Support Me!

Please help me (Kimberly) with my gymnastics fund-raiser!

August 1, 2020

Support Me!

Hello, I’m Kimberly Tart. My mom runs this blog site but I get to write about this (with a little, okay, maybe a lot of grammar and editing help). I’ve never done a fund-raising thing – volunteered at a lot of stuff, but not tried to fund raise myself. 

Here goes…

I have been learning the sport of gymnastics at WGV Gymnastics and recently made the Xcel team! (My name is on the official roster here!)  My goal is to go all out – I love gymnastics! I plan on competing as high as I can possibly go and when I get to college to study veterinary medicine, I hope to be on a college gymnastics team!

Right now I’m doing some fundraising to help offset my costs and provide businesses with an outstanding advertising and charitable donation opportunity!  (Regular people still get the donation benefits!)

Our gym has a 501c3 Booster Club for our athletes to raise funds to help offset our competition costs.  This is WGVABC (WGV Athletic Booster Club).  Information on their sponsorship packages can be found at https://www.wgvabc.com/become-team-sponsor.  A portion of your sponsorship funds go directly into my booster club account (if there is no name attached, it goes to the general team fund).  Plus your business receives a powerful advertisement package that begins the day your banner is hung (click <- link to see an example of displayed banners) – so you get 365 full days of advertisement!  We have thousands of athletes and family members coming through our gym weekly and all see our sponsors’ bright banners. 

I totally appreciate your time reading this and any sponsorship level you choose! 

Please choose a sponsorship level or donate and mention my name, Kimberly Tart, when you do! 

Thank you!!

🙂 Kimmy Tart

Upcoming Fun Day!

Mark Your Calendars! Saturday, April 27, 2019 is Family Fun Fest!

March 14, 2019

Upcoming Fun Day

Mark your calendars!  (If you are near Saint Augustine, Florida.)

Saturday, April 27, 2019

This is the day of the Family Fun Fest at Francis Field in downtown Saint Augustine!

This family friendly event (with lots of fun activities for all ages) with include obstacle courses (registration is required ahead of time for that!), blow-up activities, and lots of games, food, and a show filled with local talent.  All of this is to benefit a great local charity; Alpha-Omega Outreach!

This will be our third year participating as a vendor.  Three of my teens/preteens will be volunteering (meaning I likely won’t see them all day).  The younger ones (and whichever of the cousins joins us) will be enjoying the activities with an Aunt or Grandma in rotation (and coming back to “base” for snacks and water!).  Meanwhile, I will be presenting my books and the girls’ various craft items will be decorating the table (and hopefully we sell a lot of these things so we can donate more money back).

These are photos from last year, but we had a blast.  We expect to have a wonderful time this year as well and would love for you to join us in our family fun annual tradition!

(My children make plans to be at the next Family Fun Fest as we drive away from the current one! – my niece has been asking me since the week after 2018 Family Fun Fest, “when can we go back to Family Fun Fest?”)

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

Fireworks Over the Matanzas

July 8, 2018

Fireworks Over the Matanzas

Ask any of my kids what their favorite day is one answer will be… “Fourth of July!”

Why?

Because we always go downtown to watch the best fireworks show ever! (Okay, maybe I’m a little prejudiced because I live here, but I get a travel magazine and it listed our “Fireworks Over the Matanzas” as one of the top 5 annual fireworks shows!)

20160704_183744

We make is a production! (Yes, that was not this year, but our longest “train!” because it included me – taking picture – and the buggy!)

FB_IMG_1530796743088.jpg

(Jaquline at the Fireworks Over the Matanzas years ago – photo credit, my amazing friend, Stacy Moorehouse)

This was the first year we went without the baby buggy – took a foldable wagon instead. And yes, it doubled as Anastasia’s buggy from the van to downtown and Lucas’ back to the van.

20180704_215821560658078.jpg

We bring snacks, water (hydration, as Christina calls it – thank you, Civil Air Patrol), juice (Becky wanted juice to refill the water bottles this year), and lots of energy! The girls always make new friends at the bayfront.

20180704_212524.jpg

This year a new friend family from Atlanta, Georgia shared their bag of glowsticks with the girls and Lucas! (This made them very excited! As you can see, Lucas made glasses to “see very far away.”) Even though Christina said she was “too big” for glowsticks, between Becky and Kimberly, they had her wearing one! (Kimberly has “a pirate earring” and Christina is covering her bracelet!)

