Shameless Plea for Pledges - Cute Lily Picture

The Charming Lily attends preschool in the next village over, around the corner from Charming David's tiny school. Lily's preschool is a wonderful place, a tiny cottage with 3 teachers and 12 children per session. The staff are affectionate, relaxed and humorous with the children, even on days when it's like herding cats to get them to participate in activities. And the children absolutely adore the preschool - Lily would go every morning if she could!

This year, the staff have worked really hard to make school time free-flow, with all kinds of activities offered outdoors year-round. Their goal is to improve the grounds by putting in all-season, safety artificial turfing (www.nomow.com; check it out!), but this will take some time (and lots of money) to do.

The preschool is totally non-profit, funded through fees and charitable donations. Even use of the school building itself is a gift from the Sandringham Estate. This means that money for improvements to the school buildings or grounds must come through fund-raising. We do bake sales and boot sales (yard sales), quiz nights and raffles.

One of the most enjoyable fund-raisers in the school year is the Sponsored Toddle. The children take a walk around the grounds at Sandringham Park, with teachers and parents along, of course. Each child is sponsored by friends and family, who pledge some amount of money for the completed walk. This year's Toddle is coming up next Friday, on 16 June.

As the volunteer Chair of the preschool committee, I've been sharpening my fund-raising skills and seeking larger donations from local organizations (500 pounds from one, thank you very much), but every little bit we raise helps. Since so many of our friends and family are not in England, I am opening the virtual pledge sheet to you here. If you would like to help support Lily in her Toddle, you can email me (susieknits@gmail.com; the sooner, the better, but I will pass on donations whenever they come) with your pledge amount and I will record it on her form. Then you can snail-mail in your pledged amount to us, or Paypal it to dhonsinger@gmail.com, whatever you like - we can work out the details amongst ourselves.

I wish I were there to beg for donations in person but this will have to do! Thanks for reading, friends.