May 16: The Bash is only 6 days away!

Ali's and my creation from her new play dough breakfast machine birthday gift... the rest of the pictures are from our back patio where we were playing...

Heaveno!

It's the week of Bella's Birthday Bash!  YAY!  We are so excited for Saturday.  Our team has been meeting at least once a week for over a month now and the event is really coming together quite nicely.  Mostly, we are just so grateful for all of the amazing gifts that have been donated - from food and concessions, to our Sponsor, Molynlycke Healthcare.  The silent auction and opportunity drawing items have been flowing in as well, and there are some really great gifts on the docket!



Some of the silent auction items include:

4 tix in the City of Anaheim Suite at Angels Stadium
A $400 gift certificate from THE top carpet cleaner in Orange County
2 4-packs of MVP level Angels tickets
A $140 Asics gift certificate
and more!



One of our friends is working on getting an autographed mini helmet from Joe Theismann this week.  I had the honor of meeting him yesterday, shaking his hand, and thanking him in person.  He is a class act.  Mr. Theismann was one of the speakers at my friend James Malinchak's event that just ran from Thu-Sun in LA.  In his speech, Mr. Theismann mentioned that one of the biggest privileges of his life right now is that his signature can raise money for childhood cancer research.  Little did he realize I was sitting in the audience, soon to be a beneficiary of that very autograph.  So, I thought it was the right thing to do to track him down and connect a person to his story.  He was incredibly gracious.  It was a trip meeting him, because he refers to himself as a little guy, and I remember him on TV growing up as this little guy... well he's an inch taller than me in real life!  I'm 5'11", and he's an even 6 foot.  When I shook his hand, I realized that NFL football players are REALLY BIG.  LOL.



There were a lot of great speakers, and I could write a really long post on the 4 days, but I have to take this opportunity to thank my friend James Malinchak for allowing me to come on to his stage and share our story and our text 2 donate campaign with his audience.  He gave me 10 minutes up there, and I wrote out my piece that I wanted to share and rehearsed it for a week straight with a stop watch so that I would say what I wanted and not go over.  The caliber of people that I got to share the stage with at this event, from James himself, to Joe Theismann to Sir Anthony Hopkins to Jack Canfield to Bruce Glazer to Jonathan Sprinkles to Dr. Bill Dorfman, it was a tremendous privilege to be given that chance as a total 'unknown' in the speaking industry.



This is the beautiful wind chime that was so generously given to us by the Ronald McDonald House in Minneapolis on the eve of the 6 month anniversary of Bella's death...

It gets better; Davy, James' COO, is going to give me both the video and photos taken.  I'll let you know when I have them, it will probably be a couple of weeks.

The really good juice continues, though.  See, my talk was about how you can't see what God can see when you create a goal or vision for your self or your life.  You can only see just what's right in front of you, but you have to get moving and get in action - even if you don't exactly know how that vision is going to materialize.  Well, I was sharing my story to provide inspiration, but also to persuade the audience to text BELLA to 50555 to donate $5 to Drs. Wagner and Tolar at the U of M.   What I didn't know was that the moment I walked off stage, a man I saw in Subway at lunch would walk up to me and explain that he sends a weekly video newsletter to a list of 10,000 names, and that he'd like to interview me RIGHT NOW for his upcoming newsletter so that his list could have the chance to donate.

Seriously.

Not 2 minutes later, Davy is holding the video camera while this gentleman is interviewing me.



Three other people came up to me and asked if they could interview me on their radio shows to share the text to donate campaign and our story with their audiences.  One of these kind people was a man whose nickname is the "Hockey-ologist" and host of "The Hockey Source" live radio show that runs weekly on XM 204 and Sirius 208 satellite radio.

He didn't know our organization's name was PUCK when he asked me to be interviewed.  When I showed him my business card with the PUCK logo on it, the both of us nearly fell over when we realized how God had brought us together like that.



Folks, we can NEVER see what God can see.

We simply cannot anticipate moments like that.

We just have to TRUST HIM, get in gear, and if we want to see just how beautiful the view is from the top, we just have to 'get on the lift.'  That was my tag line in my speech for getting into action.  Get on the lift.

When looking at a goal or vision or dream of yours, are you merely looking up the mountain from the base, trying to figure out how you're going to accomplish it, or are you on the lift?  Get on the lift, TRUST ME.  You can't figure out your next step standing still.

God night.