So I'm gonna try this thing where I update my journal more than once a year. For one thing, there are just too many fun journal skins to play with This one is courtesy of

Last Friday, I finally got to put on an event I've been planning for months called Eating Right when Money's Tight. Long story short, it's for a class I'm taking this year where we have to put on at least 2 events a year to help the community around us (it's actually part of a larger non-profit organization called Students in Free Enterprise, or SIFE...more information can be found at sife.org if you're really bored). As the project manager for financial literacy (yesh I know...I have an impressive title xD), this event was for single parents and families to teach them how to eat healthy on a budget. We had free food, games, amazing prizes, phenomenal speakers...and it was a fun night A little less than 50 came, which I was a little disappointing to me, because we had more people who registered but never showed. Kinda frustrating

It went as well as to be expected. Even with less people than expected, we had a very diverse group and two ladies with their sons who, in particular, stood out to me. They were single moms who were a bit annoying and their children were a little on the unruly side. They spoke up a lot during the dinner and provided most of the interaction, which was great, but at the same time, we kind of wanted them to shut up. They asked me to keep the chicken scraps from the other attendees’ plates for her dog. They took most of the leftover food from the event. Once the event was over, they stayed another hour or so to talk to us when we were trying to clean up. But best of all, they both had sons who had birthdays in the next week and they came to this event to celebrate their birthdays. This was going to be their birthday parties. They even brought birthday cakes and spent what seemed like hours taking pictures of their sons with the cake. Pretty weird, right?

Well, I learned that one of these women had been out of a job for awhile and just found work not long ago, but hasn’t received a paycheck yet. She never finished college and she had been through some hard times lately, both her and her family. They didn’t have the money to celebrate his birthday properly, so they decided to come to this event as the best thing they could do with their current financial situation. After hearing their story, I was put back in my place.

Near the end of the night, we had a raffle for two sets of tickets to local attractions. We wanted to just give the prizes to the birthday boys, but didn't think it was fair to the other participants to rig the raffle. However, as fate would have it, the two birthday boys each won the prizes. They would get to celebrate their birthdays after all, better than they could ever imagine. The excited looks on their faces as they talked about going to these places was priceless.

Seeing the transformation in these lives made all the stress and work of planning and executing the event worthwhile to me.

How was your weekend? xD