can I be any prouder?

A few weeks ago Nora found out that her school would be participating in something called, Jumprope for Heart - a fundraiser for the American Heart Association. Her PE teacher told her about it and she came home VERY excited about it and would NOT stop bugging me to look at her information. She was going to learn how to jumprope and have a chance to "help people and be nice" by raising money for a good cause on Valentine's Day.

Our families have some serious history with heart related health issues.
* My grandpa had one of the first bypass surgeries in the state of Michigan way back in the '70's (or '60's?). He had at least one more surgery that I can remember. He had a fatal heart attack in 1999.
* My uncle has had a valve replaced. Has he had bypass surgery, too? Not sure.
* My dad had a triple bypass in October 2005.
* I'm pretty certain everyone in my family has high cholesterol - including me.
* Dave's grandpa had a fatal heart attack on Halloween 1997.
* Dave's grandma has a pacemaker.

So the American Heart Association is an organization that is close to our, ahem, hearts;) We have always considered it a worthy place to donate money. So when Nora had an opportunity to raise money for them, we were honored to participate!

I was pleased to find out that they accepted online donations - makes things so much easier for our out of town family. I sent out emails to many of our relatives and close friends and had a fund raising goal of $500. Our family and friends came through and generously sponsored Nora for Jumprope for Heart with $400! Nora was very excited about the prizes that she was going to earn (one of them being an "ipod" - actually an MP3 player) and Cornbread and I were thrilled with the amount of support that our girl received from her loved ones.

We sent in the checks that we received along with the list of online donations and haven't really thought about it since the day she actually jumproped for heart (Valentine's Day). But I just received an email from her PE teacher with the following paragraph:

We haven't announced this yet, but Nora is the student who raised the most for the AHA! She will be receiving a special letter from the AHA and of course all of her thank-you gifts. We will be announcing this tomorrow morning along with our schools grand total.

I am so proud of her and so excited for her that she will receive this recognition. I hope that helping others will be a lifelong passion for her! It thrills me beyond expectation that she has a heart for doing so!