Raising Awareness for National House of Hope

Written by Taylor Brigham, Wife to Jake Brigham

I got an amazing chance to go to this conference a few weeks back with Jake, it is called Professional Athlete Outreach (PAO) and is for baseball players and (wives-gf-fiance) -not what you see on VH1, but a time get together meet each other, and have an amazing time of fellowship, worship, and much more!

One of the speakers was talking about how in the Bible it says give to the needy, love the blind, and poor, they got the opportunity to take some homeless San Fran people shopping (that got my attention, being a fashion major!) I was thinking how on earth could I give back, because most of us are struggling with money, then I thought... I have 3 full closets (ridiculous) and starting praying how I could get in contact with a good organization in Orlando when I completely forgot about a organization I've been involved with since I was 10 and is House of Hope which is a christian organization for troubled teens (boys & girls) My parents good friend works there, I called her to see her thoughts and she said "I'm going to let you run with this, and see how it goes!" I was so excited, and contacted a few of my friends who went through their closest and pulled some amazing gently used items!

Last night was the first night we did it, and we separated them into sizes, we had 6 girls sizes 1-16 last night! They had a blast getting to pick out some new things, and were so excited! This cute girl kept grabbing all these winter coats, and I was a bit confused by it since we live in Florida and come to find out she doesn't have any heat in her home, She was grabbing for her family..The HOH will be getting a lot of teens after Christmas, and usually has more than 6 girls.

These girls are just like us who love purses, shoes, and jewelry! We let the girls grab a pair of jeans, a few shirts, a dress for when speaking at events, and a few other items!

We want to do it again in January before we leave for the season, and we need items!

We can accept jeans, tops, jackets, jewelry, shoes, handbags, scarves, you name it--they do have a dress code so had to remove some clubwear items (haha) but all the strapless tops/dresses they can put a cardigan over it!

You can learn more about National House of Hope by visiting their website at www.nationalhouseofhope.org

How can you help? You can send new and gently used clothing and accessories to me by Jan 13, as we'll be doing another event for the girls the following week. We will also be accepting gift cards to TJMaxx, Target, Payless, Marshalls, and so on. I'll be accepting items at my house, and if you email me at taylorbrigham49@gmail.com I can give you the information needed to ship items down to these girls.

Playoffs 2011

Written by Nicole Johnson, Wife to Elliot Johnson

This September, I witnessed the single most awesome game I have ever witnessed, and may ever witness .  The day the Rays made it into the 2011 playoffs.

I went to a last night of the season dinner with some of the wives from the team, and we made our way over to the game, late.  I think that by this point, we were all avoiding dealing with trying to figure out if we were going to make it to the playoffs or not, and just didn't want to think about it til it was figured out for us.

As we watched our team fall way behind and got word that the Red Sox were ahead, we started to think it couldn't happen.  I mean, we were behind 7 runs.  Seven.  Then luck started to turn around, we started scoring, we tied, and we won.  (Obviously my details are NOTHING like what happened.  Seriously, google some of the youtube videos from the events that day and tell me you don't get excited).

We won.  We won the game.... and before we won, the Red Sox lost theirs.  Woah mama.

Whhhhaaaaa???

Did that really just happen?  Heck yes it did.

Oh. My. Gosh!

For as long as I've been with Elliot, the team he was on went to the playoffs.  Literally.  When we met in 05, his Fall league team was in the playoffs.  In 06, the Montgomery Biscuits went to the playoffs.  In 07, 08, 09, and 10, The Durham Bulls went to the playoffs.  We were kind of disappointed at the beginning of September because it was looking pretty bleak.  But the Rays pulled it off, and we were about to go play Texas in the playoffs!

The next 24 hours were a blur.  Celebrations, pictures on the field, booking a flight to Texas with other wives through text (we left the next day), Flying to Texas, and there we were.

The playoffs were over for us quicker than we would have liked, but we loved every minute of it.  It was the first time that we had gotten to be part of playoffs in the Major Leagues, and the crazy, unpredictable games were fun, and such a great experience.  I hope that I can watch my husband play in the World Series someday, and hopefully, win it all someday, too.