Congratulations to our families for raising more than $10,000 for the Little Wonders program at SLOCA! For today’s Thursday Thoughts, we felt it was appropriate to celebrate this incredible accomplishment with a story and photos from one of our Kinder families, the Ernstroms. No feat is without a flop, so please join us Ashley shares about their family’s experience with the Hop, Skip, Jump-a-thon.
Hi! I’m Ashley Ernstrom. Wife to Josh Ernstrom and mama to Elliott and Everett. Elliott is a kindergartener on Track A. Everett wishes he was a kindergartener, but he’s only two. This is our family’s second year at SLOCA.
Elliott learned the letter F this past week. For those of you who have been at SLOCA since Kindergarten, you’ll probably remember the poems that go along with the reading lessons. F is for /f/ in /f/ /f/ fog. We’ve said that many, many (so many) times this week. We had fun brainstorming other words that started with F; fast, fly, fall, feats, flops. Ok, those last two were mine, and they ring loud and clear in my mind as I reflect on our Little Wonders Hop-Skip-Jump-a-thon.
Up first: the feat. What a feat it was for our wonderful Little Wonders team to pull off such a fun, fabulous fundraiser! Not only did they reach their goal, they far surpassed it! Way to work together SLOCA families! What a huge impact we can make when we unite. All those fundraising efforts culminated in an hour-long fun-fest called the Hop-Skip-Jump-a-thon. The kids had an absolute blast bouncing on bright green bouncing balls, hopping from colorful dot to colorful dot, skipping a zig-zag course back and forth, back and forth, chasing bubbles, and jumping to their hearts content in the giant bounce house, before launching themselves down the inflated slide, and running to the “Finish” table full of delicious snacks. My son said the bounce house was “the best” and the event was “super fun”. A glowing review if ever I’ve heard one.
That was the feat, but what about the flop? Well, here is where I confess that I have my own flop to share. My family didn’t meet our fundraising goal (hanging my head in shame). We have no good excuse, as we had weeks to get this thing done. We even had a super creative plan to meet our goal. A quick backstory: a few weeks ago my son lost his first tooth. It had been loose for months, and we knew it was going to come out any day. Any normal family would allow nature to take its course, and let the tooth fall out on its own. However, anybody who knows us will tell you that we don’t do things exactly “normal”. One day we noticed there was no way his tooth was staying in his mouth for even a few hours more, so what did we do? Naturally, we put a string around his tooth, tied it to a nerf dart, and let him shoot the dart out of a nerf gun, sending his tooth flying across the room. So, when it came time to come up with fundraising ideas, we thought, how fun would it be to send a video of Elliott telling his extended family about the Hop-Skip-Jump-a-thon and, for motivation, he would allow whoever donated the most money to choose how he removes his next loose tooth. Great fundraising idea, right? We were super excited to do it. But somehow life happened and before we knew it, all our grand plans and great intentions didn’t matter anymore because we ran out of time, and the fundraiser was over! Thankfully, with the help of a generous grandparent and a totally unexpected donation from another SLOCA family, we made it to 75% of our goal, but imagine how much more we could have raised had we pulled ourselves together and put our plan into action.
So, despite our personal family flop, would you join me in celebrating the amazing feat that our Little Wonders team pulled off by far surpassing their goal, and throwing the most fun Hop-Skip-Jump-a-thon ever! Give them a high five or a thumbs up if you see them in the halls. I can’t wait to see what they come up with next year!
Thank you, Ashley, for sharing your feat AND flop with us! And yes, we are celebrating with you! GREAT job, Little Wonders team!! And if you’d like to see more fun photos, there are loads shared on our Flickr account so make sure to check them out!
