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Monday, June 11, 2012

PERFECT!

A perfect day! Not a cloud in the sky, lots of people, amazing friends, great food, a few surprises for me and of course donkeys!
Yesterday was our annual fundraising day..."DONKEY DAY"! It was a huge success and everything went without a glitch, there were happy smiling faces all over the DSC, 2420 happy faces to be exact. A new record.
100+ volunteers helped with the event and it was great. I met up with a few volunteers that I usually don't get to work with and I was happy to see them. First surprise came in a having a volunteer show up that had originally said that he couldn't make it, so I was happy to see Carlos. I guess they had decided that he would come to help at the DSC and his wife would volunteer at the other event they had committed to. I am glad they did, as it is always nice to hang out with either one of them.
There was still a lot to do before our gates opened at 10 am, by twenty to ten we were ready and everybody took their positions. I was positioned with 1 staff member and 2 other volunteers in the new barn.
View from the new barn to the old barn, we had shade in the morning and a perfect view over the whole DSC.
                                                                   

The donkeys had breakfast and seemed to be unimpressed by all the attention that was going to come their way.


                              Quiet before the storm....here they come.....by 11 am we were out of parking spots.

Second surprise came in form of some special visitors, I mean we had great visitors all day long and a lot of them were first timers, so it is always especially fun to educate them and show them the world of the donkeys, but I really didn't expect bosses and coworkers and their families to show up and support something I love to do. It sure meant a lot to me and made me smile. I was happy to introduce them to some of my co volunteers and to some of the donkeys. It was fun and they stayed for quite some time, so for me that means they enjoyed themselves, which is great. 
By mid afternoon the heat started to show it's face on most of us, staff and volunteers. Here is a shot of Terri, looking heat exhausted and trying to stay cool in her boiling hot Learning Centre.




The only real break I took was a short visit in the Wetland Centre to have a quick chat with one of our volunteers who also is into saving Wetlands and mostly the turtle. It was definitely interesting and I learnt a lot of things that I didn't know yet but at least I know them now and I will know what to do the next time. I also did a quick stop by the Quarantine paddock that was used to hold our mini mules and Juno. Juno had a nice shady spot with grass....now that was heaven.


There was lots to do for our visitors, we had a kids play area with bouncy castle, face painting, tattooing, kids entertaining and name the donkey contest, there were information booths, the market place, the boutique, great food vendors, Tim Horton's gave out free coffee for a donation of 1 Dollar, there was a silent auction with lots of great items to bid on. I didn't have a chance to bid on anything, There was one painting of Gordon in the auction that I totally loved, but I never got a chance to get it. But that's how my third surprise of the day came to be, but I will write about that one  another day.
It sure was a great day. By 4:30 pm most people had cleared out and it was time to take everything down.  We were all just dragging our feet by then, the heat...31C( humidex of 39 C) and the long hours were just getting to us, most of us had been at the DSC since 7:30 that morning. By 7 pm I was finally at home and after a quick shower and lots of water to drink, I just laid down on the couch for the rest of the night. Today I am still recuperating. But what a wonderful day it was. 


2 comments:

Tracy said...

Tina,
That is absolutely wonderful! I'm so glad you had such a great turn-out :) love the photos...now rest!

Joan said...

Congratulations for a great turn out and thanks for all the hard work!