Hello friends, I hope this message finds you all well.  So, the last time I made a post was Feb. 20th.  My, how things have changed since then!  Who knew??!!  

I just wanted to reach out to check on everyone. I know how hard this is for all of us. So much lost.  Graduations, vacations, proms, end of school celebrations, jobs.... the list goes on and on.  Such devastation and loss. So many people are hurting. There really are no words. 😢 

The Collins family is hanging in. In all honesty, we are used to living in isolation.  Quarantine was our life with Maya for many years.  But it still doesn't make it easy.  Annabella is sad to be missing the rest of her freshman year at Xavier and she had a wonderful internship lined up at a non-profit working with Spanish speaking ESL students that has now been postponed to next year.  She's been a trooper though, knowing that she most likely will be living at home all summer (she would've been living on campus for the internship).  Nothing like being stuck in quarantine with the "rents" all summer when you could've been footloose and fancy free on campus as a 19-year old!!  She's taking it waaay better than I ever would!  But, we are blessed to have an amazingly unselfish daughter who knows that it could be MUCH worse, and she is blessed to have a bed to sleep in and food on the table during these trying times.

Our foundation has been hard at work trying to help several pediatric cancer families during these trying times as well as support some incredibly promising cancer research. Many have lost jobs and are struggling to pay the medical bills, let alone put food on the table. Being such a new foundation, we don't have the means to help as many families as we would like, but we do our best to help as many and as much as possible.  All of our fundraisers have been cancelled for the near foreseeable future. We hope to host our annual Bingo events in the fall/winter, but for now everything is on hold. We are still collecting donations for raffle/auction items if anyone would like to drop anything off with me. If we have to cancel all events this year we will hold onto them for next year. Thank you to all who have dropped off items to me so far this year!

We are so thankful to everyone who donated items to our Mother's Day fundraiser in conjunction with the Shine Like Sable foundation.  We were so sad to have to postpone the fundraiser to next year, but we really had it in our hearts to be a Mother's Day event, so we have postponed the event to the same day, May 8th, 2021.  Please mark your calendars.  We will be notifying everyone when tickets go on sale next year.  And if you have already purchased tickets we will hold onto them for next years event or you can request a refund from EventBrite. 

To read an article about our foundations and the event visit: https://citylifestyle.com/cincinnati-oh/articles/life-and-culture/kindness-matters

Today is national #GivingTuesdayNow, an emergency response to the unprecedented need caused by COVID-19.  Today is also Cinco de "Maya", a day that our family loves to celebrate with blue margaritas and toasting to our girl!  You can see in the photo below that Maya loved Mexican food!  If you have it in your heart to donate to our foundation, or to my St. Jude fundraising team in Maya's memory we would be so grateful.  I'm trying to top $1K in donations today!  You can also Venmo to LIVELIKEMAYA!

In conclusion, please feast your eyes on the train wreck "Dance Challenge" that our family performed last night to raise $$ for St. Jude.  Tom hurt his foot during his epic jump at the end so no more tries for us!! Needless to say... I need to keep my day job... ha! 😂  So, please don't let this embarrassing dance (and Tom's hurt foot) be in vain!!  Please consider a donation to our foundation or to our St. Jude team!!  

Thank you all for your continuous support and generosity and stay safe and well!  #LiveLikeMaya