Sometimes, amidst the chaos of life, we find solace in the stories of resilience and the warmth of community. Our latest episode is no different, as we weave through the tapestry of personal anecdotes, from the laugh-out-loud trials of perfecting a podcast intro to the simple, understated joy of sharing donuts with our furry companions on the patio. But it's not all chuckles and pastries; we delve into the hard-hitting reality of today's economic pressures, sharing our own creative strategies for staying afloat in these trying times.
The emotional core of our discussion shines through as we sit down with Christine and Peter, the founders of the Mary Moon Foundation. Through their words, we honor the memory of their daughter, Mary, and her courage in facing neuroblastoma. Their story is a testament to the strength found in grief, as they channel their loss into a mission of bringing smiles to critically ill children. Their foundation's initiatives, from art programs to festive theme parties, underscore the profound impact that care and community have on families navigating the murky waters of hospital stays.
As we wrap up, we shift gears, injecting a dose of humor with a joke that's sure to split opinions—laughter is, after all, a balm for the soul. We also set the stage for an intriguing conversation with June Hessler, the Midwest medium, in our upcoming episode . Our journey is a mosaic of emotions, from heartache to joy, reminding us of the incredible ripple effect each of us can create through advocacy and a caring heart. Join us, and let's navigate life's trials and triumphs together.
Sometimes, amidst the chaos of life, we find solace in the stories of resilience and the warmth of community. Our latest episode is no different, as we weave through the tapestry of personal anecdotes, from the laugh-out-loud trials of perfecting a podcast intro to the simple, understated joy of sharing donuts with our furry companions on the patio. But it's not all chuckles and pastries; we delve into the hard-hitting reality of today's economic pressures, sharing our own creative strategies for staying afloat in these trying times.
The emotional core of our discussion shines through as we sit down with Christine and Peter, the founders of the Mary Moon Foundation. Through their words, we honor the memory of their daughter, Mary, and her courage in facing neuroblastoma. Their story is a testament to the strength found in grief, as they channel their loss into a mission of bringing smiles to critically ill children. Their foundation's initiatives, from art programs to festive theme parties, underscore the profound impact that care and community have on families navigating the murky waters of hospital stays.
As we wrap up, we shift gears, injecting a dose of humor with a joke that's sure to split opinions—laughter is, after all, a balm for the soul. We also set the stage for an intriguing conversation with June Hessler, the Midwest medium, in our upcoming episode . Our journey is a mosaic of emotions, from heartache to joy, reminding us of the incredible ripple effect each of us can create through advocacy and a caring heart. Join us, and let's navigate life's trials and triumphs together.
Hey guys, welcome back to honor best behavior. I'm Mac and you're here with Kelly with Mac and Kelly. Sorry, ma'am, I'm gonna start again, like you forgetting oh.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you overthink it or you just don't try it all.
Speaker 1:No I. I'm right, oh, there you are. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Okay, you know, maybe another four years You'll have it down. That's not when you get to retire from the podcast.
Speaker 1:That is not true, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, actually like three years, because once you go off to college then I'm gonna have to find a new co-host.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm gonna be Justin. You know, he him and I don't podcast.
Speaker 2:All right, what's new? What you got going on.
Speaker 1:Well, so many years, what happening? That never happens. Oh, okay, going outside you have Touching grass.
Speaker 2:I love it and it's been nice out.
Speaker 1:Yeah minus.
Speaker 2:It was so windy today.
Speaker 1:I Was like, it's kind of when yesterday was better, though. Yeah it wasn't as windy.
Speaker 2:No, it wasn't but it is March now and they say that March is the windiest month of the year. Really and also can be the snowiest month of the year.
Speaker 1:It's supposed to rain tomorrow, is it yeah?
Speaker 2:I try not. I don't even look, because I I ask myself all the time like why am I even surprised by Minnesota weather? Because it could be Snowy, and it could be snowy one day, it could be negative 21 day and then it could be 70 the next day. Like why am I surprised Anything else? You got your spacers put in. Oh yeah, they're honey more.
Speaker 1:That's good. It's a hard time eat stuff though.
Speaker 2:Have you ever peaked on it? Yep, I ate it this morning for breakfast.
Speaker 1:Was it good?
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, it was nice out. I got to sit on the patio Drink my coffee with the dogs and I ate my donut and I did share some with them because you know they make me feel so bad and guilty. Anything else.
Speaker 1:I don't think so.
Speaker 2:I had a rough week emotionally. I feel like the world is getting expensive and I Feel like I'm not making any more money.
Speaker 1:So, I?
Speaker 2:because I just feel like Things are getting more expensive groceries getting more expensive, utility bills are getting more expensive, everything's getting more expensive, but like companies aren't paying their employees like a 30% cost of living. So I just feel like right now it's super hard to get caught up, which is why I've been, you know, selling my plasma for money and yeah, just trying to do little things to save money and little things to make more money. But it's just really been a struggle.
Speaker 1:So if you're out there downstairs, I'm kidding.
Speaker 2:I'm. I'll sell my pyrex for the right price. So I'm not letting it go for cheap, but I will sell some of my good stuff for the right price. And I did list some of my Not rare but well sought up, well sought after pyrex For a high price but no one has wanted to buy it yet because people want to find it for a deal. They don't want to pay primo dollars for it. So, anyway, working on that. So once again, you should really stream your video games. That income could help us.
Speaker 2:Okay, you can, I'll do whatever. Okay, well, you just let me know and I will hook you up. Okay, you could also get a job and contribute to the household.
Speaker 1:Hello Sam.
Speaker 2:I would never take your money. I couldn't do it.
Speaker 1:Why couldn't you do it?
Speaker 2:because I think it's rude when I was, when I was not younger. But one of the things that I'm resentful about in my youth is that once I graduated high school, my mom and dad made me pay to live in my own house. Actually, yeah, they charged me rent three hundred dollars a month, which was a lot of money back then, and then, like when I went to college, they didn't Help me.
Speaker 2:I mean, they helped me in the they, my mom, would borrow me money for like my books, but I had to pay every penny of it back. So I just Felt sad that they couldn't or I don't know if they it's that they couldn't, they wouldn't, they didn't help me more and I wish that they would have. So those you know a lot of things that I have learned from my childhood. I try to take Into my parenting style and not do the things to you that I felt like we're done wrong for me.
Speaker 2:Okay so therefore, I'd never make you pay to live here and I would never. What was the other thing I was talking about and I'll remember call and I want to help you with college, yeah. So anyway, also, I just want to let you know that for 2024, my resolution was to kind of have a mindset of one moment at a time and and goodbye, I just really want to have a great year this year and I feel like I am having a really great year this year.
Speaker 2:But something has happened in my life that I can't disclose yet. That it just makes you realize that it's nothing to do with our household. But it just makes you realize that your life can change in an instant, like getting some news or hearing something, and there's some things that are out of your control and you have to try to look on the bright side. But my spirit has just really been like tainted this this week.
