Stepper-Ette Spaghetti Dinner/Silent Auction

Hello everyone!

I am excited to share the information and photos from last night's event! The Stepper-Ettes host an annual Spaghetti Dinner/Silent Auction and I had the opportunity to serve food, sell raffle tickets, draw for the winners, hang out with the kids, and help facilitate the silent auction! It was a wonderful event and over 600 people were served!

With two of the younger Stepper-Ettes!

The silent auction had some amazing items!

Some of the awesome younger volunteers, gotta love those Stepper-Ettes!

So cute! 

Serving was my favorite "job" of the night, it is more fun when you get to interact with everyone and be social! The Spaghetti was also very yummy!

With my dad, he works SO hard for the Stepper-Ettes!

Getting ready for the 50/50 raffle!

With Dae! She is a joy to work with at the studio!

And the drawing..

The winner! She was so happy!

My station for most of the night was the 50/50 raffle table!

Serving salad with Sierra, one of my twirling students!

Her name is Rachel too! :)

WIth Miss Heartland, Kim Brennan. Kim and I have had such a great time attending events together this spring! Looking forward to sharing more moments with her!

Dancing with some of the kids after the dinner!

Overall, the event was a huge success! It is always a ton of fun to help out at the Stepper-Ette events where I can see lots of familiar faces! Now looking forward to three more weeks of training for the world championships and for Miss Nebraska Orientation!! Can't wait for everything that is coming up! I will make sure to keep everyone updated on my events and travels!

Thanks for reading!

Rachel

Miss Lincoln

Special Olympics Breakfast of Champions!

Good afternoon!

This morning I had the amazing opportunity to volunteer at the Special Olympics Breakfast of Champions! It was so amazing to meet all of the athletes and sponsors for this amazing organization. I learned a lot this morning about what Special Olympics Nebraska has to offer, and I was beyond inspired. Seeing the great turnout for this event was also very inspiring for me! I am so glad that I (along with Kim Brennan, Miss Heartland) had the opportunity to give our time to such an amazing organization.

Here we are with some of the athletes that we had the pleasure of meeting! We had so much fun with them this morning welcoming people to the event! They had a lot of energy for 7am!

Here are Macy and Beth, two of the younger athletes for Special Olympics Nebraska. They were both a little shy, but they were amazing girls and so much fun to hang out and play with this morning at the event! We had a lot of fun talking to Beth's mother, Lisa, a former Miss Missouri!

Kim and I welcomed people to the event and showed them to their seats, we never knew a volunteer opportunity like that would change our lives so much, but we were both so inspired that we are eager to spend more time with the Special Olympics organization in the near future!

Here I am with two of the other volunteers, they were from Lincoln too!

All in all, waking up at 5a.m. to volunteer at this event was beyond worth it. I am so glad that I had the opportunity to meet and chat with so many of the athletes and can't wait to see some of them again very soon! Kim and I kept saying how inspiring the event was and we decided that we would like to hold a baton twirling event for the athletes in the future! I would like to thank Katie Dischler and PlanIt Omaha, as well as Special Olympics Nebraska for allowing Kim and I to volunteer this morning!

Now onto more Miss Nebraska paperwork and preparations, as well as school work and three more weeks of preparing for the Baton Twirling World Championships! 

Until next time,

Rachel

Miss Lincoln

National Pancake Day at IHOP!

Hello all!

As you may have heard, yesterday was National Pancake Day! Anyone who stopped by IHOP received a free stack of pancakes for a free will donation to the Children's Miracle Network. This event is always a lot of fun, and it is always so wonderful to speak with people who have been directly involved with the Children's Miracle Network! I spent the evening greeting people and serving the free pancakes, it was a wonderful experience, and from what I could tell, it was a huge success! The Children's Miracle Network had set a goal this year to raise 2.7 million dollars, and I believe it was achieved! A special thanks to IHOP for allowing such a wonderful event to take place in their restaurant!

Here I am with some of the IHOP workers, they are troopers for working on National Pancake Day! The event brings a lot of people to IHOP in a short period of time and it can be stressful! We all had a great time serving the pancakes, though!

I had the great privilege of meeting multiple families that have worked directly with the Children's Miracle Network, it is always inspiring to hear the stories of children overcoming sicknesses and also hearing the family's love and support for CMN!

