ice cream + a cause = an ideal day

My friend Matt is one of the most decent human beings drawing air.  And his amazing wife Ange is no slouch and often keeps my world spinning rightly on its axis.  I love it when two amazing people join forces and create additional incredible human beings to populate the earth. 


Matt works for a car company called Darling's and  he is in charge of the adverstising department.  Someone in the company came up with this brain child: a charity ice cream truck.  The ice cream is free and donations are accepted to go to whatever cause the truck is dedicated to that day.  How cool is it to work for a company that pays you to go around town and give out free ice cream all day on a Friday?

 Sandi has a classmate, Laurie,  in anesthesia school who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.  She has two young kids and is going through the same rigors of this program while undergoing chemo.  Can you even picture this?  We asked Matt if the ice cream truck might be free to dedicate a day to Laurie and her family and he said yes!

Sandi took the the entire day off and we had the best time all over town as a mobile ice cream-giving unit.  The truck even provided us with hats.

 

This ice cream truck, and the whole experience really, is the coolest thing you ever saw.  Laurie and her family have the University health insurance, the worst possible insurance you could ever hope to not have if you have a chronic medical condition. I spent all of last year on the phone with them trying to convince them of their responsibility to cover my diabetic supplies.  They have major road blocks and pathetic caps on the amount they will spend on you in a calendar year. I am afraid for Laurie just in that regard.



If you donate $25, you get this really cool shirt.

In truth, I really got into the whole thing.

We made a stop at the University of Maine and Matt had a friend there who had a some tricked out mini bikes.  This was an opportunity I couldn't pass up.

Whenever I see people standing near the road in costume, I can't help myself.  I beep and wave.  I'm a sucker for a costume.  I was out on the sidewalk shouting, "Free ice cream!" and I got lots of waves and a couple of customers.  But then I got a man smoking a cigarette who flashed me his nipple.  I find this a strange reaction to seeing a dancing ice cream sandwich on the side of the road, but whatever.

We picked Maya up at preschool and for a while she was the only kid on the truck and she was all over that thing.  Does this picture make anyone else a little nervous?


With her makeshift megaphone she was yelling to people: "Free ice cream! For real!"  People couldn't resist this curly-headed four-year-old passing them chocolate eclairs.

After school, Ange brought her kids and we brought Ella and the twins.  We were bummed that we weren't nearly as busy as we had been in the morning but they still had fun.

I mean running an ice cream truck and dressing up as an ice cream sandwich after school on a Friday?  What could be more fun?

 

The final total raised for Laurie and her family was $1,939!!!  Matt said the most the truck had raised previously was $600 so this was really a whopping success.  It was all thanks to Matt using his connections with local businesses to get them to match what their employees donated and setting up appointments to be at those businesses at certain times throughout the day.  Thank you so much to Matt and his staff, to Darling's for making this all possible and to all the people who gave so generously!

As Matt said, "I can't think of a better way to spend the day, surrounded by friends, making people smile and helping someone in need."

So if you need a car, go buy it from Darling's okay?