Speaker 2:So I'm trying to be tainted like like you know, I just feel like my spirit's a little down, like some things are gonna be happening and it's not For the best for me but it is probably for the best for other people involved. But it's hard to Be okay with something that you necessarily don't want to happen. Okay that's all I'm gonna say about that for now, and I will talk about it. It's just not my story to tell yet.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:All right, pca no, I'm just kidding. Psa Do you know what PSA stands for? No public service announcement. So here's my public service announcement, which I'm sure I have made plenty of times, but I'm gonna make it again. If you are on your cell phone and you are watching a video or Whatever, we don't want to hear it put in your headphones. Or turn that volume down. This Gentleman, who was not a gentleman I was at the Plasma place on whatever day last week and I was across the Facility and I could hear exactly everything that was playing on his video. And he's over there. Shut the fuck up, I don't want to hear it. Friday night oh, no, no. So first of all, thursday night was senior night, no, kebasko, and it was really. There's a lot of a lot of kids showed up, and one of the things I love about anoka basketball is I Really have enjoyed watching a lot of those kids grow up.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like we saw Grayson I hadn't seen him in a minute we saw Christian I hadn't seen him in a minute and we saw. You know, we see Terrell and we just Javan and Viral B. But I just remember those kids when they were like little and now they're all grown up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're all men now and I just so.
Speaker 2:Anyway, I really Enjoy that. And even age. I like gosh. We knew him when he was younger than you are now. Yeah, now he's just all grown up, all right. Friday night I watched, so I was on Pinterest and I you know something comes up in my feed. I love to read books and psychological thrillers are my favorite books to read, so this thing pops up on my Pinterest and it's like the most I'm trying to think of the world, the most disturbing Documentaries that you could watch. And I was like, okay, cuz I watch a lot of documentaries, mm-hmm and I feel like they're sometimes.
Speaker 2:They're like, most of the time I think that they're kind of boring, like they lose my interest. I end up doing something else. But every once in a while they're really good. So I'm like, okay, why, I'm gonna jot these down and when I have some downtime I'm gonna start watching them. So, anyway, I watched this Documentaries, which this has been out for a long time, but I just never watched it, and it's called don't fuck with cats.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I saw you watching that.
Speaker 2:Oh, mg, that was the most disturbing Real thing I have ever watched in my life. So if you want to be disturbed and you haven't watched that yet, like I had to shut my eyes through some of it- why?
Speaker 1:what was happening they?
Speaker 2:were killing cats. You gotta really yes, because it's on the internet, but anyway, I'm not gonna go into detail about it because it is really disturbing and, yeah, it's crazy crazy. So if you want to be disturbed, watch that, and if you don't want to be disturbed, avoid it at all costs. But it's on Netflix.
Speaker 1:Oh my god.
Speaker 2:Saturday went out with Emily, I went to Invictus. So let me tell you the Blaine Blaine high school hockey team, they were selling these fundraiser cards this this season and it was this card for the Invictus brain which is in Blaine.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm and it was $20, but you get a punch card for 20 free Pours of beer. That is a good. It's like a dollar a beer. Yeah, those are really good, a really good fundraiser. So all you fundraisers out there hit up the breweries, because if they do something like that, that is huge. That is, people are gonna want to buy that. And Then after that we went to the Dollar Tree, because we do monthly dates to the Dollar Tree.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's all I have. Oh my gosh, what do you say?
Speaker 1:Excuse rude, I'm sorry, I just came out of nowhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, it came from all that soda you're drinking. We didn't.
Speaker 1:Interrupted it. I was not expecting it. It's just like problems, like I kind of push ourselves.
Speaker 2:Do you have anything else that you want to talk about? I don't think so. Okay, I have two things that I want to talk about.
Speaker 1:Two more things.
Speaker 2:Alright, so if you have been listening, I also want to tell you, mccoy, that we published our hundredth episode and we totally spaced it out.
Speaker 2:We didn't like acknowledge it, so anyway, last week was our 100th episode, so if you have been listening to us for some time and you have been enjoying us or maybe you just found us and you're like, damn, this is a really great podcast like I want them to keep going we want to let you know you can support our show. You can go to our link tree and we have a couple of things where you can Donate some cash flow to us. So we have buy me a coffee, which you can click on there, and what is buying me a coffee is where you can like send money to what to the to us for the show.
Speaker 2:Oh and then also we have our Venmo link on there. So if you want to support us and drop us some dollars, we would love that. And also if you subscribe to our show and send it. If you subscribe to our show, send a screenshot of your subscription or DM it to us and we'll mail you out on our best behavior sticker for that. Okay, all right, so and tell your friends, make sure you like our episodes, rate us five stars on whatever platform You're listening to your podcast. Like our posts, share our posts. Tell your friends about us. We would appreciate all those things. Yeah, he would, all right, but now we have a guest.
Speaker 1:All right, all right, let's get into it.
Speaker 2:Let's get into it.
Speaker 1:All right.
Speaker 2:You're listening to another episode of on our best behavior, and today I have two very special guests with me. Today they have Organized the Mary Moon Foundation. It is a nonprofit organization based in Apple Valley, minnesota, and it was founded in the memory of Mary Jacqueline O'Keefe and her nickname was moon. Mary loved participating in arts and crafts and a variety of games and other activities, while she spent a large portion of her life Hang on Um, technology is great when it when it works right a large portion of her final years in the hospital fighting neuroblastoma. So their mission is to conduct fundraising events to help finance art supplies, toys and games for critically ill children and their families by Providing hospitals and children hospice resources, and to help children enjoy life as much as every child should. So, christine and Peter, I'm gonna let you kind of take off from there. Tell us what brings us to this point in your life, how you got here, a little bit about yourself and what I missed you.
Speaker 3:All right. Well before our daughter was born. I was very sick with her and so Mary was born on March 4th, hence why we do the Mary Moon charity event every March, since that's her birthday month. But leading up to her birth I was very sick. All nine months I had hyper-MSS, had to have a PICC line, which is IV line for me to receive my nutrients. I was just that sick and I was that way with how far my kids but anywho, but Mary was the sickest with, and so when she was born, she was born with a diapheramic hernia, which it was a right sighted, which is one in 100,000 births. Then I noticed she was having a hard time breathing. They did an X-ray and her liver didn't test. Things were in her chest. So she was born at Ridges and Burnsville and then she had to be shipped off four hours after she was born down to the University of Minnesota where they, at 72 hours of age, she had surgery. That went great.
Speaker 3:But before she was born I had a premonition that someone was going to be wrong with her and I thought oh, that's it. Then, around age two, mary started getting very sick and we thought it was daycare. We caught the Petri dish, and so we took her out for a little bit, thinking that's that will help her. And I kept bringing her to the doctor for six months and I just had this feeling something majorly wrong. Didn't know it was cancer, because childhood cancer is very rare, and the doctor kept going oh, is this Mary's mother again? They knew me by my voice I called that much because she was all sick. And they finally, after six months they did an X-ray and they thought her diaparamic herniate came back. But you could see on the X-ray the edge of the grapefruit sized tumor that was on her left adrenal gland. Mary kept getting sicker, but when you're two years old you can't tell you what's going on. So she kept asking for us to put band-aids on her because they had metastasized to her bone.
