A dear friend of our's, Mark Smith (that would be Kelsey's dad), has a heart condition called Atrial Fibrillation that requires almost immediate attention. He's had it for years, but it has gotten steadily worse, sometimes his medications don't even help.
The surgery was going to cost anywhere from $20-$40,000. The cheaper surgery would have to be redone farther down the road, so they really wanted to try for the more expensive one. Prayerfully, his friends and family started a Go Fund Me page and raised over $20,000.
To try to cover the rest of the costs, they planned a spaghetti feed and a silent auction for February 5. They ended up raising over $16,000!! That put the total up to just over $36,000! After the benefit, somebody called and said they'd be willing to give the last $4,000. Isn't our God good?! Now, Mark has enough to get the lasting heart surgery!
Dad was asked to oversee the food area, so the Gavins and our family went out to Holdrege on Tuesday, February 3. We stayed at the Axtell house, as usual. :)
That was the overview of our time spent out in western Nebraska. Now for the in depth report!
Mom, Abi and I road in the Honda while the boys road in the cold van. We had a wonderful time chatting (we solved almost all of the world's problems), then, we listened to Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. I had downloaded it from LibriVox.
We had just had nearly a foot of snow that weekend, so it was pretty snowy there for awhile. The farther west we got, the less snow there was.
Aunt Carol
We stopped to get lunch at Subway, then drove over to the gas station across the street. Our windows were in desperate need of a scrubbing, but, the squeegees were one solid block of ice!
That next morning (sorry, but the pictures from the night before don't go any farther than this computer! What happens late at night at the Axtell house, stays at the Axtell house!) and, KK woke up on the wrong side of the couch, and, the wrong side of his shirt.
I had just finished the last bit of a delicious donut!
Aunt Annette brought us over 2 dozen donuts! Certain individuals had gotten away with eating 5 donuts before I found out and stopped them! :)
Dad had his plans all laid out for how we were going to serve supper. He made us all into teams and stationed us at certain jobs. He brought each team in and gave them a run down of what their job would entail.
Brie put Ben's belt, hat and paraphernalia on.
All the way down to his wallet stuck in the back!
It was unanimously decided to go tour the Pioneer Village Museum since we didn't have much to do on Wednesday. It had snowed in the night and was blowing really hard.
Some parts of the road would have snow skipping across while other parts were bare.
Here we are!
Mom and Aunt Carol were here in 1977, just two years after this areal view was taken.
Covered wagons were huge! They made KK look like a dwarf!
Could you image packing all of your earthly possessions into this wagon and just heading "West"? The pioneers were one tough set of people!
Gram! an Irish jaunting cart!
Here it is...
I've always wanted to see a hansom in real life, and I finally got my chance!
I can just see Holmes and Watson as they clambered in, discussing the latest intriguing case. My imagination was going haywire! :)
The cab driver sat on the seat projecting from the back of the hansom. His reins looped up over the cab. When you wanted out, you thumped on the roof. :)
This old Ford was from 1915.
The original bill of sale is on the right.
Engines were so much simpler back then...
They had rows and rows of various means of transportation. Starting with horse drawn vehicles, on to horseless carriages, and on and on! It really was actually quite fascinating!
A glider
This was a little motor powered two seater thingamajig.
A little tiny two seater death trap...
...called the "Spider"! :)
In this early "airplane," one's feet hung in thin air.
Shrouded horses for the hearse.
Vintage style fans
Telephones
Telephone switchboard
We were able to cram five of us!
Inside a "camper" wagon
Peddler's cart
Looking down on where we just were.
Some dolls are just plain old creepy. These poor dears were exceptionally grotesque.
This glider looked absolutely heart stopping!
Old medical instruments...
Bleeding instruments
Cash register
Handcuffs through the centuries
"All aboard!"
Early age helicopter
The floor looked scary!
The Valhalla
This yacht was confiscated by the US government during WWII to be used in submarine hunting. The picture toward the bottom right shows it sinking its first submarine.
Dining/living room with a tiny kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom beyond.
That's a huge fog horn!
This tobogan sled was ginormous!
Tiny self defense pistols
This whole wall was lined with different weapons, guns, etc.
These cannon balls were found a 1/2 mile from Fort Ticonderoga 6 feet under the ground!
Uho! I feel another Holmes imagination spree coming on!! These are called cane guns. You should research them... It's a very fascinating study! Oh, and I should tell you about the hypodermic umbrella... I'd better stop while I'm ahead!
We couldn't get over how tiny some of these ladies' waists had to be!
These quilts were absolutely amazing!
The attention to detail just blew my mind!
Irish Chain pattern
They had two old fashioned telephones that actually worked!
I'm talking to Mom. :)
We all had to sign the guest book.
Some of these post cards were hilarious!
One of our relatives was buried in the Wilcox cemetery not far from Holdrege, so Mom, Aunt Carol and Abi decided to drive over and take some pictures for Gram.
Gracie got these little tiny cards from the gift shop at Pioneer Village. Just for perspective, those are KK's hands.
My hand of Go Fish. We played it for hours!
