Secret Millionaire

There is this new show that just started this past week called 'The Secret Millionaire'. It is so inspiring. It is about a millionaire (different one each week) who goes undercover as a poor person, a bum, someone who is struggling to meet the needs of everyday life. They are placed in an extremely poor city and given $100 for the week. $100 is what people on welfare in the States receive. $100! Could you even imagine having to pay your rent, buy food and other necessities with $100?! You may think, 'Well why are they on welfare anyways? Are they too lazy to go and get a job?'. These are people who have just had some bad luck and have to try and pick their lives back up and survive. Anyhow, the millionaire's job is to give away at least 100,000 of their own money to anyone they'd like, anyone who touches their life.

This one woman that the secret millionaire met was a construction worker. She had a house, and everything she needed. One day at work she got hit by a live power line and fell about 20 feet onto her back. Every bone in her back was broken. When she recovered, she had lost her house, her company and lived on the streets for over a year. She got a couple good breaks, some people helped her out and she started up her company again, and found a place to live. Let me tell you, this lady was amazing. She works her butt off everyday. On the weekends when she doesn't work, she gets up at 4:00am and goes to the homeless shelter to help them get breakfast ready and feed the homeless. The millionaire asked her why does she get up so early on the weekend when she's so exhausted from work. She simply replied that someone did it for her when she was on the streets.

The people who are struggling and just trying to survive are so amazing. It is so touching to watch and it makes you realize how selfish we are. These people are just so inspiring. They are so self-less and compassionate for others and they do anything they can to help someone else. We need to start helping the less fortunate and stop complaining about stupid little things. We complain about having to work too much, at least we have work! We complain that we have so much housework to do, at least we have a roof over our heads! We complain about having to go grocery shopping or cooking dinner. At least we have food to eat everyday! We complain that gas is so expensive, at least we have cars and we can afford to get gas. It just really puts things in perspective and makes you realize that we need to be thankful EVERYDAY for what we have. We need to stop complaining about things are don't even matter.

Secret Millionaire airs on Wednesday nights at 8pm on the E! channel. I highly recommend it, you won't be disappointed.

Eden

I went to a 'alternative' high school, as they called it. It was pretty much a Christian school. We had the uniforms that always had to be tucked in properly, the strict mennonite teachers (well most of them) and an even stricter vice principal. I am not one of those people who wishes I could go back to my high school days, I didn't really like high school that much. My parents made me go to Eden and I think if I had've went somewhere else I would've liked high school much more.

Some of you may be offended by what I may write, but know that this is just my opinions and experiences during those years. It is nothing against anyone personally.

Looking back on my high school experience I think that Eden sheltered us from a lot of things that go on in the world. I'm not necessarily saying that it was a bad thing but I don't think that it was a good thing either. I think it was a lot of trying to look like the perfect Christian person, and we were judged if we didn't pretend to be. I think (I don't know for sure...well yeah, I'm pretty sure) that I was perceived as a bad kid in high school. And I really wasn't. Some of you may be surprised, but I never did drugs, I drank ONCE (and got so sick I didn't touch another drink all through high school)... the only "bad" thing I did was smoke. And personally, I don't think that makes you a bad person. In a regular high school that wouldn't even change anyone's opinion about you but in that school it did make me a 'bad' person.
I was shy so I had my group of friends and I didn't try to make new ones. Sarah and I would occasionally skip school (honestly, if that's the worst thing my kid was doing I would be so grateful!) and the one time we got caught the vice principal told us we were 'riding the fence of Christianity'. What the ?!?! For skipping school? Needless to say my dad had a few words with him. I think the focus was a little off there. I think if he had taken the time to get to talk to us, he would've realized that we weren't bad kids. It's not like we were out being promiscuos, or doing drugs or getting drunk every weekend...we skipped school. I remember our grad trip to Washington, D.C. someone in our class pulled the fire alarm in the hotel. Who did the teachers come to to blame? Me. And it was actually someone they would never had suspected. When we got home I was pulled into the office and the teacher that blamed me apologized. Judgement. I hate being judged!
Like any school there were a lot of nice people that went to Eden and there were a lot of people who weren't, there were friendly people who didn't judge others and there were people who had nothing better to do than talk about everyone else. There were the strict teachers that didn't particularly like a lot of us and there were the ones who actually got to know us and made a difference in our lives.