Speaker 3:So leading up to the diagnosis I got a call from my husband Go ahead, mary's really sick, we can't control our temperatures. And she was just. And then she got one of the classic signs of neuroblastoma, where she had the raccoon sign, because a lot of times the tumor will go behind the optic nerve and so it just looks like she had two black eyes and she was losing a lot of weight. And I got a call. I just got done with doing a surgical procedure at the hospital, since I'm a labor and delivery nurse, and my patient heard me on the phone with my husband because I got a call and she could hear his franticness going I don't know what to do. Mary's really sick.
Speaker 3:And I got the phone and my patient looked at me. She goes you need to go home to your daughter. She didn't know what was happening but she overheard that and I called my husband and said we're going down to the university. I'm not getting answers. I'm getting virus, virus, virus. Oh, christine, you're okay. And this started treating me like my child's in by proxy.
Speaker 4:Before we got to the university.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I picked her up, brought her down there and finally this wonderful doctor. Now he's like hi up now, dave Jacob, listen to me. And they did an ultrasound. And when we were in the ultrasound I saw the look on her face and she got very quiet, the tech but she couldn't tell us anything. And then they're like, oh, it could be just a cyst and they sent us home. They're like, send you home.
Speaker 3:I have my dad coming in and people from all over the United States, my family members, because I was hosting a week long party for my dad's 70th birthday and I went to Ridge's, got a CT scan, came back the last person from my family comes in and I got the call from Dr Jacob saying Mary has neuroblastoma. We do have to do a biopsy and make sure, but we're pretty certain it is and she needs to come down to the university right now. You can't wait. And so the great thing is my family members came in already, did all the work. They took over for my dad's 70th birthday party and that's where our journey began.
Speaker 3:But the grueling it was one year from the day she got diagnosed was July 30th 2008. And she died July 30th 2009. Well, she was always sick but she never complained. She was. Kids are just so strong and so it was heartbreaking and as a mother I beat myself up.
Speaker 3:Go I, if I wanted to just push harder six months prior because I was getting calls all the time at work Mary's sick, you need to pick her up, you know from, you know the daycare center, and just she would kind of get better and she just was getting skinnier and skinnier. And then we noticed too before the diagnosis that her rib cage was kind of protruding outward because the tumor was pushing out her chest. Yeah, so the doctor said that they think that the reason why her primary pediatrician thought it was just she thought it was the diaphragmic hernia coming back that they had switched the X-ray maybe was reversed, but they said they would call me back the next day and they never called me back and I just think, as a mother, would she still be here if I want to push harder and neuroblastoma is the most aggressive of the childhood cancers.
Speaker 2:And it's rare. When you were pregnant? Did they notice anything with her development? Along that along the way, other than you didn't feel well.
Speaker 3:Nope, Nope. And I actually, at 12 weeks, went. I don't know if I can do this anymore because it was 24, seven of omni. It wasn't just like my other pregnancies I would. I was sick, but this one brought me to my knees and I remember the doctor at 12 weeks bringing the Doppler so I could hear Mary's heartbeat and I'm like all right, I can do this, because I just want, I'm not going to have any teeth. I'm like unwilling to believe it. So yeah, but they did not see anything and they think the diaphragmic hernia happened after the 20 weeks and they don't think the neuroblastoma had anything to do with the diaphragmic hernia. But I wonder, without the medications I was on, so I helped me with my hyperemesis that has cancer. You know the mother's guilt goes through my head.
Speaker 2:So, the surgery that she had right after birth was to fix that hernia.
Speaker 3:Yeah, she just. Oh, she did well there is. If it was on the left side, they go on a thing called ECMO. It's basically there is a machine that's doing all the work for you breathing circulation. They're critically ill and they said at that point she had a 30 to 40% chance of passing away from the diaphragmic hernia. So that's what I found out right after she was born. Oh my gosh, it was just super wet from day one.
Speaker 2:And then tell me you guys have another organization or program called Crescent Cove. Tell me about that.
Speaker 3:So we give our proceeds to two organizations. So first, obviously, university of Minnesota Masonic Children's Hospital, to what is called Child Family Life, which gives kids activities while they're hospitalized. They help out the siblings and the parents. So they, I think, were just as important as the medical treatment.
Speaker 3:Now, crescent Cove after Mary had passed, I kept getting people coming up to me going, hey, they're trying to start this, the first hospice program for theatrics, and there was only two in the United States at that time, one in California and one in Arizona, and they were under another name prior to that, and so they had changed it to Crescent Cove. And about what, would you say? About six, seven years into our charity that we decided to start giving to them too. And so now we those are two organizations that we give out our proceeds to, and I just believe that Mary brought me to them to help them. And then the lead person, the founder, katie, just said that she was interviewing people for a job and both her names are Mary and I go Mary's, mary's, pulling some strings from up above. So, yeah, so we give to them. I wish Mary would have had hospice. And so when Mary passed away here we were walking down the hall of the oncology medical floor and kids are running around and I'm going home empty handed.
Speaker 2:It was just heartbreaking, yeah, oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:And you know what I now know. I've always thought people would just say that losing a child is the worst thing. I'm like, oh, they're just saying that. I can verify now. Both my parents have passed. My mom passed back in September and the two together don't even hold a candle to losing my daughter. Because I think the mother in you are like gosh. Why couldn't I protect her? I'm a nurse. I should have been able to protect her and obviously that shows me that I have no control.
Speaker 2:Right, and I think we go our whole life thinking we have this silver lining of life, this American dream we're going to go to college and we're going to get a job and we're going to get married and we're going to have babies and everything's going to be great and we're going to live heavily ever after and when that doesn't happen. That's the unimaginable. No one is prepared for that. I do think that's every parent's worst nightmare.
Speaker 3:And one of my friends just lost her child the cancer, and I've been checking on her every week because I told her this is what happens after the dust settles a few weeks after the funeral everybody goes away. I get it, they're busy, but it changes everything in your life and I'm glad. The moment she passed something in me, said get out of bed, because if you don't get out of bed, you'll never get out of bed Every day. I had a purpose got out and I still do that. Why me, god? Because I exercise. I eat well, you know, rarely drink, never did drugs, just did everything right. Only thing is, without my pregnancies I get hyper-emesis. So I'm trying to pinpoint why she got sick. Or was it just she's here to teach me something, and maybe that's the reason why I'm supposed to do the Mary Moon Foundation. Is she came here to open my eyes or our eyes?
Speaker 3:So, this is a little bit. Yeah, I love the kitty.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So what did your life? So Mary passes now. What does life look like for the Oki family? For a little bit it was dark.
Speaker 3:I don't know if you want to add stuff because I'm using all the airtime. Do you want to say anything?
Speaker 4:You're a great speaker, Christine, so you may speak, but yeah, you should add something too.
