MK’s Olympic Dream…

Yea, it’s been a really, really, really long time since I posted on this blog. Why? Well, life. Since my girls are no longer toddlers or elementary school students, I subconsciously…or maybe consciously…decided to scale back on stories about them. After all, they’ve become quite the young ladies and have minds and feelings of their own…for which I haven’t felt comfortable sharing stories about without their consent. And honestly, they were always my muses for posts to this blog.

Yes, we’ve had several vacations over the years to write about but I’m going to blame Facebook for that because they made it too easy to share short comments and photos with all of my friends.

However now, for once, one of my daughters welcomes my sharing of her latest story. In fact, she encourages it, so, here goes.

Way back in 2013, I wrote this post about how I decided to teach my daughters about my old college sport of field hockey. They fell in love with it way back then and have continued to play as often as they can. And because they started younger than many of their friends, they’re actually quite good for their age group. In fact, both play for clubs where they routinely play in one or two age groups older in area tournaments.

In 1990, after my prime field hockey playing years, USA Field Hockey began the Futures field hockey program in an effort to identify and develop young field hockey talent with the goal of creating future Olympic athletes. My daughters participated in the program this year and one of them was selected to take the next step and play in the National Futures championship. The top 12% of all Futures athletes are invited to this event after competing in the Regional Futures tournaments around the country.

This is an amazing opportunity for her and we couldn’t be prouder of how hard she worked and played for this honor. This is, however, unplanned and of course, unbudgeted…and quite expensive. So, she has taken it upon herself to make it happen. She is planning a garage sale, selling books, and refereeing soccer (her other sport) but she needs a lot more help and $$ to make it happen. So now, she has put together a GoFundMe campaign: https://www.gofundme.com/SupportMiaKarinesOlympicDream and she is hoping that others will support her journey to the Olympics by donating or spreading the word. And, if you can help, thank you…from the bottom of her field hockey heart.

An original post by mommytwingirls for It’s Never Easy…But It’s Always Fun blog.

 

Fascinating – Save the Children Catalog

The other day, I received a catalog in snail mail – glossy paper, colorful photos and all. Doesn’t sound extraordinary, I know. I’ve been a long-time catalog shopper and I still appreciate being able to quickly flip through a number of purchase options before making my selections. For the most part, I have migrated to online shopping but I have to admit that occasionally, I prefer being able to curl up on my sofa, away from my computer and browse.

Then I received a Save the Children catalog. This is the first time I’d ever seen it. Though it does exist online, I would have never thought to look for one. I was fascinated. With a brief glance through the first few pages, I assumed it was as other fundraising sorts of catalogs I’d seen before – purchase an item and some percentage of the sales go to the charity. I particularly liked the stuffed sheep animal (Songwriter would love it!) and started looking for a horse (Storyteller’s current obsession). I turned the page.

Mosquito nets. Oh. Could this be a garden catalog of some sort? Home improvement stuff or a mish mash of various house and kids items like in the Lillian Vernon catalog (a personal fave) or something? Then another entry read De-worming and micronutrients to protect 30 children…  I read on. Stock a medical clinic…in Armenia…. Wow. I’ve never seen anything like this before.

Educate a young girl…and keep her learning for one full year. $65. I read on. Your gift of $65 – less than 20 cents per day – will provide vitals such as books, education materials and teacher training to help a girl attend – and stay – in school for an entire year.  Statistics show that girls…. You know what? This is the amount we’re asked to pay to the Home and School Club at our girls’ elementary school – for enrichment programs. Not essentials, extras like improvements to the school like new play structures (sooner than later), computer equipment, art and music programs. (Don’t get me wrong, I personally believe that art and music should be essentials in the public school programs here in California.) But in other parts of this world, $65 gives a little girl basic education for a full year. Kinda puts things in perspective, eh?