Cupcakes for Caroline!

I wanted to sincerely thank all of you for your support with Ashlynn’s bake sale. Many of you volunteered your time, baked goods, supplies and money and we are so grateful to you for that. This bake sale meant a lot to our family, mostly because of the outpouring of love you showed us. (We are going to miss our San Luis Obispo family!) Overall, Ashlynn earned $1,200 to donate to the ALS Association! A big thank you to Brooke Brundage for her generous donation of cupcakes from her shop. The cupcakes were the fun part of the bake sale and brought a lot of customers to our little stand.

I thought I would share a letter Brian sent out to his family following Ashlynn’s bake sale. In it, he describes some of the special things that came out of the bake sale. Often the greater reward than funds raised for projects like these are an increased feeling of service, community and inspiration.

Thank you, all for being a part of this event with us!

To all,

I know we provided a few updates yesterday, but just wanted to throw out a few more notes about the bake sale. I am so proud of Ashlynn and her thought to put on a sale. Also for Kate and all the hard work she put in. Some of these details you may have heard, some not. I’m in Memphis right now at a conference and just wanted to put together some overall thoughts as the sale is still on my mind.

Enough credit can’t be given to Kate and Ashlynn. Ashlynn and her friends did a fantastic job getting ready and executing the sale, Kate did a fantastic job preparing, baking, printing and everything else. I drove in from Sacramento late Thursday, took the boys to the father son campout on Friday night, drove home at 10:00 am on Saturday morning right when the sale was starting, repacked the car Saturday night, driving back up to Sacramento to be on a plane this morning at 8:30 going to Memphis for 2 days. So Kate pretty much hauled out all the goodies, equipment advertising, ideas and logistics. Ashlynn and her friends did all the selling.

There were a lot of people who had heard about the sale via the 300 door hangers they passed out last Wednesday. There were a few people who came by and particularly asked for Ashlynn with the flyer or door hanger in their hand. In my mind testing her sincerity. She held her own better than I could have imagined. She did a great job explaining where the money was going and thanking the people for their donations. She showed pictures of mom that she had put together in frames and only slightly struggled when a customer became emotional with a personal ALS story. The girls were not shy by any means and 4 hours was about right in length. We sold most of the items and the girls were starting to get antsy by 2:00.

One lady I texted you about lost her husband April 29^th. She was from Chico and was in San Luis to visit a friend at a soccer tournament. She happened to be at her friend’s house and saw the door hanger on her counter. She broke down and brought her daughter down to make a donation. It was very inspiring for her. Her husband had ALS for 5 years.

A doctor came by asking Ashlynn if she knew what ALS stood for. Ashlynn said no, but it was the same as Lou Gehrig’s disease. He rattled off the medical term and was complimentary of the cause.

1 lady came by and dropped off a $100 check, no goodies to be taken. She had a family member pass away from ALS. There were other inspiring stories of people who were touched by the idea of the sale and had family members who had died of ALS. They all gave very generously. One lady came by and said she had heard at the gas station around the corner that there was a fundraising effort around the block and that they “had it going on!” She came by off that tip. Ashlynn’s teacher at school collected money from her lunch group, the next door neighbor ordered cupcakes to take to work. There were many ward members that came by including the girls Sunday school teacher, who not only bought cupcakes for herself, but to take to church today for the girls to eat.

Kate and Brooked developed a new flavor cupcake called the “Sweet Caroline” just for the sale. It is a Bordeaux flavored cupcake and frosting. Pretty dang good. A lady came by in the afternoon and asked for 2 of the “Sweet Caroline” cupcakes. Then her eyes lit up because she found out and loves the Bordeaux flavor and also loves Neil Diamond! She doubled the order to 4.

More people donated at church today, all in all effort brought in more than $1,200. We had friends who helped bake, donate their plates, time, lemonade dispensers, easy ups and efforts. It was a joint effort and I know that mom spirit was there. It was so exhausting by the end of the day, but very worth it.

Looking forward to the walk in October. Mom is with us always. It was nice to be able to do something like this and not only think about mom, but associate with other ALS victims. Last week Briggs came down from bed at Lynn and Jan’s in tears. Kate had put a CD on for the boys to go to sleep to, it happened to be a church CD and Briggs associated the music with mom funeral.

Three cheers for the “Sweet Caroline”!