Why 2016 is THE year to support the Fun Run!

With school comes fundraisers, yay! (Daycare does them too, but we give them enough money already, and I'm not going to give them more money by buying frozen cookie dough or flavored popcorn or whatever other nonsense they want us to hawk.) I like Chad's new school a lot more, and I feel like the funds they raise will benefit Chad's education more than whatever the daycare was raising funds for.

Our new PTA has hosted two dining-out fund raisers already (where some % of your restaurant bill goes to the school) but the school's biggest event each year is a Fun Run! (See? This school is perfect for our family!)
The gist is thus:

• Students seek out suckers generous friends and family members to sponsor them for each lap they run.
• On September 1st, they will set up a 1/16th mile lab outside, and each grade gets to run their little legs off for half an hour.
• Kids are cut off after 35 laps, which, if you didn't major in math, comes out to be just over 2 miles.
• Meanwhile, classes get prizes throughout the weeks leading up to the run, based on how much $ they have collected per lap. So far, Chad's class has won an extra recess, a popsicle party, and a "shoe-free" day in the classroom, which is apparently SUPER exciting to little kids. The next prize they are eligible for is a pajama party day, if they reach $75/lap as a class. 

Chad came home all excited and asked to be registered, so I signed him up and, of course, to be supportive I pledged $1/lap. He is taking this quite seriously, and even asked me to train with him, so we went out and ran a mile together to get in racing shape. But we haven't really done anything to raise funds. I'm not going to post the link to his pledge page on Facebook or anything like that, because it's just not my social media style.

And you may have realized that pledging is going to set a bad precedent, because with 3 kids attending this school for 6 years each, that is 18 different fun runs to pledge for. In fact, so far, the top two classes school-wide for this years fundraising are both kindergarten classes, probably because the older classes parents/friends/families are all like, "no way! I am so done with this Fun Run baloney!" #donorfatigue

But wait! I'm going to explain to you why if you feel like you would EVER want to pledge, then THIS is the year to do it.

This afternoon, the twins were upstairs jumping on their beds instead of napping, Andy was fixing our finicky wireless, and I was reading outside getting some sun (Hawaii in less than two months, yo!) Chad was meandering about doing Chad-things. We had a couple of boards out back that were being used for random imaginations such as seesaw engineering, railroad tracks, race finish lines etc. and Chad was moving them around, despite my repeated requests to keep them DOWN. He wasn't wearing shoes, but we're low-key Southerners, so if he wants to walk around outside shoeless, I don't really care. Suddenly, he was making noises like a howler monkey, and screaming about his toe. Apparently a board had fallen over and hit just one pinky toe, which wasn't really bloody on the outside, but was certainly turning a hundred different colors at a very rapid pace. It was actually kind of impressive how colorful it was becoming. I've never seen anything like it. Poor little toe. :(

Off we went to Urgent Care for our first set of x-rays! And I got to answer all sorts of judgey questions about why he was playing with a 2x4 without shoes on. (Ummm, because it was keeping him quiet and I have less than two months to get tan, so back off about it, lady!) At first the doctor said the x-rays were fine, but then she looked at the toe itself, and said she needed to take a second look at the x-rays, and apparently his little toe was confusing enough that they ended up calling for a second opinion. The final consensus was that it there was a shadowy line that could be a fracture, or maybe that's just how his bone looks. She says sometimes fractures in kid bones don't look clear until 7-10 days after they happen. The plan is to keep the toe buddy wrapped "like peanut butter and jelly" for a few days, and if it doesn't feel better we should get it checked out again. 

Anyway, all this to say that Chad can probably still do the Fun Run this week, but he may not be up for doing the full 35 laps. So, this is the year to sponsor him, because you will probably not have to shell out that much $$ in the end, and then for the next 5 years of his elementary school career, you can guilt-free say that you pledged for his inaugural run, and then sit out the years when he is healthy enough to do real damage to your wallet.

If nothing else, you can  see a ridiculous promo video they made with his picture if you go to his pledge page here: https://funrun.boosterthon.com/a/s/hHyeDK4A

And this has nothing to do with anything toe- or Fun Run-related, but it cracks me up every time I think of it: I called Natalie "Dear" one day, and she stopped what she was doing and stared and me and said, "Mommy! I am not a deer! I am Natalie Jade Ashcraft!"

These two move up to the 2s room on Monday. This is when they start focusing hard core on potty training. Natalie has had one liquid success, and Theo had one solid success, but we're mostly spinning our wheels here. Chad is very invested in their potty use, and is manning their sticker reward board.