Speaker 4:So when Mary passed, you know, we did a quick walk. What was the walk for? We raised money for Neuro-Blessed on. We raised some money after Mary passed away, just within a month or a few weeks Three weeks later and we raised some money for Neuro-Blessed on. And we also wanted to have more kids. So, because it was really interesting for our older son, will, who's three years older than Mary, so he was about six or so at the time, you know, he became an only child, right, you know he wasn't only child, and Mary was born and then many became an only child again, you know, and so we didn't want him to be an only child. We were getting. You know, I wasn't a spring chicken anymore, or Christine might have been, but we asked the doctor to help with our pregnancy. They have more kids and when you do that ask the doctor for help Sometimes you end up with more than one.
Speaker 4:So about a year later, august 14th, john and Katie were born and that really kind of breathed a lot of life and positivity back into our home, especially with Will, our older son, who's now 21 and in college and all that. But he, that was just a great thing bringing John and Katie home. We got these great pictures of Will in the hospital holding his new brother and sister with a big smile on his face, and then we really felt that something happened to us that we wanted to give back to the community our experiences when we were in that hospital for a year with Mary. We were very well supported by our employers and by our community of friends and family, but we also realized that a lot of children were there with parents that weren't as well supported as we were, and it was really heartbreaking to see. I can only imagine being a parent having your child hospitalized and not having that level of support.
Speaker 4:So Christine started bringing things in and you can bridge off of this conversation, christine. She started bringing things in to the University of Minnesota Children's Hospital toys, because there was a room with toys and it was great to rotate the toys, but some of the toys were worn and you could imagine Mary's longest stretch in the hospital was nine weeks, 63 days straight, in a room maybe as big as a bedroom this room, yeah, yeah, this room and it was really confined and she couldn't leave because of her immune system and things like that. So we were rotating toys in and out, and so, when Mary passed, we wanted to give back to help replenish those toys. And so, Christine, help me out here now. You were bringing things in and you met Jen, right.
Speaker 3:Well, jen found out about me, so her name is Jen Foster, university of Minnesota, and so I'll back up why I started doing this. So one of the things prior to Mary's diagnosis and as a two-year-old in a hospital setting, she was freaking out. So child family life came in gently and they started blowing bubbles, that's all, and Mary just calmed down so they would come in the room. Hey, we got the activity and they'd have an activity room or they'd come in with different things and we would do arts and crafts. And each time Mary was in for her hospital stay, I would design a room. I'm like, all right, let's make it. Okay, it's Halloween and we'll do this.
Speaker 3:I remember taking stuff and making a chandelier and then creating just a whole different thing, just to change it up and do stuff. And while Mary was on the bone marrow transplant unit for nine weeks, I joked that I was Mary Poppins, because I'd bring in my big bag and we'd change out the toys that we brought from home. But we had to clean everything up because so think of a bone marrow is chemo on steroids. Your bone marrow will not regenerate unless you get the bone marrow transplant. So, mary, it was her own bone marrow. But the thing is she got some virus and it was eating it. So she usually there there just a few weeks and Mary it just kept rejecting it and she just this virus that was killing her. And then she got C diff, which was really wonderful.
Speaker 3:But the good thing before they got done with the Masonic hospitals, their building, that meant we could be in our own room afterwards when she had regular chemo, because otherwise you were stuck in a room with another child crying all night so you're not sleeping because IVs are beeping and me as a nurse I'd go on there and help them out. I'm like, okay, blood, okay, let's switch it over this. And then I do their input, output and everything top for them, because I know nurses are short handed. So but also it gave me a purpose.
Speaker 3:But so Mary passes and every few months I bring stuff down to them so the kids can have activities, toys, arts and crafts, you name it. And they kept coming up to me asking me do you want? You want to start a charity? I'm like my nurse, I'm just paying it forward, I don't want any recognition. And then I got pregnant with the twins and about a year afterwards they came up to me again. I'm like okay, god, if this is what you want me to do, I will do it. And then we had a first before. It's now Great Wolf, but it was called Waterfront of America.
Speaker 3:And Jess, walla walla people, and it just was huge. And so, oh and I, I have jumping around. So Jen Foss was the person. She was brand new to the job. She was the one that met with me and she just kept going. Are you sure I'm like? So she saw something in me that I didn't see because I was just like I'm all good, I'll just do this all for me. I'm not going to bother people, but I'm not very good at asking people for stuff, but with this charity, that's what.
Speaker 2:I'm doing.
Speaker 3:Yes, that's what he does, so you guys are a good team, yeah, but I'm good with going out there to businesses, because it's not for me. It's kids Now asking for myself. You know, as nurses, we're, we're no. I'm good, but no, it was, and it was very receptive of the people going okay, I'll give you this, and it just kept growing and different people coming in and it's just been an amazing ride you know.
Speaker 4:I think we should do a shout out to our friends, brian and Missy, who are there in the beginning too. Yeah, they helped us look into the 501C federal government program to become an authorized charity at that time Right, and our first couple of activities that we weren't to 501C3 and then we said let's take that deep and we didn't do some research and learning. Right, and the federal government guidance on how you become that right, and in doing so, it opens the door for more entities to donate to you because for them, it becomes a tax write off as well. So, you know, making that bridge in 2011 over to becoming a 501C3 really helped us, and we've created a great group of board members with Alicia and Jackie and Pamela that help us in all sorts of different ways.
Speaker 4:Everybody has different strengths around marketing, social media technology to help manage the website, the taxes that you got to do every year, so you know a lot of the things for it that a charity has.
Speaker 4:There's lots of things that have to happen behind. This seems to make it go, and then that allows us this time each year to go out and look for donations from all organizations, from individual people, from businesses, and we take all sorts of donations for our auction. You know the first, this is our 12th or 13th year now but for the last two or three years we paused on our silent auction that we've had COVID kind of prevented us one year and then the economic downturn we felt really kind of improper asking businesses and in a tough economy to donate. So we're going to bring back our auction this year on a little bit smaller scale than we've had and we're going to build from there. So we really appreciate. You know different organizations donate a product and gift cards are always so flexible and easy to, you know, put out there again, especially if you buy from that customer already, that vendor, already they go over well.
Speaker 2:And now that you've been established, doing this for a significant amount of time, I'm sure that you have your regulars that are like hey, we want to donate to this every year. Or I'm sure that there's people who have found you because they have a similar story to yours and so then they have that connection with you.
Speaker 4:And yeah, very much so. Really, you know, when we take a look at the people who've been with us for about 12, 13 years, is some of them been with us the whole time and some people rotate out, you know. You know I'm not. You know we got other things going on. This year Peter and Christine were not able to help. Maybe in a couple more years we have people move out of the Minnesota and you know, et cetera.
Speaker 4:But we always find new people, fresh people to volunteer. Help us run is set up on Friday night, march 15. And then we have to be there at 7am Saturday morning to get ready, set up the registration. We have some neighbors Renee, who ships out the tickets that people buy online. If they don't want to come and get a, will call, you know. So we have a whole variety of folks. Carol goes out to her regular list every year and she grabs and brings over to our house here, you know, set up donations and gift cards, and so it is. Yeah, we definitely have the regulars, but we also are always recruiting that new, because some people do get busy with other, Absolutely so.