Dad has to put his feet up everyday, so we set him up with the iPad watching remodeling. :)
We invited the Collisons over for a supper of chicken enchiladas. Yummy!
Since Abi, Grace and I made the enchiladas, KK and Brie had to wash up the dishes before Collisons arrived.
Ben went to work with the guys at Cornerstone Electric and had to wear these.
Playing Go Fish... Again!
Since T.J,'s birthday was Sunday, we decided that since we were altogether, we might as well celebrate it now! Aunt Carol got him an ice cream cake...
Collisons decided to record themselves singing "Happy Birthday" and send it o T.J. :)
Nate and Josh arrived on the scene around 10:30, after Collisons left.
Card tricks
Josh was trying out his new bow. JK
KK and Ben, looking at something on the iPad.
We had to be up bright and early Thursday morning. The indistinguishable lumps? Those happen to be the boys. :)
GIVE... pant... ME... gasp...COFFEE!!!
Ah, now the lumps are taking shape!
We had to be at the hall by 8, but were about 15 minutes late.
Piles of stuff to be organized!
There's strong me carrying the mixer in the background. (Just kidding!)
Before everything was set up and decorated...
Boys will be boys...
We had to make 400 breadsticks that morning...
Auction items were starting to trickle in!
They thought it would be funny to put Ben's hat on this unfortunate model.
It was decided to decorate the tables with pasta bouquets. They were really interesting!
We had quite the system down for the breadsticks!
The boys had a lot of fun cutting head after head of lettuce... Actually, it was case after case of lettuce!
Last batch! Hooray!
Grace and Ben worked on chunking the tomatoes for the salad.
There's quite an art in pinching off breadstick sized lumps of dough. Not to mention rolling them out!
Whit brought sandwich fixings and snacks for lunch.
Jay Becker (a good friend of the Smiths) made the four roasters of sauce.
Kiley and Stacy were having themselves a jolly little time while Kayla just kept plugging away at the auction stuff. Kayla (Micah's fiance') headed up the auction. She was amazing!
Kiley put together all these pretty hearts with verses that mentioned the heart. :)
Sarah and I opened box after box of spaghetti.
Done dough.
Taking a break
After the pasta was done, we had to drain it, then dump it into pots of cold water to cool it down. Once it was cool, you drain it again, pour it into another bowl and dump enough canola oil on it to coat the pasta. Next, we poured it into these tubs and poured ice on top to keep it cool till it was time to serve. That's a restaurant secret, so sshh!
The cold water and the oiling bowl
Stacy arranged the pasta bouquets beautifully!
The boys were "helping" Kiley by giving her lots of "good" advise on how to wrap the donation boxes. :)
Irene and Annetta came out with the Zooks.
They were such a big help! It would've been a scramble to serve all that food without them!
The auction registration booth.
Sarah and I, putting the skirt on the beverage table.
Still draining pasta!
The finished Italian themed dining hall!
The first registrants.
Donation table
Brie and I were in charge of the dessert table. That doesn't sound difficult, does it? Huh, well, you should be on the other end of a beautifully arranged dessert table!
Reeses peanut butter cup cake... Are you drooling? Brie and I were! We had to keep slapping our fingers to keep them from flashing out and licking up that goodness. As you know, when you work with food, your hands have to stay absolutely clean! No licking fingers period.
The AppleSmith donated fudge.
Our cake station
Salad station
Pasta, sauce and breadstick station
Finished product!
Aunt Carol was our greeter. She'd get the number of people that needed served, shout out the number, and the salad people would snap into action. After they had the salad ready, the plate would be passed to Abi. She'd scoop out a portion of pasta, pass it to the sauce guy, KK (he is pretty saucy!), KK passed it to the breadstick lady, Grace, and Grace passed the finished plate to the greeter lady, Aunt Carol. Quite the cycle, huh?
Irene was our bouncer. She just helped out wherever she was needed! You were great, Irene!
Brie and I had to create our own system for serving the cake. Once people started eating cake, we really had to scramble to keep the table filled. There were 8 flavors, Reeses, white, chocolate, lemon, strawberry, butter pecan, carrot, and German chocolate!
Having a little fun in between people wasn't out of the ordinary. :)
Here's a behind the scenes video.
Oops, somebody found a bug in the salad...
This was all that was left of the cake! Not pictured of the left overs: Carrot and German chocolate.
Clean up time!
The hot water ended up running out. Let me tell you, it's not fun washing greasy dishes in cold water!
We had to bag up and distribute the left overs...
KK took a picture of Ben through a paper towel tube.
We got to take this carrot cake home!
Ben started collecting name tags.
Aaron won the bid for the huge helicopter! He got it out to play with...
Sweet family time
Everyone gathered around to watch... Nobody wanted to get run into by those propellers! I know how much those little tiny helicopters hurt when they hit you!
We had to hold LouLou back from rushing headlong into certain death! :P
I loved working in the kitchen with you guys!! :) It was much more fun than it would've been sitting around and watching you do all the work! :) Annetta
ReplyDeletemakes me jealous!!!!!!!!:)
ReplyDeletePeach:)