What a day!

Shelter Foundation Garage Sale this past Saturday was a huge success!  Look for more details shortly about how much of a difference the community made to this important cause.  In the meantime, enjoy some pictures of the fun had.

We had a great day. We had lots of support from the local businesses. We had the fire department fill our dunk tank and then they brought a brush truck and 3 volunteers that stayed all day. We had volunteers for the dunk tank including our local Weather Anchor man, Bill Welychka, who proudly wears his White Ribbon and supports the shelters. We had York Polk from Mortgage Brokers Ottawa in the tank! We had volunteers from our local shelter, Chrysalis House and the Peer Support program at the Western Ottawa Community Resource Centre. We had the boys from the Carleton University fraternity, Kappa Sigma, join us for the dunk tank and then stayed until the end to help load the moving truck and send everything off to the Diabetes Association, that was a blessing as we were very tired by day's end! The kids had a great time at the games, loved the face painting and free balloons and cotton candy.

We had one resident arrive from Chrysalis House near the end of the sale. I had mentioned to one of the Woman's Advocates to send over anyone who was moving out shortly. Anyway, we gave her a good start with some dishes, mugs, toys for her 4 & 7 year olds, a desk, a microwave, a TV and some chairs, she was ecstatic! Another Peer Supporter and myself ended up taking some of the larger items over to her new place in the Royal LePage courtesy van. She had her keys and will move in on Wednesday. When we got there and helped unload her new possessions we were once again hit by the fact that this woman had nothing in her place except for the items she had picked up from us. We quickly tracked down a bed for each of the kids, a washer and dryer and an air conditioner all of which I'll get to her on Wednesday. She was so grateful and couldn't believe good things were happening to her. The hard part is leaving, everything is falling into place now, as it should. This is what made the day for both of us, and reminded us of what is really important.