Happy and Sad News

Greetings friends! Well, these should be happy days this week, but there was some very sad news yesterday. Two Boston firefighters were killed fighting a fire yesterday which was so awful. One of the fire fighters, Mike Kennedy,  was a participant in our 2009 Annual Charity Date Auction. Mike had signed up to participate but wasn't able to attend the event, so he had a life-size cardboard cut-out made of himself in his turnout gear and had a friend drop it off at the event. My sister brought it up onstage and we auctioned him off like that. It was awesome and so funny. My heart goes out to his friends and family and the loved ones of Lt. Walsh who was also killed. We've lost 2 bachelors in the line of duty who have participated in our Date Auction. It really is a reminder of the dangers that police and fire fighters face on a daily basis.

In other news- yesterday, we made a donation to the Worcester office of the Dept. of Children & Families for the Easter Baskets. We donated over 200 crayons, coloring books, books and stuffed animals. We've been providing items for the Easter baskets for the past few years. DCF works hard to provide gifts of Easter baskets for some of the children they work with who are most in need. Here is a photo from yesterday's donation.

We hit a milestone tonight- the earliest time for the first sale of Date Auction tickets! A couple of weeks ago, I created the ticket sales page on Event Brite, then had our web host add it to our Events page. I wasn't expecting to sell tickets yet, but I like to get the things done well ahead of time. I get one hour of free website updates monthly, so I try to use the time in the best way possible. I have to do a lot more updates when the events get closer, so in order to avoid having to pay an extra fee for additional update time, I space things out as much as possible over the months. Tonight, someone purchased 5 tickets for the Date Auction! I was very happy to have sales start so early.

In other positive events news, Miss Massachusetts USA is going to be a special guest at our Step into Spring fashion show at Copley Place on May 1. She will also help judge the Best-in-Shoe competition. I emailed the pageant a couple of days ago and they emailed me tonight. It will be great to have her attendance at the event. I've already added it to our event details page. Tomorrow morning, I'm going to send an email to the models to encourage them to get their friends to buy tickets. Each model has been asked to commit to bringing 4 guests with her when she signed up to participate. We have 24 models, so if they all bring 4 guests that would be most of the event sold.

Well, that's the latest for tonight. I'm off to catch up on a few emails. I just ate some honeydew melon and clementines which were so delicious. There is nothing like delicious fruit. I'm now holding off the urge to go and devour some cheese.... Until next time friends...