4 Paws for Whit

Only a few days left until Christmas! It's hard to believe it's that time already. It was almost a year ago that we started our efforts to start raising money for Whit's autism assistance dog. We hope to do some more activities with this in the spring, but right now our time is being spent eagerly anticipating the arrival our new baby...any day now

Thanks again to all those who have helped along the way and to those that encourage us on this journey.

Thanks also to the Jackson Citizen Patriot newspaper for their article featuring our efforts to help Whit.

http://www.mlive.com/news/jackson/index.ssf/2009/12/pitching_in_jackson_family_wor.html

It has been a long time since we've updated much on our site and we apologize for not keeping in touch a bit better with all of you. We've been very busy recently and haven't had as much time recently to focus on the fundraising efforts as we are preparing for a new baby due in December.

Thank you to all who have assisted us thus far and have asked about our progress. We are at around $4000 of the $13000 goal so far. We hope to get back into the swing of fundraising probably early next year, possibly around March depending on how things are going.

If anyone has ideas or would like to help out, you can drop us a line through our website or email at coopnwhitspop@yahoo.com

Thanks again!

Jim, Becca, Cooper, Whit and Eliana

So after taking two weeks off after our first event and moving across town, we're back online again and I figured it was about time to post something.

Our event went well thanks to a lot of hard working friends and family members but we had a smaller crowd in the evening for the dinner and silent auction, due in part to the Final Four game the Spartans were participating in.

We learned a lot through the experience and realize we're not nearly as organized as we should be. We'll do better as we move forward. The fundraising is heading in the right direction, but this will be a long journey. I hope to have updated totals tomorrow to post on the website.

Thanks to all who have supported us with kind words, prayers, help with activities and financial donations!

Less than 5 weeks until the first big event, the community fun/fundraiser on April 4th at Commonwealth Commerce Center in Jackson.

Things are progressing with details and arrangements although we feel a wee bit behind schedule.

Every day we're eager to check the mail to see if any response come back from the 125+ letters we sent out to various sports teams and other organizations. Check out the Donations/Sponsors tab for information we've received thus far.

We're looking forward to our first event and are already in the initial stages of thinking about/planning our next event, a fun dog show tentatively slated for June. This will be a dog show with categories like highest jumper, best dressed and owner/dog look-a-like and should end up being a lot of fun.

Stay tuned for further updates and check the Sponsors tab periodically.

Well, we can sit back and relax a bit with a feeling of accomplishment as we can say that we have mailed out over 100 letters this week in hopes of garnering some much needed donations for the silent auction/raffle coming up on April 4th. We're now officially 6 weeks out...only 42 days...about 1000 hours from the beginning of our event.

Are we sitting back and relaxing though? Of course not!

During the evening yesterday and the day today we've amassed a list of approximately 300 local businesses and organizations that we need to talk to about our fundraiser and the types of donations that we hope to procure. There are a lot more businesses we need to speak with as well, but this first batch is made up of mainly the places with possibly higher end donations for the raffle.

We're still in need of restaurants and caterers to provide food service for the evening dinner and also plan to be approaching pizza places and grocery stores for the lunch and snacks that we will be needing.

There is a lot of work to do, but we're optimistic that we can get this done with the help of those around us.

If you have any friends, relatives, coworkers, etc that you would like to pass along the website to, feel free to do so

We also have a group on Facebook with 4 Paws for Whit.

...off to compile some more businesses!

It's been a while since our last post so I figured I'd bring you up to date. We've been working hard to organize ourselves and figure out who to contact in regard to possible donations for the fundraiser. We've been scouring the internet to find all the sports teams and their corresponding contact info and those letters should be going out by the weekend.

We're still working on securing printing services so that we can start pounding the pavement to all the businesses throughout Jackson county, but hopefully we'll have the printing thing figured out by early next week.

We're looking for anyone who does Mary Kay, Avon, PartyLite, Tupperware, Pampered Chef, etc that might be willing to donate a basket for the silent auction, or anyone that does knitting, sewing or crocheting that might be willing to donate a craft item like a afghan or quilt. Any donations can be accompanied by flyers or business cards that we'll display at the event and of course, all donations are tax deductible.

We have only 51 days left until our first event so things will be happening quickly. Lots of work to do and often little time to get things done. We'll still try to post at least once a week, but I apologize if that doesn't happen.

We receive information on our donation totals on the 15th and 30th of each month so we'll update the website shortly after we receive this data.

Stop by and check on it periodically and make sure you sign the guestbook if you haven't already.

Thank you to all those who have helped and donated thus far!

Well, we managed to upload "a few" pictures...considerably less than the 670 that we apparently had on the computer. I'm sooooo glad that they are digital as that would be quite expensive to get that many pictures developed.

Enjoy the photos! We'll update them periodically. We're always on the look out for a good photo op.

Make sure you also check out the video compilation on the "Whit's Story' tab if you haven't already done so.

Well, the website is almost complete and we're making good progress on the video, although time consuming. It is an emotional time looking through all the pictures and reliving all the memories. I periodically wake up in the middle of the night with that song running through my head.  I like the song, but not as much at 3am! :P