October 2, 2007

Geez, it has been WAYYY too long since I updated last... and so much has happened! I've started high school, a new charity, Double T is thriving; the list goes on and on! I figured after I got an e-mail from one of my best friends threatening that I'd better update the blog or else, that I should in fact find the time to update this thing!

I better start from the beginning. So yeah, I'm well into my second month of 9th grade at high school! It's a lot of fun, very different but the transition wasn't difficult. I'm also swimming on the Fresh/Soph and J.V. teams for swimming, which wraps up October 13th. (Hear that, babysitting clients? I'm once again on the market come the 14th!) I'm also in the show choir group, student council, and speech and drama club, plus I'm running for Freshmen Class Council President. Overall, high school's great, just very busy! With swimming, I leave for school at 6:30 a.m. and don't return home until 6:30 p.m.! On Mondays, which are show choir days, I don't get home for dinner till 8:45, if I'm lucky! PLUS--> HOMECOMING IS COMING UP, also the 13th! I just got my dress- I'll try and remember to post pictures this time =] !

Yeah, so a new charity! Any of you who check the website on a consistent basis may have noticed that not only have I changed it (check out the pictures from the 6th Annual backyard carnival!), but I've also added a page titled "Catch the Reading Bug" dedicated to our newest campaign. The idea of the program is, we donate NEW books to underprivileged children around the Chicagoland area, our first objective being to collect 220 new books to give to the Backstretch kids of Arlington Racetrack by the time they return to the track this upcoming summer. We donated about 70 books to the kids last summer, and we're hoping to collect enough for ALL of them this year! You can help this new program by donating new books- any kind of books--chapter, picture, the works! Since the families of the track are 100% Spanish, until around 1st grade most families are unable to read English, so Spanish picture books would be greatly appreciated. I know many schools support this program called "Book Orders", where students receive a packet of book choices for very low prices that they can buy and are then shipped to the child's school. We bought 70 books last time my little brother got a Book Order packet, for $0.99 a book! Check with your child's school and see if they support a program, and donate some books to us via that. I believe there is also a way to buy books from the program in Spanish.

On to Double T! Not only did we give a donation of 250 hygiene kits to an awesome organization called in Washington called Treehouse, but we also just donated 25 long-term hygiene kits to the Bolivian Street Children Organization a couple of days ago. I actually read a book on the same type of children that will be receiving our kits in Bolivia called "When Invisible Children Sing", and then wrote to the organization the book is based on. It's a great story, very moving, and I strongly recommend it. The only problems with these recent donations are as follows:

- We now are almost completely out of Double T supplies. We've had so many wonderful donors in the past couple of years, but now are literally incredibly lacking supplies to make the kits. See our Double T page for what we're in need of. When I have the time (swimming ends next week!), I'm going to go through my friend the Yellow Pages and write to local dentists for donations. In the mean time, though, anybody with connections-- please help us out! We'd love to continue helping, but can't if we don't have any donations!

- Next: While we loved donating to people as far away as Bolivia, we ran into a problem when shipping the 25 kits cost more ($125 for one box-- and that was at a reduced price- thanks Grandma!) than the kits themselves! If anybody knows of a way for us to get free or at least reduced shipping or stamps or whatever (we had to use my grandma's work to get the discount to Bolivia-- UPS on its own would of cost $400!), PLEASE e-mail me! Thanks!

On to "happier" subjects-- I recently got an e-mail from a teacher at St. Peters Lutheran School asking about me public speaking about charity work there. Woohoo! For those of you who know me well, you know that public speaking is another of my favorite things to do.

I also got an e-mail from a family whose daughter along with her two friends are holding a 9 year old birthday party. They are asking for their guests to bring books for Catch the Reading Bug! How awesome is it that children SO YOUNG are getting into the helping spirit?! Thanks girls! Keep it up!

Plus, we received two wonderful boxes from another one of my friend's at Zurich Insurance Corp. full of teddy bears for Something to Hold On To! We still need to schedule another delivery at Children's Memorial with my friend & nurse Mrs. Parise, but once my schedule slows downs hopefully STHOT will be thriving again! Thanks so much for the bears! They are BEAUTIFUL!

Thank you to everybody out there for the incredible encouragement and support. It is because of you guys that I continue Abby Horan Charities. You guys are incredible!

Thank you,
Abby Horan