Speaker 2:So we're going to say something, Christine.
Speaker 3:No, that was to say it is a lot of work and keeping it going. And I started doing fairs and making stuff and it's another way of okay, here's what I made, here's my story.
Speaker 3:And then you get more people and opens it up and we love. I think the best part is like I hope they bring you back someday. They've done the turtle derby down at the University of Minnesota and we bring stuff out for the kids and just the smiles on their faces. And the one thing that happens every time is there's a mother that comes up to me and they said they usually don't see this with other people that volunteer, that the parents come up to you and talk and say well, I got two things I lost a child.
Speaker 3:I've had a child at this place and I'm a nurse, so it's good to connect with them, give them encouragement, show them you know, look at me, I'm surviving. But the smiles on their faces between going there or going up to Crescent Cold, like they have their. It's Christmas, I'll just say it. They have Santa Claus and Buddy the Out there and so they drive around all the kids that are either terminally ill or have chronic illnesses and you're giving it all in the, just the glee, like they get to be a child. That is what's for it.
Speaker 1:They get to forget that they're sick and so that might be glee, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So how do you specifically tailor your programs to meet the unique needs of the children in the hospital? Because I'm assuming that you know some kids are super, super sick and some kids don't seem as sick, or some kids are more limited than others. So how do you adapt?
Speaker 4:You know, kelly, great question. You know. So our foundation runs about four events a year in Christy and I was talking about the Terrible Derby. There's other arts and craft shows that we do that allow us to get exposure to the community, our big events coming up on March 16th, which we can talk a little bit more about in detail here shortly. But really, how we contribute to both of the University of Minnesota Children's Hospital and Crescent Cove is through our ability to raise financial support for them and we provide.
Speaker 4:At the University of Minnesota we have an endowment fund set up. So most not all most of our contributions to them is financial and what it does is grows that endowment fund and that endowment fund gets bigger every year and then they spend the interest off of it to buy the supplies and resources that they need. So we've given them permission to, you know, use the interest off of that for wherever they need. You know, with the theme of the arts and crafts and the toys and the entertainment that the theme of Mary Boone Foundation was founded with, the great news about endowment is it lives forever, you know. So work will be gone some days, but they'll still have the Mary Boone Endowment Fund there, you know, generating interest that they can continue to spend.
Speaker 4:If you go down to the University of Minnesota Children's Hospital, you'll see the Mary Boone Foundation a plaque as one of their you know contributors to their services Crescent Cove. It's very similar financial. We know we do bring a couple other ancillary support items toys and gifts and things like that to both of them, but we really want to stay focused on funding, right? So Crescent Cove is dependent upon funding to hire nurses, hire the support, remodel the building, expand their services, etc. So just this past month we split $50,000 between the two that we, the Mary Boone Foundation here, raised over the past 18 months and provided them that financial support in that way.
Speaker 2:How do you collaborate with the hospital, the medical staff to ensure the well-being of the children that you're serving? So you guys aren't there all the time, but what gives you good faith that you're working with good people and the right things are happening?
Speaker 3:So with Child Family Life. That's what they went to school for. They know what the kids need. So I watched them through Mary's treatment and went they've got this and so I told them. I said I trust you, you have this. And they're all sending thank yous and I just they know more than me and just watching them throwing like theme parties and other stuff and how they were so supportive even to the day that Mary died. They did stuff with us, including my son. I just I have 100% trust in them because they're always reaching out, going, hey, we got this, want to do this, you want to volunteer and yeah.
Speaker 3:I think they're the best at knowing the wording.
Speaker 4:Over the years we bump into nurses that help with Mary at the hospital and we've gone to the Crescent Co Fundraiser Gala event at the end of January multiple times and then every Christmas every early December. Christine and Jack, you know the board member, they typically do, and Sue joined you too this year. Oh, she loved it. Yeah, you know, we did. They do a drive-through of the families that are there and we hand out Christmas trees this year, last year we had a holiday lanterns, so we have different things, and toys too, and toys that were donated and things like that. So we, through these other activities, we engage with the staff at Crescent Cove. It's just a wonderful group of folks.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and also too, during our Gala I'll make these big packets of stuff for them to bring to their organization. One year it was, the kids could paint birdhouses, so my son and I we were priming all of them and got all the paints and everything. Another one was pots. So every year we try to do this whole set so the kids have it and then they can enjoy it. And I know Chris and Cole sent us pictures when they use the birdhouses and it was for their Easter and get together and all the kids were painting and you just saw them having a great old time. I'm like all right we're making a difference and we're 100% volunteer me.
Speaker 3:So nobody gets to yeah.
Speaker 2:So that leads into my next question, which is what role do volunteers play in your foundation and how can somebody get involved to be a volunteer?
Speaker 4:Yeah. So a lot of this information is on our website, marymoonfoundationorg. My email address is there and I'll help organize and structure that with Pamela, one of our board members, as well. But we're looking for volunteers throughout the year for different types of contributions. Some people don't have time. They have product like birdhouses or pots, right, you know. Or one year we had pillowcases, I think. People crochet items for us. You know that are children centric. But reach out to me. My email address is on the website. So donations are always great. Volunteers are good, are always welcome.
Speaker 4:We're looking for a few more for March 16th. We have a couple we need for Friday night, the 15th, as we set up down at the Parkview Conference Center it's right next to Flyover America, there inside Nickelodeon University Mall. And then the 16th, we typically need a couple people helping put out signs, standing up balloons, and you know, then we have people that we have bead making, face painting. So there are some financial transactions and some directional type of support that we need volunteers to help provide our guests. So reaching out to me is great. Right now we can help. We need to always people resharing our Facebook page, resharing our website, you know, promoting the event. You know we have a lot of tickets we sold already. We've actually already sold 800 tickets for that event, which we're actually ahead of pace over last years. But they'll give us unlimited amount of tickets.
Speaker 4:And the key thing that we love our guests to know is we have exclusive access to Nickelodeon Universe on March 16th from 8am to 10. And our guests have learned to be there by 7.30, 7.45. Get there early, get your wristbands all set up, because 800 people is very insignificant quantity compared to the volume of people Nickelodeon Universe can hold. And so there are no lines. There are no lines that people going on the roller coasters, you know over and over and over again just running around getting back in line, getting back on the roller coaster, you know.
