August 2005

Bike Show & Dinner – The next fundraiser is Saturday, August 27-a dinner and dance! Solution Motorcycle Club will be hosting a Bike Show & Benefit Dinner Dance for Kennedy at the Solution Recovery Club on Saturday, August 27th.

Shawn and James, the organizers of this event, attended the Moose Lodge Spaghetti Feed in July and decided that they wanted to do something to help our baby girl! This will be a really fun event with the dinner starting at 6pm and the dance going from 9pm until 1am!! There will be a $5 door charge that will include dinner and there will also be a 50/50 raffle! Anyone wishing to enter their motorcycle in the Bike Show needs to have their bike at SRC by 8pm which will be easy if you plan to be at the dinner!

I am continually amazed and blessed by everyone’s outpouring of love and prayers for our baby girl and appreciate all the work everyone does for us. We plan to be at the event and hope that Kennedy will also be able to attend. It should be a blast!

UPDATE
Even though we had to leave early (Kennedy was admitted to the hospital for neutropenia and fever that evening) we had a blast! The food was excellent and the guest speaker was inspiring. Many people stayed and enjoyed the music and dancing. We understand the event raised over $500! Thank you so much to everyone at SRC for their support!

September 2005

Garage Sale – The Garage Sale was a huge success! Including the raffle tickets sold, we raised over $1700!!! Fabulous! Thank you everyone for coming out and helping to support our precious girl as she battles leukemia! We appreciate all of your donations, help, and financial support. Please know that we could not do it without you!

October 2005

BBQ Raffle – Yes, we are having a raffle! It’s true!! For $10.00 per ticket, you can be eligible to win a luxury, stainless steel Vermont Castings Gas Barbecue Grill! This top of the line grill was generously donated by Rex Heating and Air Conditioning in Portland! This is the grill you have always wanted but could never afford to spend the money on! It could be yours for only $10.00!! This is their VCS4005 and is described as a “monument to modern culinary perfection.â€? It is cast iron and stainless steel with a 450 square inch cooking area and four burners!!!It also features a 15k btu side burner, backlit console and double condiment tray! This BBQ is valued at over $800!! Check out our new website soon for pictures! All of the funds will go to the Kennedy B Duval Contribution Fund to cover unpaid medical costs and care expenses. The drawing will be held at Platt Electric in Gresham on October 15th so get your tickets soon as they are selling quickly! In addition to their very generous donation of the luxury BBQ, Rex Heating & Air Conditioning will be sponsoring a fund raiser car wash at their location (14015 SE Stark St. in Portland) on Saturday, October 1st (HAS BEEN POSTPONED DUE TO WEATHER)! Join us there!! Check back for more details!

A WINNER HAS BEEN CHOSEN!!!
On Saturday, October 15th, Kennedy dove into the big box of raffle tickets and chose a winner! I know you are all waiting on the edge of your seat to find out who the winner is so…the winner of the luxury BBQ was Sue Schermerhorn! Yes, it is true! Sue has a new BBQ and we expect to be invited over soon for lots of good cookin’ 🙂 She was so excited and she just could not believe that she actually won! I do have the picture of Kennedy and her Papa with the ticket to prove it! Congratulations, Sue! Here’s to many good years of BBQing!

The raffle raised over $1600 to help cover Kennedy’s growing care and medical expenses! Many, many thanks to Rex Heating and Air Conditioning for the incredible BBQ, Marsha Lee at Copy Express (12777 NE Whitaker in Portland, Oregon) who donated the printing of all the flyers and raffle tickets (Please see her for all of your copy needs! She is fantastic!) and everyone who bought tickets to help our baby girl! You guys are all wonderful and you make it possible for us to concentrate on our family right now-Thank you!

Rodeo – Join us in honoring Miss Kennedy this weekend at the Boo Boogie Bash Rodeo in Albany, Oregon!
Saturday, October 15th
At the Linn County Fair and Expo Center
2700 Knox Butte Road in Albany
Gates open at 6:00pm and rodeo begins at 7:00 pm

It will be a blast and a dream come true for our little Kennedy!

UPDATE
Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who made this dream come true for our baby! Thank you to Scott Randall and Tex, Jan, Adam and Ashley Fults for all of the effort and time in putting this together and making everything run so smoothly Saturday night; oh, and for the 500 flyers that were handed out at the event! You guys are all so fabulous! We are so thankful and we can’t wait to get together again soon! You guys are the best! Thanks to Mike at Double H Western Wear in Salem who graciously donated the adorable boot-cut Wrangler jeans, Wrangler top, Montana Silversmith belt buckle, and Ariat boots for Kennedy and out of the goodness of his heart also gave Austin a beautiful Bailey cowboy hat and Double H cowboy boots. On top of it, Mike had a birthday gift for our future barrel racer, a Breyer horse of the world famous Scamper! Wow! Thanks to the Fults family for the donation of a black hat for Kennedy to wear, tiara and belt that was once Adam and Ashley’s. Thank you to Wayne White, the announcer, for making this night special and giving Kennedy a pink, cowgirl hat and Cowgirl Up! t-shirt! To all the riders who signed Kennedy’s card and made her feel so special. Many thanks to all the sponsors and the audience who made her feel like a queen. Thank you to Wild West Events and Double H Western Wear for everything! And how could I possibly forget Dandy and Breezy (the horses). Thanks again to the Fults family for allowing Kennedy to ride Breezy with Ashley and then around the barrels. I think our girl found a new love in her life! We just love you guys and feel like we’ve known you forever! It was an incredible night and we will be posting pictures soon of Kennedy, Rodeo Queen of the Boo Boogie Bash! We do have video tape of our baby’s debut-coming to a TV in your home soon! Again, thank you just doesn’t seem like enough!

