Bring On The FUNdraiser!

A 4-H Money-raising Extravaganza!

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Friday night my son and I hopped into my trusty little blue car and proceeded toward the Kootenai County Fairgrounds. Our journey was a bit of a treacherous one, as it was snowing rather hard, but we have a saying in North Idaho, "If you don't drive in the snow, you won't be driving." I honestly don't mind driving in the snow, I just slow down a bit and give myself more stopping distance, but I do get a tidbit nervous about the other drivers on the road, and since I had to go into Coeur d'Alene around the time everyone was getting off of work for the evening, my alert meter was on high.

Why on Earth would I chose to venture out into a snowstorm on a Friday night? Well, our county extension has a big fundraiser each year to raise money for certain things that are needed in our local 4-H realm. This year's event was called Pen The Ponies. We haven't had horses at our fair for years due to a lack of stalls. The stalls that are at the fairgrounds are more than a little decrepit, as in unusable, so this year's fundraiser was focused on getting the stalls up and running so the horse kids could come show at fair too.

My husband runs the youth shooting sports program at our local gun range on Friday nights, so he and our daughter were off doing their Friday Night Shoot thing. My date for the evening was my son, Bobo. After drifting into the Kootenai County Fairgrounds and tromping through six inches of fresh powder, we stomped into the Jacklin Building to a sight of fundraising gloriousness! Upon securing our BBQ dinner tickets we wandered around the big building that my kids stall and show their pigs in every year at the fair and took in all the fundraising sights.

The first vision to hit our ocular regions was the prize table for the old fashioned carnival. There were candies, puzzles, and stuffed unicorns galore! Tons of under tens were lurking around the prize table, wringing their hands in cheap good procurement anticipation.

Next we walked by the pulled pork, potato salad, baked beans, and coleslaw that was to soon fill our bellies. Things were looking good. The middle of the building was a mass of round tables for the attendees to sit at, and before claiming a seat, the Bobo and I took a few minutes to peruse the multiple tables of donated live auction items.

This is the basket the our club made and donated!

There was an incredible assortment of goods available in the live auction. Living in a somewhat still rural community, there were cool things to bid on like sweet lick cattle protein tubs, a fly control basket for horses, something called a Redneck Basket that wowed my son due to its immense proportions, and lots of random horse tack. There were also things for a more discriminating, less country palate as well, original artwork, beauty product baskets, and tickets to multiple local events. Heck, the live auction even had a trip to Hawaii to bid on!

It was around that time we ran into one of our club moms and she escorted us over to view the other spectacle of the evening, the old fashioned carnival. Not since the elementary school carnival of my youth have I envisioned such a glorious scene. The co-director of the entire 4-H program even brought her pet donkey for a kissing booth (you paid a ticket and got to feed the guy a carrot). My attention was held in enthralled captivity by the whole carnival scene, for there was a beanbag toss, bowling, Plinko, a spin wheel, and my absolute favorite carnival game of all time, the cake walk.

Before carnivalling, the boy and I went and procured our dinner plates and stuffed our faces, we needed energy for what was to come. I must say that dinner disappeared rather quickly. The Bobo and I started with the bean bag toss, and he became legend for throwing five bags in a row into the 50 slot, which earned him twenty-five prize tickets. Each game only cost one or two tickets to play, and a ticket was only 25 cents. I had cleaned out the quarters out of my change jar in anticipation of the carnival, and before long the boy and I had a ton of prize tickets.

In fact, we had so many prize tickets that we ended up giving a bunch of them away to other kids after we got a ton of loot. We brought home drink cups and LED lights, candy and licorice rope, and let's not forget the big blow up guitar that took up my entire backseat!

However, the most enjoyed event of the night by yours truly was that darn cakewalk. Our local grocery store had donated an entire table of boxes of doughnuts, muffins, cakes, and cookies. There was another adjoining table of cakes donated by individuals. It was a cornucopia of confections!

My son was mystified when after just two turns on the cakewalk I ended up walking away with some jumbo cherry chocolate chip muffins. One of our friends had given him a ton of tickets and asked my son if he would go win them a cake. Time and time again did he walk, without luck, until one of the teens manning the scene told him to just go pick a cake out. The Pity Cake was a source of amusement for the rest of the evening.

The Pity Cake

In the end, as my boy and I walked out of the building, our arms laden with the goodies we had won, we both smiled and commented on how much fun we had. 4-H is such a great program for giving people an experiential learning experience, among other things, and our experience at the fundraiser reiterated why we volunteer our time to mentor youth through the organization. Hopefully the stalls will get built, and any extra money will go to scholarships for local 4-H youth, so every penny we left at the Jacklin Building goes towards multiple good endeavors indeed.

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And as pretty much always, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's not covered in donkey slobber iPhone.

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