It is with great disappointment that we officially announce the cancellation of Winter Festival 2014 benefiting Toys For Tots. Throughout the year our family has been dealing with medical issues that have prevented us from dedicating the necessary time to match and surpass the event from 2013. In the past, the logistics of this non-profit event have required the commitment of a full time job: a time-consuming job without pay, one that was worked to make the world we’re living in…better. Sadly, we just cannot match the pace this year. To put it in perspective, we began serious prep for the 2013 event the prior February and more or less kept that pace up for the entire year. Despite the fact it is a ‘seasonal’ show, the logistics are complex and take 9-10 month for us to do it right. For 2014, we could not juggle our careers, education and health, particularly our health, in order to prepare all parts of the show. Again, Patience and J. Scott love running the event, but we are not able to move forward in 2014 by ourselves the way we did in 2013. We recently had a few offers from people willing to help out this time, but honestly this year we would have needed more than an assist. To succeed, we would have needed someone to take ownership of the reigns by April of May. This did not happen, and honestly, we didn’t expect anyone to run it for us. This was our labor of love, and we hope to do it again in the future. We want to thank everyone for their participation this past year and in the past. Of note, we’d like to give special thanks Garrison Carida, Echo Base, Star Wars: In Character (and the Artmor Project), Mariam Mikhail and Carey Granger. As for us, Patience, J Scott and the boys will continue to support Toys For Tots and donate our time where we can. We also have not ruled out re-visiting the Winter Festival for 2015. We had big plans for this year, and some of them included ideas from your feedback. If we do this again, we will undoubtedly have a reliable food source secured as well as an adequate seating area for lunch. Additionally, we have plans to better manage the waiting line for the Blast-A-Trooper event if we are lucky enough to have Garisson Carida join us again. However, if we are going to do this again, we would need you, our guests, vendors and friends, to help us as well. We received almost unanimously positive feedback about the event, but some negative feedback was indirectly filtered to us. We are always open to suggestions for improvements, and more importantly, we are open to volunteers that would like to have direct involvement. Many of the shortcomings from the prior event, as well as some of our reservations about holding an event in 2014, were surrounding a lack of volunteers. Although we did have a few people helping out on the day of the event, it was not enough. If we do this again in 2015, we will run it, but we would need a commitment for more volunteers during the lead up to the event as well as on the day of the festivities. We’ll put the feelers out there early, and if it looks like people want to make it happen, it will. We had fun doing it and met so many new friends last year that we know had a good time. Otherwise, if it is not meant to happen, the Winter Festival will live on in name. Patience, J Scott and their kids will continue to volunteer for the wonderful Toys For Tots organization in one way or another.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 17:35:31 +0000
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