7th Grade's First Annual Car Show!

This post is not food-related and there are no amazing recipes lurking at the end; (just a disclaimer for my fellow food-blog-readers out there.)

I'm posting this particular page mainly for the benefit of my daughter, her friends and classmates; and our family and friends who live out of town - just sharing and showing off - so bear with us...

Sunday my "Middle Sprout" and her 7th-Grade classmates held an AWESOME fundraiser at their school, in the form of a Car and Bike Show. (Classic Cars, Hot Rods, Classic Motorcycles, etc..) Basically LOTS of purdy cars!

By way of explanation, my Sprouts attend a great private school and each grade organizes little events throughout the year to help defray costs of those "extras": field trips; music, electronic and science equipment, class outings, etc. Usually these are the typical bake sales, car washes and candy-bar sales. Ugh. We decided to end the school year - and our fund-raising efforts for the year - with one big, exciting event!

We had no idea if it would be successful or if anyone would even come - (despite the our advertising and careful planning)... but, Oh My Goodness! what a great day it turned out to be!

Over 60 great cars of all makes and models entered, and just TONS of people came out to see them! I'm definitely not a "car person" so I know next-to-nothing about these events, but all the participants had only good things to say about 'our kids' and the way things were organised and planned.

I'm so pleased and proud of the kids and their hard work, despite the funky weather that was alternately hot, cold, sunny or windy with sprinkles of rain...

My daughter kept busy selling Italian Sodas most of the day (other booths sold popcorn, coffee, doughnuts, burgers and hotdogs - even some vegetarian ones!! - raffle tickets, tee shirts and car "stuff"); She and her best friend were also the "Trophy Girls" at the end, handing out awards, and posing with all these car guys for pictures... they loved it!

(One of the 7th Grader's Dad's even won a trophy plaque - he was so proud with his car trophy and his daughter - I just had to get a pic!)

Lest you think I kicked back in a lawn chair, let me assure you, this was a TOTAL "whole family" event... starting with me dragging the Sprouts out of bed at 5:30 on a SUNDAY to help get things set up for the day... oh yeah, that was a thrill.

I was also the lucky parent who got to supervise the kids' "face-painting" booth, and despite my original skepticism, it was actually a lot of fun; Fortunately, I had VERY talented 7th Graders helping me out - no one would have paid for MY face-painting skills! My littlest Sprout kept herself well entertained having them do "paintings" on every exposed body-part - she went home looking like the Tattooed Lady!

And my older Sprout got wrangled into selling tee shirts when the original person didn't show up. Yeah, even though it was for little sister's class, and she pretended to be too cool to even BE there, she enjoyed helping (and handling all that money) too!

This was the first time most of us had ever attempted anything like this, and how great it was for these kids to see it turn into such a success! As each car left the event, the kids stood in little groups down the drive way and cheered and thanked them for coming. Very cool!

I am totally amazed at the work put into restoring some of the incredible cars we saw. However more than that, I am in awe at the hours of hard work put into this event by the parents *ahem* and students of the 7th grade class....

Can I just say we were absolutely EXHAUSTED by the end of the day? Even so, we're already making bigger and better plans for NEXT year!