Here are some of the hard-working cooks at IHOP! They had a big job yesterday with all of the free pancakes that needed to be made but they still had time to pose for a picture!

This is Rain, she was so excited to get her free pancakes, and to meet the "Yellow Princess" :)

Here is the donation box for people to leave free-will donations for the Children's Miracle Network! We raised over 2.5 million dollars yesterday alone, great work!

This was my job for the majority of the night, serving pancakes! I burnt my arm one of the times, accidentally grabbing the bottom of the plate, I guess I know why I'm not a server!

Here I am with Miss Omaha, Mindy Schreiber! These are the donation slips that people filled out while making contributions to CMN!

It was so great to meet this little girl, and she was really excited to eat some free pancakes! She didn't know the occasion for the free pancakes, so I chatted with her and her mother for a while explaining CMN and the Children's Hospital, and by the end of the conversation they were so happy to be able to support such a great cause!

Local and state title holders all over the country (as well as Miss America, Laura Kaeppeler) worked so hard yesterday to raise money for the Children's Miracle Network, and with an end result of over 2.5 million dollars raised, I think it is safe to say it was a success! It is always an honor to represent both the Miss America Organization and the Children's Miracle Network!

March is going to be a pretty crazy month in the life of Miss Lincoln. I have 4 appearances, 3 baton competitions, a philanthropy event for my sorority (Gamma Phi Beta French Toast Feed), orientation for Miss Nebraska, and at the very end of the month, I will be off to Switzerland for the World Baton Twirling Championships! With all of this, plus staying very busy with preparations for Miss Nebraska, March will be a very fun, busy, and exciting month!

Until next time!

Rachel Foehlinger

Miss Lincoln 

Inspirational Video of the Day:

Children's Miracle Network!

Hello everyone!

Today I had the opportunity to volunteer at an event for the Children's Miracle Network! The more time I spend with people from the Children's Hospital in Omaha, or people who work directly for the Children's Miracle Network, I find myself more inspired by the amazing things that these companies do for children all over the nation. I am so proud that Omaha's very own Children's Hospital helped over 16,000 children last year, suffering from all kinds of different sicknesses.

Today's event was a very special one. It was a Radio-a-Thon at the KX96 studio in Lincoln. I volunteered my time answering phones and taking donations. These donations go directly to medical supplies for the children at the hospital in Omaha. It was very inspiring to see so many people willing to pledge to give monthly donations to such an amazing cause.

With two of the other volunteers at the Radio-a-Thon

These signs helped guide the way to the Radio-a-Thon!

With one of the families. The kids, Mason and Lanie, were very excited to be on the radio!

With the radio talk show hosts for the event!

Again with Rob from KX96.

I was so happy to be able to volunteer at such a great event and I look forward to upcoming events with the Children's Miracle Network this spring! It is such an inspiring company and I know they will continue to save lives and make children very happy for a very long time. 

Tomorrow morning I will be flying by myself for the first time (my mom is already in Florida). I am off to "Twirl Mania" which is a really fun baton twirling competition in Orlando. The preliminary events are held at Disney's Wide World of Sports, and the finals for the Collegiate Championships are at Epcot! I look forward to an exciting, warm, magical trip!

Until next time!

Rachel

A Colorado Adventure!

Hello everyone!

I have something extra special to share this time! Taking a trip out to Colorado has turned out to be an even more fun and rewarding trip than planned! I had the opportunity to volunteer at a great event last night with Miss Colorado, and today I had the amazing opportunity to visit the Lincoln Meadows Assisted Living Center! I have met so many amazing people on this two-day journey and I want to share the pictures!

Miss Colorado and I! 

The Beach Ball was a blast!

With my parents..

With my brother-in-law Christian!

Some of the kids, they were so much fun!

My performance...

Sisters!

The kids were all so great!

My biggest fans!

Today, I had the opportunity to visit the Lincoln Meadows Assisted Living Center (They loved that i was Miss LINCOLN!) :)

This is the piano player at the Assisted Living center, he played "There She is, Miss America" as I walked in! It was so great!

As I said before, this trip has turned out to be even better than I had planned! I am excited to eat dinner with family tonight and head home tomorrow! I have more events coming up in the next few weeks and I look forward to my next trip, Florida!! I will be in Florida for a collegiate twirling competition Friday-Monday of the coming week!

Until next time!

Rachel

Miss Lincoln