Silent Auction

Well hello, I now have some time to fill you all in on the Silent Auction.

The Silent Auction was a tad crazy, as we had no idea what to expect. The Auction itself was the idea of our Cousin Lisa, who put a Herculean effort into collecting, labelling, photographing organizing donations. Lisa traveled all over the place collecting donations no matter how big or small they were. She was an impassioned woman bent on making "A Wish for Taylor" a success! So much time and love was put into Lisa's Silent Auction it was bound to be successful! Lisa also nailed down the venue at Flow, who was a complete dream to work with! Yeah Flow you all were so amazing as was Charlene who went out of her way to make the day a success!!!! Behind the scenes Lisa also had helpers doing a variety of things...from Asia making "A Wish for Taylor" shirts, to purchasing Henna for "Henna for Hope", Kristen for making a million tiny little gold ribbons for cancer awareness at the silent auction, Jeanne for the most gorgeous Angel wings and Halo's for all the helpers....as well as some extremely happy little girls! Auntie Sharon for doing all the paperwork, Amanda for acting as Master of Ceremonies and giving us all an amazing speech at the Auction to thank all volunteers, especially Lisa!

For our Auction "overseer" we had Eva! Anyone who knows Eva can understand what an amazing facilitator she can be to help get things into the proper places! Eva quickly organized an "Enbridge" work crew in addition to our family & friend helpers. The Enbridge Crew was amazing at helping to make sure we got Flow organized....thanks so much to Cheryl and Nga (Cousin Amanda's co-worker who generously also donated both money and her time, even with having a son who had come to visit her that weekend, she still made the time to come and help!) as well as my bestie Wendy and her daughter Angel for fulfilling my "idea" (always have lots of those.LOL) to attach balloons to the various stuffies Aaryanna had brought to sell at the Auction (and she did pretty darn good...thanks to the generous buying of everyone there, including one of the owners of Flow who bought two for a very generous donation!), so we had beautiful balloon/stuffie decorations throughout Flow!

The Xerox print shop that Enbridge uses also generously printed off some pictures of taylor to hang throughout Flow as well as some beautiful heart shaped photo's for all the volunteers to wear.Thank-you, Thank-You! Kelly from Enbridge was Eva's side-kick who the day before spent hours in co-ordinating all the donations Lisa collected with the bid sheets, etc as well as cataloguing them as the sheet Lisa had created went missing.The bids were then colour co-ordinated so that they would be pulled on times to avoid a rush at the end. We had sooo many helpers, I really just cannot thank or detail all they did, so I hope they can forgive me. Rod and Michelle came after spending an exhausting weekend with a dear and close friend who had lost her five year old daughter, Rayanna, the year before. Rayanna was a beautiful little girl, who last year was found to have a brain tumour...during the inserting of a shunt little Rayanna left us...I am sure you can all understand what an emotional weekend this was an how appreciative I am to Rod and Michelle for still coming and helping out even though they were physically and emotionally exhausted!

Cousins Felicia and Melissa came and helped with set up as well. Edwina was a great helper and spent some quality time entertaining Taylor...sharing fries and "dippy" (ketchup) as well as pop.LOL We were so blessed to have so many little helper bee's! My Cousin Jodi and her daughters Mikki and Maddy sold chocolate chip cookies (Taylor's Favourite) and some various candy for Taylor's fund as well. I am told the cookies were AMAZING! Thanks so much Jodi for putting in the time to make it a special occasion. Melanie Shockey also came out again for both Taylor's Dance Party and the Silent Auction to sell her beautiful barrettes to raise funds and awareness for Taylor. The United Way campaign also did an AMAZING job in helping raise even more funds for Taylor.

We were also blessed as my Cousin Amanda has a friend Kathy who contacted an entertainer, Wayne-o, who willingly and generously donated his time to give us entertainment. He brought along some other musicians and singers who did an OUTSTANDING job! I would definitely recommend these people if you wanted to hire some entertainers, absolutely fabulous music!

We raised a little over $6000! A Great success. Thanks to all that donated as well as came out to bid in our Silent Auction. Mindy and Landon have began the planning and booking of their Disneyland trip...3 days in Disney than the express train to San Diego for 3 days there to see Sea World and other sites. I will keep you posted and hopefully will be reporting on their trip very soon! We are hoping to lay low here awhile as these last few weeks have been exhausting with fundraisers, MRI's, and hospital visits. Hard to believe it has only really been a little over a month since this whirlwind began. We are awaiting the next MRI on the 23rd...I think we are in shock, not fully digesting things, but we still really need your HOPE, your wishes and your prayers! This is an ongoing battle, it is relentless, please continue to keep Taylor close to your hearts!

Taylor's Auntie Leah