This is the best freaking community ever. Two days ago I posted a diary asking for donations for my 11 year old son. He was walking in his first Juvenile diabetes marathon. As we sent out emails to family and friends, he had the great idea for me to write a diary. He knows I write here pretty often and he loves reading all the comments I get. So he thought we should try to post and ask for support. The first diary I posted early Friday afternoon and it was gone within an hour or two but we did get a few donations. He kept making me check every few minutes. Our goal was to raise $500.00. When he went to bed we were at $400 and he was pretty bummed. Since you can only post one diary per day, he went to bed pretty sad and disappointed that we would be walking the next morning without meeting our goal. However, being the dedicated, smart mom I am I stayed up late and wrote a second diary and submitted it at 12:05 a.m. begging Kos readers to help my son wake up to a surprise. Follow me after the break to see how great you guys are.
After posting my second diary I had to go to bed because we had to be up again at 6. So I sent it out to you guys hoping some of you could chip in $5 or $10 and we might make $100 all night. Imagine my surprise when I checked at 6 a.m. to find we had raised $860.00!!! You guys rock. My son was so happy. We almost doubled our goal of $500. We also received a lot of well wishes for him and it made his day. We walked 3 miles in under 2 hours-pretty good considering a 5 and 8 year old sister were tagging along showing support. We all proudly sported our Obama shirts and buttons and discussed voting early and voting Obama with anyone who would listen. Every time someone commented on our Obama gear, my kids said "I love Atlanta." We live 2 hours away from Atlanta and our Obama shirts are not received as well there. Anyway, we have huge plans to really do it BIG next year and we are looking for a national sponsor (Don't you think Daily Kos would be great?) so be looking for a donation diary again next October. Thanks to all of you who donated-it really meant so much to us. Go to my myspace page Gail Weston McDonald for pictures. And if you didn't donate but would like to, please visit http://walk.jdrf.org/...