Allison's Benefit

Saturday was a wonderful day full of lots of fun, a few tears and much hope and inspiration.

I had plenty of help to set up.

You can see the bean bag toss in the background. We painted it to resemble Allison and her horse Skyler.

Allison's Mom and Dad, Teri and Grant, came for the first hour or so. They brought a book they had made for the day with pictures of Allison in a beautiful jump right before the fall. There were pictures of Allison in the hospital too, and those were sure hard for me to see. There were pictures of Allison,her students and friends too, and those lifted our spirits. Teri is such a positive strong woman. Ginny told me later that just talking to Teri made her believe that Allison is going to be ok because she believes it so strongly.

A lot of Alli's Pony Club came out to play and a few of them even joined the Horsemen's Association.

Aren't these cute kids and ponies? These poor Moms ran like this all day!

These two lovely ladies are from my new barn! I didn't know them yet, but they came and took the Snack Shack and worked there all day! What troopers! And what a fantastic job they did! Thank you Amelia and Corrine.

We had roping, a fish toss, a bean bag toss, and face painting for the kids. Here John is teaching a little guy how to throw a rope.

Leesha painted faces all afternoon.

And of course the Littlest Cowboy had to get in on the fun!

The Raffle was the biggest surprise of all. Our own Wonderful Trainwreck donated three beautiful prints, and when the crowd saw those, well lets just say that people dug DEEP to pay for Raffle tickets! We saved them for last, and just when the crowd was breathless with anticipation, we raffled them off.

I didn't win one.

Either did Lil Mama.

We were sad.

But not for too long, because when we counted up just the raffle money we had a total of $700!!

Though we had other prizes donated, it was those three prints that made everyone want to participate! Thanks a MILLION TW!

So for a Benefit that I had three weeks to pull together, with the help of my fantastic club members, we made..............................drum roll please................................

$4841!!!

And I know that there will be a few more donations rolling into the mailbox this week also, so perhaps that amount will increase to $5000.

Teri is setting up an account for Allison at her Credit Union, so the money will be deposited there for their use.

If anyone is moved to visit Caringbridge.org to read Allisons story be sure to sign her guestbook. People from all over the world are reading and wishing her well !

And if you are so moved to send a donation of your own, you can send it to - MHA,P.O. Box 1954, Martinez, Ca 94553 ( write Allison on the memo line ).