Speaker 4:So it's really fun and so we love to sell another 800 tickets. So promoting the event just word of mouth right is a great way to support our organization. And then those donations you know everybody. If they just pause for a moment, I think they know somebody, the favorite store, they know the owner or their friend owns a company. You know what can they do to donate. And we do have a couple raffle sponsorships available as well. So all that information is on our website and it directs back to my e-mail address.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I just kind of want to focus on the Merry Moon event at the Mall of America, nickelodeon Universe, which is coming up, you said, on March 16th. I have been there numerous times with my family and it is the best experience for the kids because, like you said, it's two hours where the park is closed, unless you have the special respite Correct me if I'm wrong and the kids ride on every single ride. They want to multiple times and in two hours you can do the entire park repeatedly. But if you go there on a regular day you're going to wait in line for an hour to go on one ride. So this is an amazing opportunity and experience for the kids. We always go have lunch after bum around the mall a little bit. You guys in the past have had like the room with the silent auction items. We always look around there. There's a bunch of stuff going on. It is awesome, it is, it is. It is like going there for free. It is a really good deal.
Speaker 4:If I could add, you know the risk. To make sure we're clear, the wristbands are good the whole day, Right?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 4:That first two hours is only for the Mirri Moon guests, and then what happens is right around 10 o'clock when it opens up for everybody else our guests will then come up to the conference room. That's where they engage in the jewelry making, the face painting, the auction, wherever else activities we have up there, but then they hang out. A lot of them hang out well into the afternoon, but get there early at eight o'clock because it's a blast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you want to be there right away, yeah that's right. We usually go eight o'clock at night. Yeah, it's fun. I usually have my son. I'm like bring a friend, like this is. And his friend's always like this is the coolest thing I've ever done. Like I've never been at Nickelodeon Universe and been able to ride this many rides. So it's good for the kids.
Speaker 3:Exactly, yeah, and you know one of the things too, when. So how we chose to go from the Waterpark of America to Nickelodeon is one of Will's friends. He's going to be an entrepreneur someday. Here's this 11 year old child going. I think you should go there.
Speaker 3:The lines are too long and I'll with Mary Moon at the Waterpark are now Great Wolf, and so we moved over there. Well, why not? And Mary's last outing was at the Mall of America. Yeah, she wanted to keep writing on the Paul Bunyan ride there, the log ride, and that she was so sick because she had a lot of uplift.
Speaker 3:No, she died 12 days later. So she got to at least do that and experience that. And so my friend and I went to the Mall of America when there used to be a glamour shot. So Mary and I did that, but I knew something was wrong with her. But she, every time we go there, I'm like this was her last place that she went to other than the hospital. So it has a great meaning to us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. I love when stuff lines up like that.
Speaker 3:Oh, totally, it's not a coincidence, no no. And it's so great to see the kids get so excited, like when the Vikings cheerleaders come or the characters come. Oh, the Vikings cheerleaders are coming right, yep oh pictures. The Vikings cheerleaders are coming right, yep the.
Speaker 4:Vikings cheerleaders are coming, and so we're looking at the pictures there in the past that were for photo opportunities. We haven't announced who's going to be there this year yet, so we're still working on those final details. We leave a couple of surprises until up to the about a week or two before the event.
Speaker 2:So, looking towards the future, what are your goals and aspirations for the foundation?
Speaker 4:Well, I think a lot of that is regulated by our own capacity. We have kids that are teenagers. We're still working full-time, so we have responsibilities to our own family and we have other hobbies and things that we like to do as well. So a lot of the growth or sustainability of the foundation is built around volunteers. We have fantastic board members that help us throughout the year on key things, leveraging their backgrounds and specializations that they bring to our organization, which is very critical. I hope to sustain it. I think Christine wants to grow it. I would like to first of all sustain it, at least until I get retired. I work 50 some hours a week already. So I mean, so was Christine, but she had a migraine this week, so this was an exception.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that was fun. Yeah, when you're busy, hold out of your eye, yeah.
Speaker 4:We've had no discussion around changing who we want to help support. We will always support the University of Minnesota Children's Hospital. That's where Mary went Hospital, children's hospice is well understood and it's something that people just don't like to talk about. They don't want to talk about children's. We talk about hospice for our 85-year-old fathers right, that makes sense to us, but not for a three-year-old child or for a 17-year-old young boy that has leukemia or something that's going to take his life. Hospice is ended life care. It's for the children that we want to give the most to.
Speaker 4:Another sad story was the Make-A-Wish Foundation. We applied for Make-A-Wish for Mary and they call us. After she died they were going to grant her a wish, right, and so we want to get active and provide those wishes, even in small doses early on to Crescent Cove. I don't think we'll ever change, but you never know. I think we're going to continue to help fund their support. Crescent Cove is full. I think we heard from Katie. All the rooms are full.
Speaker 4:I don't know if there's a fourth children's hospice in the US. The UK has like 30, right, the UK is like the size of the Midwest, right At the most. Right, they got 30 children's hospice we have, like Crescent Cove, is the third in the US, and so that's a really important thing, and I'll probably just wrap this topic up with. As I grew up, I thought cancer was something that happened to somebody else yeah, maybe it was a friend of a friend that had a child of cancer. And then it happened to me and it really changed my life. It made me really appreciate children. It increased a level of empathy I have towards things that happen to others a lot more, and it's something that we want to continue to help educate and make awareness around and people that lose their child. It's just terrible and we're still in pain. We're still in pain, but we love talking about Mary every day in the foundations away for us to keep that, those memories, alive too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's the people who haven't been through a terrible, terrible loss. They don't always know how to talk about it or ask about it. But I do agree with you where, when you have lost something like that, you do want to talk about it, because if you don't, like you said, it doesn't feel like you're keeping their memory alive, their legacy alive, their stories alive, and how important they still are in your life, even though they're not with us. You know.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, I've been total, don't talk about her and I'm like so I get to hear about all your kids' activities, but I can't talk about my charity and what we're doing for her and I'm like that's my way of keeping her alive, that's me being a mother here till I see her again. Exactly, yeah, but it is kind of sad how you are not supposed to talk about it because it makes the other person uncomfortable and some of the people that don't know the impact it has on parents. I remember coming back to work in. One of the people I work with never had kids goes. I know what you're going through. I just lost my cat and I just looked at her like really, and I wasn't mad. I was kind of sad that she thought her cat passing was the same.
Speaker 2:I'm sure you've heard it all. People will say the strangest things. That they think is comforting, exactly.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'll go talk about it. That's what we encourage and, as I was listening, kelly, one more way people can help is a lot of people work for organizations that the company themselves provides funding on a match, where if an employee gives $50, their employer may also do a full or partial match of that and give to the foundation. So we do have. I get checks every month in the mail, just a regular cadence, from these other giving programs where employees have set up Mary Moon Foundation and their company giving portal to be able to donate to us, and so there are a lot of little ways that people and those checks that $50, I mean we have costs to host the website. We have a storage unit for all of our supplies, so we have monthly expenses and all those things help offset those because those operational expenses are always exist. We manage them down so we can give as much to our benefactors as we like.
Speaker 2:So, kind of circling back to the beginning, I just kind of want to talk about neuroblastoma. I want people to know, like what is neuroblastoma, how does it affect kids and what are the common signs and symptoms?
