Each Sunday I spend my afternoon with the amazing children at Gillette Hospital. Yesterday I met a very sweet little boy who asked if I would visit him today too. I was delighted by the invite and had a wonderful evening visiting with all of my friends at Gillette. Below are some of my favorite friends I visit with each week!
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The last two days I have spent my afternoons at Jump Rope for Heart. Jump Rope for Heart is an event where children raise money for the American Heart Association and are sponsored to jump rope after school. Thursday I jumped rope with kindergarten through second graders and today I jumped rope with third through fifth graders. The students all had a great time jumping to their favorite music and even competing in jump rope competitions and drawings to win prizes like jump ropes, basketballs, and soccer balls.
Jump Rope for Heart offers many benefits to students. First the money raised will help fund potentially lifesaving research into heart and blood vessel disease and stroke, our nation’s No. 1 and No. 3 killers. It will also help fund the development of educational materials that teach the importance of heart health and STAYING FIT. Schools also receive gift certificates for physical education equipment that help buy classroom equipment. In addition, Jump Rope for Heart benefits the students too. Besides being fun, it teaches them jump rope skills and the importance of physical activity and community service. Depending on how much money the student raised they are eligible for thank-you gifts to play with at home. Finally, Jump Rope for Heart builds school spirit and helps connect schools with their community. As a child I participated in jump rope for heart every year. Heart disease runs in my family so I love to support the American Heart Association in every way possible. Three years ago my Buppa (grandpa) died from heart disease and I miss him every day. Buppa’s father and my grandma’s mother also both died from heart disease. It is wonderful to see so many children wanting to serve their communities and help people who may be sick. Jump Rope for Heart is an amazing event and I recommend it for all students. This was a successful event with a great turn out of students. We all had a blast jumping rope together, learning new jump rope tricks, and dancing when we had breaks from jump roping. Until next time, Samantha Phillippi One of the questions I feel I always get asked as a Miss Minnesota contestant is “If you had to choose a platform other than the one you have now and CMN; what would your new platform be?” My platform Dance this Weigh: Physical Activity for a Healthy Life is my life’s passion. I love teaching our state how to live a healthier and longer life but if I HAD to choose another platform topic I would base my platform on celebrating our differences-diversity. I currently work at a culturally diverse elementary school. I love working with my students and together finding commonality between peers while celebrating our differences.
Today we had an all school morning meeting presented by Tou Ger Xiong. Tou Ger Xiong is a Hmong man who shares hilarious stories about his life history. He captivated the students with funny stories, entertaining rap songs, and great jokes. His performance began with his experiences coming to America from Loas and the Hmong culture. He then talked to the students about being bullied by his classmates. He shared storied of how his classmates would make fun of his eye shape or how he talked. His final message to the children was, “If we all looked and talked the same life would be pretty boring; it would be like coloring a picture with only one color crayon.” Personally, I love to learn all about different cultures. I feel it is important to embrace our differences to better understand our peers but it is also special to find similarities between cultures. We have different skin colors, different dialects when we talk, and even different traditional foods to eat. One similarity among ALL cultures is the importance of living a healthy life (this may sound corny but it is something we all do have in common). We all want to live a full, long life and the best way to ensure that is to eat healthy and stay physically active. Dance this Weigh encompasses ALL cultures and offers a way for EVERYONE to come together to share our common goal of being healthy. Let’s celebrate diversity and Dance this Weigh together! (Below are pictures of Tou Ger Xiong’s presentation. Sorry they are blurry but they are pictures of him storytelling, rapping, and taking pictures with students) A HUGE congratulations to my cousin Patrick and his hockey team who are the 2012 Junior Gold State Champions. Patrick is the team’s goalie and performed to his best; not letting a single puck past him. The final score was 3 to 0. I am so VERY proud of you, Patrick, all of your hard work has really paid off!!
Happy day after St. Patrick’s Day! I hope everyone had a fun and safe day. I did not celebrate St. Patrick’s Day this year but I did have a great day yesterday. I started the day by going to my cousin Patrick’s hockey game with my family. His team is at state right now and won their game yesterday so they are playing today for the Junior Gold State Championship title. Patrick has dedicated so much of his time to physical training so he can be the best goalie for his team; I am very proud of him. I have never seen a more strategic and talented team. If they play today with as much drive and teamwork as yesterday I have no doubt in my mind they will win!
After Patrick’s hockey game my family and I went to Coon Rapids to celebrate John Leggate’s 70th birthday. John is one of the sweetest guys I have ever met. He helps out the Miss Coon Rapids organization so much and is always there to give me his support. He is a leader in his community. He has become a part of my family like the rest of the Miss Coon Rapids board and I am so glad I was able to spend my day with all of them celebrating John’s birthday. Since it is so nice out today I hope everyone spends some time outside. We are taking my sister’s daughter for her first family walk. Her name is Aubriella and she is just over a week old. Good luck to my cousin Patrick today! I am off to Gillette Hospital to spend some time with some very special kids. Enjoy the day, Samantha Phillippi The last three mornings I have spent some time at the Lino Lakes YMCA working out with the Silver Sneakers. The Silver Sneakers are a group of seniors who have chosen to live a physically healthy life and they go the YMCA regularly to do so. I think working out is so much fun for them because they do it with friends as a social activity. These men and women come many times a week to see their friends and work out as a large group. After a great work out they often have coffee together or go on group field trips. By the end of day one I was already part of their group and the next day I was greeted with smiles and hugs. I had such a wonderful time getting to know everyone in this dynamic group.
