Seussapalooza

     I was sitting at a PTO meeting in August.  It was the usual assortment of mostly moms in exercise clothes and doughnuts and juice.  There was a president, and a treasurer, who've been doing some sort of job on the PTO for the past five years, and a long agenda of "to-do's" on the list for the beginning of the year.  I remember thinking, it's just like church, the same things/people, just in a different state, and mostly, it was. 

    

      Number one on the agenda was fundraising.  The dreaded word PTO moms have nightmares about.  I heard them say "two" and I heard them say "cookie dough" and I thought, "can that be right?, two cookie dough fundraisers in the same year?" I made my first mistake, I raised my hand and asked if I'd heard right and if so, how much money did we actually keep from the cookie dough sales...the answer, yes, two cookie fundraisers and 40%, we only kept 40% of the profits. 

     

     What happend next I don't really remember, something like this...I rolled my eyes, the PTO treasurer/president said they would love for other fundraising suggestions, two mom's approached me and said they had other ideas, we could do our own Spring fundraiser, Otis Spunkmeyer didn't deserve 60% of our hard earned cash, how hard could it be? etc, etc... 

     In my defense I wasn't really sane at the time.  I had just left our two youngest children in Utah with my parents because of a foster care technicality and I wasn't sleeping or eating due to the stress, plus, without the baby there to distract me, I had been lulled into forgetting how hard it is to do anything with a toddler and I thought I had all this extra time on my hands.  

       The "Seussapalooza" was born and all of a sudden it was time to put my money where my mouth had been.  Fast forward to March...our children were home, had been for months, I re-learned that it is difficult to accomplish anything with a toddler underfoot/on your hip, I also re-learned that I am not a delegator, nor will I ever care as much about fundraising as I do about anything else.  Thank goodness for one fearless leader (the short "thing 1") in the above photo, and a great group of women who do care about fundraising...and aren't afraid to don a blue wig.

They dressed up like their favorite book characters... Alan chose Brown Bear

"Thing 1 and 2" cupcakes.  One of the activities of the day.

Bilbo and Brown Bear ready for the character parade...

Mrs. Davis, our principal.  She's missing a hand.  This photo was taken earlier in the week.  For the actual day she was a pirate, from her favorite book, "How to teach like a Pirate" She had a hook on her stump and a new story for how she lost her hand every time a child asked.

The Photo Booth - One of our activity stations and probably the highlight of the day.  

The kids LOVED it...on the bright side, we didn't have to shell out any cash.  

Dothan Photo Booths slashed their price for us and a local politician covered the rest. 

Our community really stepped up and came through for this fundraiser.  Our total out of pocket for supplies, prizes, food for volunteers, etc was less than $1,000.

     There aren't many pictures because I was running around like a crazy person all morning, but it went like this.  Six rotations, reading, activity, reading... the kids just asked for donations from their friends and families, no gimmicks, nothing to sell, just needed money for ipads...$25 dollars earned you a homework pass, a dress down day (we wear uniforms), and lunch outside with music.   Higher donations earned you an outdoor marshmallow fight and a chance to silly string the principal.  The kids wanted these prizes just as much as the stupid dollar toys from the cookie dough company, if not more. In the end, they're $27,000 closer to their ipads, and I am officially giving up all things Seuss, for Lent.