20180704_212431.jpg

Finally, after enjoying awesome music (before the city music came through the speakers, we could hear Evan D’s music from Harry’s! He’s a local artist I like to hear.), playing and talking with new friends, snacking on lots of fruit and sweet potato chips from Currie’s and Aldi’s, and having Aunt Becca join us, we got to the main event

The best fireworks show on the bayfront! (I can’t record more than about 22 seconds at a time on my camera, so we only caught a few snippets of the show, but it was amazing!)

We trudged home, (Lucas slept in the wagon, in a picture back up there^ somewhere) laughing, singing, and enjoying our family time! Oh, and yes, Lucas fell asleep during the fireworks! 🙂 I was so excited and even mentioned “this is the first year everyone is awake to see the fireworks!” haha! Then he was out.

20180704_212455.jpg

Will we face huge crowds, packed potties, and no-see-ums again? Oh yes! And look forward to an amazing 6 hours or more next year at our special bayfront spot, making new friends and enjoying each others’ company!

We love the City of Saint Augustine’s Fireworks Over the Matanzas!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

Amazing Live Music: Evan D Music

(photo from Evan D Music’s Facebook page)

May 29, 2018

Amazing Live Music: Evan D Music

Our weeks are pretty full of stuff.  Between our crossing driver shifts, taxiing children to and from college classes and groups, and just general life – it is awesome to have a mostly-weekly couple getaway afternoon on Mondays.  (THANK YOU! Shout to my amazing sister, Becca, who is brave and possibly just as crazy as me to sometimes text, “Pick them up by 8am tomorrow.”)

That is what we had this week.

The adventure of just Louis and me began with dropping off 7 children at 4pm (Anastasia had “sleptover” Sunday and Christina’s Monday class was canceled because the college was closed) to 6:30am the next day.  Only one cab ride to take someone home before the night was ours.

We had worked in the morning (all 3 cab calls) and ferried Christina to Marine Street for her Civil Air Patrol volunteer time, then spent almost 4 hours playing yard and board games with the girls (I even got to conquer an Age of Empires map with Rebeccah!) so when our time started it was like, “okay, what now?”

I wanted to walk on the beach and surf… wrong tide, and I don’t do baiting-shark surfing (aka night surfing).

Louis said, “I remember hearing some really good music downtown two weeks ago at the Tavern.” (He means the new Taberna del Caballo.)  Oh my! You should go there on Mondays from 4pm to 8pm – trust me, your ears are in for a very special treat!

So down we went.

And there, I was transported backwards to the very skillful, amazing raw guitar sounds that I heard my minstrel-of-the-dawn Daddy playing when I was a child and the awesome worship jams with Louis and his team and I first met.  Clean music, inspiring riffs (…you know, the things where a string musician picks the strings with his fingers so fast the fingers blur all together and you sit in awe with your mouth open…) and timeless songs.

We were listening to the sounds of Evan D Music.  (This guy is about to release a record too… yep, I’m not that old, but projects are records of time and passion, even if they are downloaded on a smart device in snippets.)  He plays around town almost every night but at the Taberna del Caballo Mondays from 4pm to 8pm.

One lady at another table had the best stadium whistle I’d ever heard (right through her fingers, no device!)  I’m sure people at the Oasis on the beach heard it.  You should have seen the two adorable kids dancing along with most of the patrons when one particularly moving song was performed.  (Louis doesn’t dance, so I’m not going to dance without him… but had the girls been there, we would have been dancing around too.)

I love live passionate music.  You can tell when an artist puts their heart and soul into their work – and Evan surely does.  I grew up listening to my Daddy play “story” songs from Phil Collins to Gordon Lightfoot to Jackson Browne, Moody Blues, Beach Boys, and all in between.  (We sat down to hear Evan playing “Kokomo” which was way cooler live with a riff-master on guitar – and he can sing the higher harmonies – I hadn’t heard that since my little brothers’ voices changed!)  My Daddy’s eyes would light up like he had stars in them when he strummed the tunes.  For years, I thought Lightfoot’s “Minstrel of the Dawn” was the story of my Daddy.  I loved just listening to the guys play when Louis and I first met; they’d be crammed in Grandpa’s attic room and wailing away and I’d hide on the stairs or they’d be practicing in the empty auditorium and I would slide off to the dark side entryway and dance.  I still love it when Louis (who claims he’s really rusty) plays guitar or Christina or Becca play piano.