Here is the article that appeared in the Albany Democrat-Herald:

Kennedy Duval, 5, the rodeo queen, rides with Ashley Fults, 15, of Salem as they parade the flag for a crowd of about 2,500 people. Duvall made a wish to ride with barrel racers, and the Fults family, Wild West Events and Double-H Western Wear made it happen.

It’s good to be queen

By Jennifer Moody
Albany Democrat-Herald

Kennedy Duval just turned 5 on Wednesday, but she knows what she wants to be when she grows up: a barrel-racing cowgirl.

The little girl from Mulino, near Molalla, can’t concentrate on her dream just yet because she’s busy fighting acute lymphoblastic leukemia. So family friends decided to give her a hand by making her a part of the Boo Boogie Bash Rough Stock Rodeo, held Saturday at the Linn County Fair & Expo Center in Albany.

“She always wanted to be in a rodeo, and her parents didn’t know how to make it happen,� said Jan Fults of Salem, whose neighbor knows the Duval family and whose children are rodeo competitors. “So Wild West Events and Double-H Western Wear made sure she’s going to be our rodeo queen tonight.�

Wild West Events invited Kennedy; her family, Keith, Melenie and Austin Duval; and grandparents Bob and Linda Platts, all of Mulino, to be their guests for the Boo Boogie Bash.

Kennedy rode out with Jan’s daughter, Ashley, 15, on the Fults family quarter horse, Breezy, to kick off the rodeo. She waved and smiled shyly as the crowd of some 2,500 people gave her a standing ovation.

“She don’t like the hospital, she told me. She likes horses,� Wayne White, the evening’s emcee, announced to the audience. “She don’t like cowboys — she likes cowgirls. I told her she was on the right track.�

Double-H outfitted Kennedy with a Western shirt, pint-sized Wranglers and size-11 purple sparkling cowgirl boots. To that, White added a tiny pink cowboy hat, a cowgirl T-shirt and a sparkling tiara.

“Looka here. We have your queen’s crown, goes right on your hat right here,� White told her, slipping on the tiara.

He handed the microphone to Kennedy, who called a timid, “Thank you,� to the crowd. With that, she and Ashley were off to circle the arena, carrying the American flag.

November 2005

4-H Club – Thank you so much to Patti Torres, who attended the Boo Boogie Bash Rodeo and wanted to help our baby, for raising $230 🙂 for Kennedy at a 4H Horse Show in Coos County!!! That is wonderful! We really appreciate you going to all this effort for us. Patti also has some more plans in the works for our baby-we look forward to meeting her and thanking her in person for all her efforts! Thanks again, Patti and all the Coos County 4H kids who came out to help our girl.

February 2006

Willamette Falls Hospital
Conference Rooms 3 & 4
1500 Division Street, Oregon

February 10 & 11, 2006
Fri. 10th 9:00 a.m. – 6:30 p.m.
Sat. 11th 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

The Indoor Garage Sale at Willamette Falls was a huge success!!! It raised over $3400 in just 2 days!!! What a blessing this is to our family. What does $3400 pay for? It pays for one set of orthopedic braces ($1100), a day in the Day Treatment unit at Emanuel ($1300 including chemo), a month of gas to and from the hospital ($200), a month worth of diapers and wipes ($150), prescriptions for a month ($150), tube feeding bags for a month ($400) and two days worth of formula ($100). Many thanks to Katharine and Becky Wilson for all of their hard work and to those of you who staffed the Garage Sale (a special acknowledgement to my daddy who took time off of work on Friday to spend all day and all day Saturday working for our girl)-you have all blessed us so much and words can not express our appreciation. Many thanks to Willamette Falls Hospital in Oregon City for hosting the fundraiser and to all of those kind people and businesses who donated items, their time or gave/bought at the Garage Sale…Thank you so very much. It would not be possible for us to do all that we do for Kennedy without the tremendous community support that we receive.

April 2006

Thank you to everyone who turned out and had pizza to help our baby girl! The Kennedy B Duval Contribution Fund received a check for $660!! That means they sold over $1300 in food that day that was in honor of Kennedy!! You are all so great!! We could not do this without you!! We will be having another fundraiser at Papa’s Pizza in the fall so watch here for more information!

July 2006

Many, many thanks to Prayer for the Children for all that they have done to help Kennedy this summer. They has put on 3 events and raised over $2100 for the Kennedy B Duval Contribution Fund! We were fortunate to attend the Charlie Brown Musical and had a wonderful time. They also gernerously provided us with a copy of the Eric Whitacre concert at George Fox University. We can’t thank you all enough for attending these events and to Prayer for the Children, especially Andrew, for doing so much for our little girl. Thank you again.