Box Tops and Playgrounds

This is the playground at the elementary school my children have attended for five years.

Shockingly much of the equipment came when they built the school - over 50 YEARS AGO!

Two years ago they removed the "merry-go-round", deeming it too dangerous. And last summer, someone burned the climbing turtle (?) so now we have a big gaping hole of nothing in the middle of the mulch.

My friend and I took over the collection of General Mills Box Tops for Education and Tyson Food labels this year and decided that whatever we collected would go to the purchase of new playground equipment. Unfortunately, none of my children will get to benefit, as this is Caeden's last year, but it will be nice to leave a legacy of having done something before we leave.

That's where we need help - we need LOTS and LOTS of labels. You may have a bunch of them in your cupboard and not even know it! We have asked the community for support and now I'm asking you too. The labels look like this - we need thousands and thousands.
Send them to:
Stadium Drive School
111 Stadium Drive,
Boardman, OH 44512
Attn: PTA Home, School & Community

I will keep you posted throughout the year as to our progress. Over the summer we collected 3,400 and that's without even pushing this initiative! Please help... :)

Idol Worship

I witnessed an extraordinary phenomenon Tuesday when rational people fawned over someone who was "almost" famous!

I coordinated the marketing and pr for The Valley Impact Awards, an event that recognizes those who have helped others in their battle with addiction. As part of the event, the client arranged for Art Schlichter to be the keynote speaker.

Anyone over 30, particularly men, will know of Art. If you're from Ohio, you worship him.

Art was the quarterback for the Ohio State Buckeyes in the late 70's/early 80's - the last QB to play under legendary coach Woody Hayes. He almost had it all - drafted by the Baltimore Colts as their QB of the future, receiving a million dollar signing bonus.

Problem was, he had a serious gambling addiction and threw it all away. In fact, he was only released from prison in 2006, having spent the better part of 10 years incarcerated for racketeering and fraud! One of his scams involved selling bogus sporting event tickets, using his "celebrity" to convince people he had access to great seats and events.

So long story short - I was with him for the media tour for the better part of the day. It was amazing - everyone was giddy being so close to a legend, or being so close to someone who knew a legend (Hayes).

Grown men giggling like school girls, women (or one woman) trying to get a piece of him - literally.

And here's the thing - HE HAS NO MONEY AND NO JOB! In fact, he owes over $500,000 in restitution, runs a small organization to raise awareness of gambling addiction, and lives in his small southern Ohio hometown - with his mother!

Here's the scariest part - he offered the CEO of the addiction treatment center Super Bowl tickets that could be auctioned off to raise money for the center. I want to believe it's legit but given his history...

Pancakes...Where's The Syrup?

I am a member of our local Rotary club and every year we host a two weekend Pancake Breakfast at our community center. It's a huge event - on average we see over 750 people in a seven hour span!

This year they added a new attraction to garner even more interest - the 1st Annual Pancake Eating Contest!

The event was to be held at 3pm. At 2:45 there were only three teams of 3 entered - two of them belong to Cameron's Pony baseball team! The boy's thought they had the $100 prize money in the bag...

Unfortunately - 6 more teams entered under the wire - three of those composed of rival high school athletes.

Even more unfortunate was the fact that 13 and 14 year old boys think it's REALLY funny to stuff 10 pancakes in your face in three minutes.
In fact, between fits of laughter, our boys probably managed to stuff only four or five pancakes into their mouths.

The winners? One kid ate his ten...and two more of his teammate's.

But you can't say that Cameron didn't make a valiant attempt in the end!

The Power of Blogging

We had friends over for dinner last night. During the conversation Vickie asked, "have you updated that blog yet?!" I didn't even know she had been reading it!

While in Canada, my mother, John's brother, and several friends asked me the same thing, "When are you going to post again"? My mother was particularly vocal, "I've told all my friends to read it and now you stopped posting!"

Frankly, my initial reason for starting this blog was to make money. I had been working with a friend on his charity website, www.puzzleofhope.org; and we had been discussing ways we could generate hits to his site. We started researching blogging and I saw how people were making hundreds, and sometimes thousands of dollars a month by simply writing about their lives!

Why couldn't I do the same thing? I had the subject matter...kids and sports...who wouldn't want to read about that? Seemed simple.

And it was simple...I set up the blog on my own and started writing. After a few posts, I was able to sign up for Google AdSense -- this was the money side. There were various ways I could generate income, the easiest was allowing Google Ads to be placed in my site. Again, simple.

What I didn't realize is that you need THOUSANDS of hits PER DAY to actually make money, unless someone clicks on the ads; then I could earn a couple of dollars here and there. There are millions of blogs, and unless you work the web everyday, it's really hard to get readers to find you!

After three months I have had a total of 2,688 hits and earned $57.13. So much for hundreds and/or thousands of dollars per month!

But I discovered something along the way...I really didn't care about making money. I was really enjoying the opportunity to write and even more, I enjoyed writing about my family. It became my journal, with the added bonus of having others share in our experiences.

So for all those who have become loyal readers; I thank you. Now, if you just take a look at the ads across the top...:)

Touchdown!

I realized as I began to write this that touchdown can actually have several meanings...a football touchdown, a plane touching down as it lands, the launch of a new idea. My post today relates to all three definitions.
The most important of these is the SportsMum brag moment...Caeden had a BIG touchdown in his football game yesterday...
I have not written very often about King Caeden. He is the youngest of my boys; frankly, he is the one with the most personality. You will not find a single person, especially teachers, who do not think that Caeden is the sweetest boy (and hardest worker) they have ever encountered. He never gives up or becomes frustrated in any task he tries. That includes football.
John and I have noticed that our youngest has been gifted with incredible speed. We're not sure how this happened, especially with John acquiring the nickname "turtle" while still in his teens, and me with my 5'2" (and shrinking daily) frame. But Caeden is FAST.
Yesterday, with his team down by I don't know how much, the coach decided to go deep. Caeden was wide receiver. His friend Nicky threw a BOMB (no kidding...no eight year old should ever throw like that...) Incredibly, Caeden caught it at midfield and took off. No one was catching the King - the most beautiful (and deserving) touchdown I have seen all year.
The second touchdown is the safe landing (by bus) of the 8th grade Washington field trip. Cameron arrived home at 9pm last evening. I asked him what was the most exciting part of the trip...I expected it to be the Washington Monument or the White House. For Cameron, it was the fact that his cell phone battery had completely died at 2pm that afternoon and yet he was still able to send texts! He's just a dumb boy...
The final touchdown - the launch of my friend Nik's charity blog. I have been working with Nik on an incredibly cool web concept for several months now. Phase one of this concept was the creation of a blog that would help introduce him and his idea for finding ways to help children's charities -- the Blog For Charity.
I have guest blogged a couple of times on subjects close to my heart - for obvious reasons, autism; and on our family experiences with cancer and cancer research.
The culmination of this blog will be the launch of the Puzzle Of Hope - hopefully by the end of the year. If all goes as planned - this could be one of the most successful online charity websites ever!
So we scored three touchdowns this weekend. I hope we'll have at least one conversion -- with the launch of the Puzzle of Hope.