Don't take any of this the wrong way, I didn't hate high school. But I wouldn't want to be back in high school like a lot of people. I think the focus was a little off, a lot of trying to be someone perfect and I think that there was a lot of judgement. But I met a lot of nice people and I met a few of my best friends that I know I will have for life.

How do you think you were perceived in high school?

I think now that we've all grown up and matured, it would be so awesome to get together again for a little reunion.

What a day...

What an interesting day I had yesterday. Rachel and I have started a little business called The Frosted Cupcake, which is obviously selling cupcakes. We do showers, parties, weddings, etc. Since we've just started out, we have to get ourselves out there, make ourselves known. Rachel found this craft show that is huge in Welland and after talking to the co-ordinator, decided to sign us up. The lady informed her that last year there were 3000 people that came through and this year they were expecting 5000-10000 people. Sounds good right? Saturday we spent about 6 hours baking 25o cupcakes.
Sunday morning Rachel calls and says that she just looked at the form to find out directions and realized that the show actually starts at 10am...we thought it was noon. Oops! Not a great way to start out the day. We rush out and race to the show and actually made it there about 10:15am. We get there and all the other 40 vendors are there set up and ready to go. Luckily people hadn't really started coming in from the public. We set up and wait...and wait...and wait some more. No one was coming to this show! Supposedly it had been advertised on the radio, in the paper and word of mouth since it was so huge last year?! By noon, we had sold one cupcake. ONE CUPCAKE (actually 3, but 2 were from Shandi and Todd, and they bought them out of guilt)! We started talking to the other vendors and every single one of them, this was their first time at this particular show, and all of them were VERY upset. They were all told there would be five or ten thousand people coming. Strange? I think so. If it was so successful last year, why wouldn't the same vendors come back? We started thinking it was a scam. Each vendor had to pay $45 to get their table with cheques made payable to this particular lady. Plus, to get into the show you had to make a donation. A few of the other vendors came over and bought a few cupcakes for themselves so we were up to $16. Sweet. Only $144 to go to cover our costs.
We then tried to brainstorm what we could possibly do with 234 delicious little cupcakes. We went around to all of the vendors and started handing them out. Okay, so now were down to about 200... that's a lot of cupcakes. We thought of a few ideas and decided to break our contract and start packing up at two (we were supposed to stay until five). The lady was just glaring at us the whole time. Then other vendors decided to pack up too! We thought that was pretty funny. On our way out Rachel said to the lady that we were very upset and we were leaving, we told her we made nothing, didn't even come close to covering our costs and now we're stuck with all these cupcakes that are going to be garbage at the end of the day. At least the other vendors can keep their products and sell them another time, we have to get rid of ours. She said she lost a lot of money too...yeah right...she's going home with $1800!
Anyways, at this point it's hailing (which made it easy to load up the car...not) and we are just laughing at our luck. Remarkably we still are smiling, and having a great time. We drive back into St. Catharines and make our first stop. The hospital. We run to the ticket meter to get our parking ticket (in the pouring rain). We go on every floor and give them to all of the nurses, and thank them for their hard work. When we come back out to the car, we decide to give our parking ticket to this guy coming in, since it had an hour on it and we only used about 10 minutes. He starts laughing and says, "You actually paid for parking today? It's Sunday!" I guess that was just our luck, there's $2.50 out of our $16 profit! :) Next we went to the Women's shelter, then the ambulance station, Hospice niagara and all 3 fire halls, thanking people for doing such a great job in our community. And the guys at the fire hall let us go in the fire trucks and into their back room where they wait for the calls! I felt like a little kid on Christmas! It was so fun! I always wondered what they did while they waited for calls. Now I know.
I know it's hard to keep a positive attitude when things don't go the way you want them to, but we should always try. We had such a disappointing day, but we kept our attitudes positive and we turned it around. I haven't laughed as much as I did yesterday in a long time. Although it didn't go well at all at the craft show, I had the best day, and I felt so much better than I would've if we would have sold out of cupcakes. We were able to put a smile on other people's faces and it was so worth it. We don't do enough nice things for others and NOT expect something in return.
Try to do something nice for someone this Christmas season, it is so worth it!