SSR Holiday Cookie Walk!

What a BLAST we all had at our first annual Holiday Cookie Walk event! With yummy treats and great company, we all lost track of time and chit-chatted all morning long. Thank you to Anita, Jean, Bonnie, Nora, Kara, and Nancy for celebrating the holidays with us and making it such a fun day in the office!

There was a wonderful assortment of cookies that were exchanged, and boy were they delish! To put the icing on top of the cake (literally), Kelsey brought in snowmen cake pops for everyone to decorate and take home. For those who are unsure of what a cake pop is, in plainest terms, it is cake on a stick! Mixed with frosting and molded to whatever shape you wish, cake pops are a HUGE hit and we had such a fun time decorating our very own snowmen cake pops.

Check out all the fun here, and thanks again to all the volunteers who came to celebrate with us! If you couldn't make it this year, there's always next year. Best wishes to all for a joyful holiday and a happy new year!

First Midwest Bank Rocks!

Manierre Student Authors

The final fall dog visit to Manierre School was such fun! Not only did each student receive their very own self-authored book, but Ms. Ernetta Roper from First Midwest Bank was on hand to make the day even more special.

As a member of the First Midwest Charitable Foundation board, Ms. Roper presented SitStayRead with a grant check for $5,000! That goes a long way towards making the program at Manierre possible.

Ms. Roper, daughter of a school teacher herself, spent the entire hour in Ms. Oceguera's classroom listening to student's read her their stories and helping them edit--doing her mother proud!

Many thanks to First Midwest for their commitment to children's literacy! Be sure to click on the photo to see lots more pictures of the kids and dogs at Manierre.

Celebrity Sighting!

That's award-winning actress Rondi Reed with SitStayRead dog Milo at Saturday's CARE Faire!

Sarah Scott reports that Ms. Reed was quite taken with the idea of kids reading to dogs and would like to get involved. Woo hoo!

Can you imagine Rondi Reed as a guest reader in a SitStayRead classroom? We can! Very exciting. Actors read the book Broadway Barks, by Bernadette Peters to a class of 2nd graders and talk about why reading is important in their profession, as well as to them personally. No telling how many kids might be inspired to become actors!