School Spirit

Tonight we had our annual family dinner at my children's elementary school. It is an enormous event. We served dinner to about 400 people tonight. And dinner is just one part of it.

The committee for this dinner had our first meeting back in August. So we've been working on it for about three and a half months.

There are various elements to the dinner - the food, of course, but also raffle baskets, silent auction baskets, a "mitten tree", and carnival games for kids in the gym.

We solicit local businesses and school families for donations, recruit volunteers, and then set up and clean up the event. 

The dinner itself only lasts two hours, but several hours a night for the last week volunteers were at school in the evening organizing the raffle and auction items and wrapping the baskets:

We ended up with about 90 items between the raffle and the auction:

raffle tables

auction baskets against the far wall

Here's Michael playing the "Blinko" game in the gym:

When all is said and done all of those hours (I was at school for 10 hours today) and all that effort raised some money that will help our PTO continue to support the students and teachers at our school. And hopefully the families who attended had a good time as well. 

I don't want to be overly dramatic, but I feel as though I'll get some of my life back now that this event is over. I put in a lot of hours, and there are several people who put in even more time that I did. Next week we'll send thank you notes to our donors before we start making lists and planning for next year.

This isn't a very inspired post, but it's all I have the energy for this evening!