For The Kids! THON 2013

So even though I was still in Florida and not up at school for THON, for the first time since I started at PSU, I was still keeping track of what was going on all weekend. Throughout the horse show during drag breaks, I was watching the live webcast on my phone. For the first time on a day off I sat and did basically nothing, except watch the remainder of THON. The last four hours are always the most tearjerking part of the whole weekend. But as always, so worth it. I am so unbelievable proud of my school and proud to call myself a Penn Stater. My first THON, we raised $6.5 million. Six years later and we raised $12.34 million. That is out of the world and unspeakable. We broke the $100 million mark for money raised for pediatric cancer. That is why WE ARE... Penn State and no one can tell us otherwise.

Like I said, I spent some of my time at the horse show watching THON. I was busy though, covering AO, Adults and Juniors. On Friday, the AOs were awesome in the stormy weather after the torrential downpours that we got on Thursday. And the rings looked fabulous for the amount of rain that we received. Continuing the trend, the juniors were great on Saturday and moved right along. Victoria Colvin racked up with blue ribbons and was on her way to the championship ribbons.

                       *All photos property of Phelps Media and cannot be duplicated

On Saturday night, I went to the Nations Cup qualifiers with Emily and Rebecca and it was so cold. The class was amazing, as the top riders are coming out with their top mounts, but it was cold. Not a fan.

Sunday, after spending the whole day watching my alma mater do amazing things, we Phelps helped out with the Danny and Ron's fifth annual lip sync. This event was so much fun. It is the only kid-friendly event during season and helps the kids raise money for an important organization, while still having fun at the same time. There were over fifteen groups that performed and they were all great and you could feel the energy and see how much fun they were having. The highlight of the night, was that Gloria Gaynor attended the event to perform as well as being a celebrity judge. Her performance of "I will survive" had the entire room on their feet and she was amazing. (See facebook for the video and more photos.) The event raised $160,000 for the rescue, which will help build a new shelter for the dogs.

It was a very busy weekend and it is going to be an even busier week, as it is week 7 and Hunter Week, which means that all the hunters get to show in the International Ring. Let's get ready to roll!