Speaker 3:Well, at the time that Mary got diagnosed there in America there was 550 cases a year and in Minnesota there was only 10. So it's a very aggressive cancer that's in the endocrine and it usually will start on the adrenal gland and, unlike other cancers that grow and then metastasize, this one metastasize so I'll say, think of blast, it blasts out right away. So a lot of times by the time you catch it it's already stage four and they don't understand why. But if it's before 13 months of age, the survivor rate at that time was 95% and Mary's was at 30 to 40% To shoes older when you're at them.
Speaker 3:And then I found out from another nurse that worked at Mayo that obviously we all have cancer in this but the neuroblastoma is in there but our immune system keeps it at bay. So what went wrong with your immune system? That it just like you know. And again they said it has nothing to do with her diaphragmic hernia. So the signs typically that you'll see, weight loss, constipation cause. The tumor grows and it repeats with the digestive system. I almost said GI tract.
Speaker 4:I'm not. She's a nurse. I'm here to convert into layman's treatment, yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm also an endoscopy nurse I work with a gastroenterologist and colorectal, so yeah, weird combo labor and delivery in that, but anyway. So the other thing that I mentioned earlier direct coincide where you get the black circles, they, since it goes to the bones, they get very anemic and so they need blood transfusions and yeah, so the typical signs. And Katie no, katie, sorry, that was a slip Cause I named Katie it's middle name after my daughter, katie's early daughter.
Speaker 3:Yeah, her name's Katie, I'm Catherine, mary. So it goes to the bones. So it just mess right out and went to her liver. It just goes everywhere.
Speaker 4:And for me she was sick a lot. Okay, so there's the layman. Okay, so, yeah, so what happened? We were on antibiotics it's something that better. And then two weeks later we're on antibiotics again. And that was the thing was like Mary just keeps getting sick. We thought it was the daycare, right, because Christine called it a Petri dish, which is another medical term for places where a lot of germs spread. So yeah, and so what happened is is that it was just like she was sick all the time and I really that was for somebody in my shoes. If I could go back to that and say this is just not normal getting sick this often. Can we look a little deeper to what the root cause may be?
Speaker 3:And again, it's such a rare cancer that you're not gonna most people. Well, let me backtrack. Not backtrack, but one of the doctors told me the oncologist. He said most pediatricians will never see neuroblastoma in their career. It's that rare and so. But the treatments now have advanced. So while Mary was sick they were doing there's a lot of trials that they do in studies and I put Mary in there.
Speaker 2:I'm like well Was she on like research men's?
Speaker 3:Yeah, because that's the only way to advance it. So I'm like, yep, do it, we'll do anything to save her daughter and if it helps Mary, we could save other people. But one of them was this new immunotherapy, an antibiotic therapy, and they usually it's over many years. Well, they cut it short because it was a game changer and now it went from 30 to 40% survival rate to about 50% to 55. And so it was a game changer and Mary was one week out from starting that and her cancer came back. So when the cancer came back, the cancer gets smarter and so, whatever we threw at it, it just kept growing. It just escalated so fast what we watched. Within a three week period, mary just went downhill. Yeah, so they made such advances.
Speaker 3:So because it's such an aggressive cancer, they have to do multiple, not just chemo. They did radiation, they have to do the bone marrow. So that's that chemo on steroids. Because it's so aggressive, you got to put everything at it. When Mary first got diagnosed, they couldn't remove her tumor because it was too big. They had to shrink it. And when they were done with the surgery, the surgeon said, yeah, I couldn't get out of it because it was wrapped around everything because it just starts going to other tissue. That's remember that metastasis.
Speaker 4:But they almost killed the tumor, right. But the problem is is that through the few cells there you go through the heavy dose of chemo. You hope you get it all, but if you don't get 100% of it, it finds its way back and it knows how to overcome now the chemotherapy. So you have to do something different and that wasn't available to us at the time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so then After the bone marrow transplant they said, oh my gosh, she could go on this study, and so we were all excited that she could start on the antibody. And then it came back and you have to have 50% or less of cancer in your body and Mary didn't qualify for that so she can do that. So then we tried to raise money for Mary to go out to Sloan Ketterling. We were trying everything to save her, but we didn't know. Five days after our big fundraiser one of our neighbors had collaborated with other neighbors and did a big garage sale, so everybody brought their stuff and they raised a ton of money so we could go out there. And obviously we didn't. So it was, and so one of the kids that had neural blastoma at the same time Mary did, they did that same person a month to live, that person still living, because he was able to go out to Sloan Ketterling and get the treatment that he needed.
Speaker 3:But the sad part is the side effects from the chemo and the radiation. Mary lost half her hearing. She couldn't hear anymore, and it affects the heart, it affects many organs because, think of it, you're trying to kill something and it goes after rapidly dividing cells. So that's why they need blood transfusions, platelets, and we always knew when Mary's platelets were low, because she would get in a nosebleed, I'm like, oh, it's less than 10,000. And the range for platelets, it's a wide range. It's 150 to 450,000. What's a platelet? Platelet helps you with clotting. Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:I know that. I know that I don't know.
Speaker 4:I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Peters, here, peters, you have all the non-medical people to make sure they're not missing anything. I know. I'm glad you're around.
Speaker 3:And then the dirty nurse goes blah blah, metastasizing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3:So now, yeah, the statistics have changed and it's improving and, just like with all cancers, you just see this improvement. But there's not a lot of funding with just childhood cancer research, but it's moving in the right direction and you're seeing more people that are survivors. I'm envious of them, but I'm happy because they got to live.
Speaker 2:In progression. Right, at least things are going in a progressive direction. I just wish that could have been the case for you for sure. Thank you, Okay.
Speaker 3:But she, even the day she died, she goes, don't cry, everything's going to be okay and she has to go to heaven. So she's comforting her mother. It's not this weird and not weird, but she was starting to admit is what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:And you know I haven't died, but I feel like when people get to a certain point, it seems like people who have experienced that being around those people, something is happening where they feel like it is okay and it's fine and it's time to go.
Speaker 3:Well, she kept like rekeying and talking to something in the room, so I know she's out there.
Speaker 2:So diagnosis for neuroblastoma Is that imaging?
Speaker 3:First, of course, they had to do the biopsies and they went to lymph nodes and confirmed it there. And then they do I think it's M-I-B-G imaging, so what it. So there's different things, like it goes out of your kidneys and there's some. I'm trying to remember going back many years here. There's something with neuroblastoma that you met that they'll see through the kidney functions. And then the imaging is this contrast where if there's cancer, it picks it up and you see it everywhere. And I remember when we first looked at it she lit up like a Christmas tree because the cancer was everywhere. So, yeah, so there's obviously lab tests, there's different imaging and then obviously the signs and symptoms. But the final way that they knew, is they did that biopsy and it came back and, sure enough, it was neuroblastoma.
Speaker 2:Any advice that you would give to a parent or a caregiver who is recently learning how to navigate a neuroblastoma diagnosis for their child?
Speaker 3:I'll say number one stay away from Google, because they always put the worst case scenario on there.
Speaker 2:Stay away from oh Google. At first I was like what?
Speaker 3:did?