While at the YMCA I went to three water aerobics classes and a tai chi class. The water aerobics is such a hit with seniors because the water is very forgiving on their bodies and is easy on their joints. My grandma has extreme arthritis and loves to go to water aerobics classes because she is able to get a great work out in without the pain. An important practice for this age group is that they never stop moving! Going back to basic physics, Newton’s first law of motion is an object in motion stays in motion; the same is true with our bodies once we stop moving the harder it will be to start again. My grandma is still able to actively move to this day because she has practiced good physical health her whole life. I have had questions in the past, by people who follow my platform work, asking what age I target my platform to reach. My platform mainly focuses on children and teaching them how to live a healthy life, but the easiest way to do that is by setting a great example. This is why I not only visit classrooms, but I also attend events where I can reach parents and other community members. The Silver Sneakers are role models in our community and I am proud of each of them for setting such a great example for their grandchildren, friends, and neighbors. I love spending time with people who care about being physically fit. Thank you Silver Sneakers for letting me hang out with you this week. Until next time, Samantha Phillippi I had another wonderful visit at Gillette yesterday. We worked on our fine motor skills while making fuse beads. These children have such great imaginations and are very artistic. I look forward to my visit each week and love getting to know the children better week to week.
Last night I attended the Miss Minnesota International Pageant. I have never attended a pageant that is not in the Miss America system so this was a whole new experience for me. It was interesting to see the many differences between the two pageant systems. I went to this pageant with my Miss Coon Rapids board to cheer on and support my friend, Megan Ehlert. Megan was Miss Coon Rapids 2011 and crowned me Miss Coon Rapids last month. She did a wonderful job and received 4thrunner up! We are all so proud of her! I am very excited to spend my next few mornings at the Lino Lakes YMCA, supporting the YMCA seniors in their physical fitness routines! Until next time, Samantha Phillippi Last night was the Sweeps Pageant where the last two titles of the Miss Minnesota class of 2012 were crowned. Before the pageant my family, my wonderful Miss Coon Rapids directors, and I went to dinner. It was so nice to see so many current and past local title holders there supporting the pageant. I thought it was funny to see all of us Polar Plungers a few hours later all dolled up. We are good at what we do because we can jump into a frozen lake in the afternoon and then get all dressed up by the evening. At the end of the night Miss City of Lakes and Miss West Metro were crowned. Congratulations to Miss City of Lakes 2012 Brittany Tischmak and Miss West Metro 2012 Bethany Beniek. I am looking forward to a wonderful week at Miss Minnesota with all of these amazing and talented title holders.
Two years ago I did the Polar Plunge and helped raise money for the Special Olympics. Ever since then I have wanted to plunge again but had no one who was willing to jump into the frozen lake with me. This year we made a group of Miss Minnesota contestants to plunge together. Our team name was Queens 4 Fitness, we had six girls on our team and we raised nearly $500 for the Special Olympics. We plunged into the freezing waters of Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis with our crowns on and matching homemade shirts. We made the t-shirts to look like our sashes. This was the best pre Miss Minnesota bonding experience; you really develop strong friendships by jumping into a frozen lake together! There were almost 4,000 other people there to plunge and there was also a pee wee Plunge. The total of money raised online (not including the many check people
brought in) for our day of plungers was $705,450! The actual plunge itself was the coldest thing I have ever done! Once we climbed out of the lake someone tried to interview us but I was so shockingly cold I couldn’t even speak. We all ran straight for the hot tub and spent some time warming up before changing into dry clothes. After we were dried and dressed in our souvenir Polar Plunge shirts we went our separate ways to get ready for the Sweeps Pageant that evening. It was a blast getting to know my plunging buddies and I can hardly wait to spend a week with them at Miss Minnesota. Last Friday night I was asked to make an appearance at Hamilton Elementary School’s Family Fun Night in Coon Rapids. I saw this as a perfect opportunity to promote my platform, Dance this Weigh. Dance this Weigh focuses on educating our community on how to live a healthy life through physical activity and nutrition. At the Family Fun Night I was given my own table which I filled with autograph cards and flyers. The flyers I made were loaded with information about how much exercise we all should get each week and fun activities to do as a family. I also added the new “food pyramid” that is actually shaped as a plate and is easier for children to understand. My Coon Rapids Junior Royalty sisters were also there painting faces and doing stamp tattoos. I even got to test out my face painting skills on a little boy named Max who wanted a tiger on his face. My favorite part of the night was dancing with my little sister queens at the dance that was there with a DJ playing all the movin’ and groovin’ songs. I had a marvelous evening talking with families and getting the word out on how we can all start today to live a longer and healthier life.
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