TBONE IS IN!

Since the marathon was completed, there hasn't been a lot of financial movement for the Amarce foundation, but that is ABOUT TO CHANGE! Our next fundraising endeavor has begun as TBone, Jim's twin brother and partner on weekly football podcasts, has written a book titled "Buy This Book So I Can Go To Ethiopia". If you would like to purchase a copy, check out www.rockonfootball.com. In other news, we have found some hope through the Wide Horizons agency through which we adopted our daughters Alexa and Liana. They have begun a program of sponsoring children and helping them and their families to survive and have hope for a future. So while we are still trying to get to Ethiopia, we have continued to make a difference by sponsoring two children, Bekele Amalo Genadela and Testanesu Dasagna Chew Sintayelis. If you would like to sponsor a child from Arbogonea (Alexa and Liana's hometown), check out www.whfc.org.

Four and a Half Hours of Fun

It's official...I am running this thing! Today was our 18-mile run. Sure, I haven't run more than 13 while training and I haven't run 18 miles in like 5 years, but get a couple Fit and Active bars in me and bammo! I wouldn't say it was fun, but after listening to Football Podcasts for over four hours, I really feel qualified to answer fantasy football questions. Now that I am sure I am running, I guess it is time to see if people want to help Arbogonea by making a donation. If running this thing in some way helps the people who live where Alexa and Liana grew up, then it is worth every minute of time and every inch of leg pain!

Happy 4th of July

Helping the people of Ethiopia is a great idea. Running your 8-mile training run in the middle of day of the Fourth of July (what was it, like 120 degrees today) is not a good idea. Around mile 2 I realized that I am really starting to get old. At mile 8, there was no more "starting to get old", I hit the old plateau and am headed to McDonald's for my senior coffee.

Goal: $5,000!

There is no guarantee that a group of Famous Dave's workers can make a difference in the lives of people in Arbegonea, Ethiopia; but to give it a chance we have to raise $5,000. This amount will provide the funds necessary to make a fact-finding trip to the region and find things such as needs, a contact person and potential ways to develop a relationship between the people of Arbegonea and those of us here in America. Why $5,000? Here is a breakdown of what that pays for: Airfare for 2 ($3,800), Hotels ($600), Car ($200), Translator ($40), Food ($100), Shots ($200). There is no waste here, just enough to cover the cost of taking the next step to see if this can really happen.

In The Beginning...

Darn that Jeff Donohue! As is pretty common most nights at Famous Dave's in Oswego, Jim Melton likes to jump on a bandwagon and drill it into the ground talking to other workers about it all night. So when Jeff Donohue brought up the idea of running the marathon, and Leslie Schaefer came into work saying she was going to run, IT WAS ON! We had almost the whole staff that night committed to running the marathon, and not only running, but running to do something we called "helping people". Jim Melton said that if anybody signed up he would run, thinking that nobody would actually do it. And then something crazy happened, Jeff actually registered! Then Leslie brought in a registration form. Shelly Marek started the training program. Never would Jim have thought that a night of mindless chatter at Famous Dave's would lead to actually running 26.2 miles, but now we have a running team. And not only that, but the charity everyone decided to run for was not any established charity, but our own newly created charity, called Amarce. For the last year, Jim has been trying to establish some sort of relationship with the former hometown of his two adopted daughters, Alexa and Liana. He quickly found out that if something was going to happen, he would have to do it. So he had been wanting to start a charity to try and find ways to help there. And what you read on this blog is the birth of that charity that Jeff, Shelly and Leslie began!

We're doing this! BOOM!