Speaker 4:she say Don't think about it for advice, because they always just tell you the worst outcomes. It doesn't need to be the worst outcome.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so yeah, I'll say that because they'll come in and the trust is not there. But that one is just generalized. When you Google anything, your doctor knows you because there's different types of neuroblastomas. There's one that's called MECH-amplified, which is the most aggressive, and there's some that maybe haven't gotten to that point of turning cancerous. So you can't look at that and it depends on your age. What stage is it? And your doctor will know more than going to Google and always questioning them. Yeah, you need to question things that don't seem right. You can get a second opinion if you don't feel right on something.
Speaker 3:But I think Google does more harm than good because they just they're like well, google says this. I'm like but Google doesn't know the exact thing that's going on with your child and you can't do this alone. Get help. We couldn't have done that without our friends and family. They would come over the labor and delivery girls would come to my house. They're like we know you're not going to ask for help, so they just came to my house and started cleaning my house.
Speaker 4:But if you do have to look things up on the internet, use Bing, not Google. He works for Microsoft. I love it.
Speaker 3:And so yeah, and there's obviously many apps that you can sign up and do meals and bring that to people. I had friends that would come down to Masonic for 30 minutes to an hour so I could go for a run just to get out of there, because certain people will eat. I went for runs, yeah, so what else would you add to that?
Speaker 4:I'm good. I think those are good. You're very comprehensive.
Speaker 2:You think you covered it Okay, anything else you guys want to share today?
Speaker 3:You probably want to talk about the day of the event, or no?
Speaker 4:I think we covered off the event March 16th coming up, we hope to you know anybody who wants to. My email is on the website. You know. Reach out if you want to help donate, contribute, you know in any way. And, of course, buy tickets. You know they're discounted and I mean it's cheaper than normal ticket for the whole day and you get two hours of exclusive access. That would be my final pitch and we're going to have some fun things in the Perkview Conference Center there. It's right next to Flyable America.
Speaker 2:People look that up on the map and if you Google shoot for the moon, or what is it called Bin, if you bin Shoot for the moon, then you'll be able to find it on there and, like Peter said too, so easy. If you do see it on there, share it on your Facebook page, because word of mouth is everything and it's free. It's free to hit share.
Speaker 4:Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and talking about this. It's a delicate topic and I just really want to get the awareness out there of I go back to people don't know what to do or say when they've never been in a terrible situation and just kind of bringing awareness to that and knowing how to treat people. We're still people and we still need all the things that we need. So thank you for sharing your story.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having us, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:I'll see you in a few weeks at Shoot for the Moon. All right, all right, hang on one second, okay.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:So, Christine and Peter, they're great people. They have been through a lot and they have really, you know, I just I admire how much they have been through their journey and what they have learned from it and where they are now and what they're doing for that community. So we're going to see them really soon because we are going to be going to the Shoot to the Moon event.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Jackson's coming. I asked him. And that's when we go to the Mall of America and you get the wristbands and they have silent auctions and all the things that they just talked about. All right, wait, what day is that? I think it's like March 15th.
Speaker 1:Oh, so the great after my break. Yes, I don't even know when your break is my break is next week, oh, so after-.
Speaker 2:This is the last week of your try. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:I knew it was coming up.
Speaker 2:I was going to ask you.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, you know, we have Tuesday off, right?
Speaker 2:No, I never know.
Speaker 1:We have Tuesday off, though, for staff development, and there's not a late start tomorrow. It's almost start. Yeah, I know, yeah.
Speaker 2:But Justin works from home for a little bit tomorrow, I think, and then I work late, so you either have to, you have to take the bus, all right, because we're not going to wake up to take you early. To take you to school tomorrow, all right, are you ready for your driver's ed Question? Yeah, okay, here it is, when you pass-. Sorry, I'm going to start that again.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:When another driver is trying to pass you. What should you do? Should you move into the adjacent line and reduce your speed? Should you stay in your lane and increase your speed? Should you move into the adjacent lane and increase your speed, or should you stay in your own lane and not increase your speed?
Speaker 1:Just so someone's trying to like what I can't hear you. So someone's trying to like what they're trying to like. What do you-?
Speaker 2:Someone's trying to pass you.
Speaker 1:Like going in front of you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like if you're driving along and someone's trying to pass you, what should you do? Is there-? An adjacent means move to the other lane.
Speaker 1:Oh no, just let them pass you. Just let them pass you.
Speaker 2:So stay in your own lane and do not increase your speed.
Speaker 1:So they can get around you yeah.
Speaker 2:And then you should If you're not in the slow lane, then you should get your ass over in the slow lane yeah.
Speaker 1:Was that right?
Speaker 2:Yes, you were right, I knew that. Bing bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing bing, you're slow. But not today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2:Good job, all right, do you have a? Would you rather for me? Yep, you ready for it, I'm ready for it.
Speaker 1:So would you rather never die. What is that called?
Speaker 2:Be immortal.
Speaker 1:Yeah or die right now.
Speaker 2:I mean, I guess I'd rather be immortal. I'm not ready to die today. What would you do?
Speaker 1:You'd want to live forever.
Speaker 2:I mean, I don't want to do either, but I'm not ready to die yet. What would you do?
Speaker 1:I'd rather have to be immortal. You were just criticizing my answer and then your answer is the same, I know, but if I was really, I would just I would just be like I don't count myself right now.
Speaker 2:Well, you can't no, and that's not funny. And you can't die because we have a pact where you can't die before me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, but if I was your age-.
Speaker 2:What would you?
Speaker 1:pick, I would-.
Speaker 2:You'd pick die now.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You think I'm an old you think I'm some old bitch Just ready to keel over?
Speaker 1:No, but I haven't even made it like far at all.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:You have like four times the years of me, whoa, all right.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't know. You have two.
Speaker 2:You don't need to harp on me so much.
Speaker 1:I'm harping on you.
Speaker 2:It feels like you're calling me old lady.
Speaker 1:I'm not calling you and tell them I should just roll over and die. No, I'm not, I'm just saying like, bro, I haven't even made it out of high school.
Speaker 2:I understand. Yeah, you better live forever. All right, do you want to hear a funny joke? Yeah, let's hear it the funniest joke you've heard all week. I know you're not going to get this one, but it's funny. Violet, all right. What's the loneliest place in Louisiana? Louisiana by yourself, because the bayou is in Louisiana by yourself.
Speaker 1:I don't know what bayou is.
Speaker 2:It's lonely when you buy yourself. I don't understand that.
Speaker 1:I know you wouldn't.
Speaker 2:But if you laughed and you think it's funny, you send me a shout out. All right, thanks for listening to another episode of On Our Best Behavior. Guess what, next week we have a special guest, june Hessler, the Midwest medium.
Speaker 1:This is a really great interview and you know what's the open interview? What Podcast puppies.
Speaker 2:Podcast puppies in the podcast house.
Speaker 1:Are you a podcast puppy? Tyson Violet, it's just cute, all right, bye, see you guys. Bye.