Festival of Trees for Primary Children's Hospital Experience
Brent Jones
Tuesday night was the opening night for the Festival of Trees so we decided to attend this event. On the first night the decorated Christmas Tree arrangements, gingerbread houses, wreaths, and quilts, are displayed and auctioned off. The rest of the week everything stays in place and mostly people just come to see things but the quilts and many things can still be bought.
People spend months preparing these items for this event and then they donate them and people bid and pay on them. Some tree arrangements go for several thousand dollars.
Our family has attended this event over a lot of years and this years was the biggest I have seen yet. Primary Children's hospital gets 100 % of the proceeds. They even get 100% of the food concession sales which are donated. Last year 16 million dollars was raised.
The hospital treated over 84,000 children last year. They are one of the top ten rated children's hospitals in the United States. The have a cancer center and a heart center also rated high in national rating. Every day at least 35 children are in the cancer intensive care.
In my post yesterday I said that, "people are generally happier when they have gratitude in their hearts. We cannot be bitter, resentful, or mean-spirited when we are grateful".
Coming to an event like this one and seeing how much people do to just help is a great opportunity. Feeling gratitude for being around so many others showing gratitude is a wonderful thing.