Real music is the love of my heart.  It lifts my soul, engages my mind, heart, memories, and emotions, and spins a relaxing web of tranquility through the air.  This is what I felt listening to the talented Evan D Music; and this wonderful little place on St. George Street will be a regular haunt for us from 4pm to 8pm as long as we have Mondays off and Evan is playing there!

Check Evan D Music out on Facebook and YouTube and come be in his audience before he makes it to the Amphitheatre!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

Family Fun Fest 2018

May 4, 2018

Family Fun Fest 2018!

We spent all day on April 28, 2018, a beautiful Saturday in Saint Augustine, at the Family Fun Fest.  This annual event at Francis Field supports the community work of Alpha Omega Maternity Home and their related outreaches.

Alpha Omega has been a vital community resource in Saint Augustine for a long time.  They are a wonderful organization to support – and we love the all-day fun!

received_1671393042916102.jpeg

I set up a vendor booth to sell my printed books, DVD books, audio CDs, some of the girls’ assorted crafts, and my mom and dad’s beautiful prints.  We had a spot for children to make free bookmarks with fun yarn tassels.  (This was on the bright teal table & was Kimberly and Jaquline’s idea. Lots of kids stopped to color!)

20180428_124728.jpg20180428_124813.jpg

Christina and Rebeccah volunteered all day!  Didn’t they look sharp in their aprons?

20180428_134037656783239.jpg20180428_111304.jpg

Kimberly, Jaquline, Jillian, and Anastasia were ambassadors for the face painting booth.  The artist did such an amazing job transforming their faces into bright works of art!

20180428_103157.jpg

20180428_102347.jpg

Lucas wanted to be a tiger, but after watching his sisters and cousin sit still, he decided running was the life for him and no face paint was needed. Notice the big blow-up fun things behind the sister-cousins?  Once those went up, Lucas didn’t want to sit still!

Kimberly’s face paint scared some little ones.  (It almost scared me when she closed her eyes and had snake eyes on her eyelids!)

20180428_144013.jpg

Lucas almost never stopped dancing.  But then, the DJ was great so there was fun non-stop music.

We bought wristbands for the kiddies and they became “pros” at the various obstacles by the end of the day. (The lady at the Boy Scout’s obstacle said Anastasia and Jillian kept challenging each other to “new heights” like “tightroping with eyes closed” or “doing ballet across the bar.”)

20180428_163131.jpg

This event started at 10am and ended at 8pm.  We were there setting up at 7:30am and left the field just before 9pm.  (I did have to wait on my volunteers to finish assisting with some break-downs and you know; we like to chat!)

Local performers from dance schools to martial arts schools to youth groups and bands filled up the stage.  (Christina’s vantage point for this was perfect: she saw every act and relayed amazing reviews to our booth later.)  There were plenty of games for little ones.  Rebeccah got to play with them for hours!

FB_IMG_1525058147052.jpg

Jillian and Anastasia were so excited to meet Princess Cinderella!  Lucas was beside himself – he came back repeating, “Mommy, Cinderella is here!”

20180428_143454.jpg

The team obstacle course was fun to watch!  We clapped and encouraged each one – Kimberly’s commentary should have been shared over a loudspeaker for everyone else to laugh at!  (She has some Aunt Katy & Aunt Becca MC skills in there.)

Lucas finally took a 30 minute nap under my table (the “campout zone”) about 5pm.  He came to get a banana, but didn’t quite finish it!

20180428_165338773745787.jpg

None of the little girls wanted a break – but they all fell asleep in the van on the way home!

Although it wasn’t a great “sale” day (we sold one book, one bracelet, and one set of clips), it was an amazing “fun” day and we’ll definitely be there again next year!

Come join us!  Follow Alpha Omega for updates and opportunities to volunteer at this event or at the campus.  Together, we can help our community grow stronger!  And, yes, have some amazing fun along the way!

20180428_1913231629479736.jpg

Oh yes, just this last picture of Anastasia snuggling with Grandma.  (No, she wans’t asleep, she was pretending so she could snuggle!)

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

Follow me!

Get my latest posts delivered to your email: