Hoboken which took place 2 weeks ago. We all put a lot of time and effort into raising money for the LLS, so we were pleased with the results. I'm not sure of the final figures, but I think we raised just over $6,000 for Meredith's team, the Naratroopers!
Last year, the walk was such a fun family outing ... the weather was beautiful, so it was nice to be on the pier in Hoboken, overlooking the spectacular Manhattan skyline. This year, the forecast was RAIN, RAIN, and more RAIN. In the days leading up to the walk, it rained a lot and we figured everything would be so wet that it wouldn't be worth bringing the kids. So, we left our husbands home watching the kiddies and enjoyed a pleasant adult night.
Thanks to the forecast, I figured it was going to pour rain on us the entire time, so we'd be walking in puddles of water. I hate when water soaks through my shoes, so I wore my only water-proof shoes, my Sorel snow boots! I felt like such a dork when I got there and everyone was in normal shoes and there were no puddles, or rain! It was just REALLY humid and it only drizzled. I'm such a geek in my boots!!
Each person received a balloon that had a little light in it. The three of us also got these yellow shirts for achieving the "Bright Lights" level, which meant we each raised over $1,000.
Team Naratroopers ... We walked in memory of Meredith's mother, Nara Purcell, as well as Bart Heid, Nicole's Father-In-Law. I also walked in support of Nila Mendez, my Mother-In-Law who is currently battling Leukemia.
Amanda, Nicole and Meredith, just before the walk began
Meredith and her brother, Jim Purcell
Beginning of the walk ... it was so difficult to get a good picture of the illuminated balloons with just a point & shoot camera! If the flash goes off, you can't see how the balloons light up, but if you don't use a flash, the picture comes out blurry. I need a professional camera where I can adjust the shutter speed!
Nicole and her good friend Michael
During the walk ... here is Meredith and her brother, along with their aunt (Nara's sister) and her boyfriend. The white dots are the raindrops.
Meredith, at the end of the walk
John and Amanda
This morning was the kickoff brunch for the Light the Night (LTN) Walk. Meredith drove Nicole and me to the hotel ballroom in Morristown, NJ (about 45 minutes away). The Light the Night Walk will be on Saturday, September 27th ... I posted pics from last year's walk on my 
two forms of Leukemia (CLL and MDS), the 3 of us have a strong bond when it comes to raising awareness for blood cancers. 
