Ten seconds of your time - and we're not trying to sell you anything!!

A friend of mine nominated my family for a contest where we could potentially win a vacation to Pigeon Forge plus $15,000 toward our mortgage payment!! It would be an amazing thing. How do we win? All we have to do is get the most votes. I thought - WOW!! Homeschoolers are the MOST loyal people in the world. I think we could actually do this. So I asked people to vote. We have a bunch of friends, even more acquaintances, and interact with hundreds of other people on a not-as-regular basis so I thought this wouldn't be too bad. Unfortunately we've seen handfuls of votes each day.

With that in mind, my friend was wondering why people don't take the time to vote. It's not just that they're voting for OTHER people, but they're barely voting at all! I wondered if people were apathetic. One of my other friends suggested that perhaps people were jealous that we had been nominated. (I can't imagine that - since anyone can be nominated. It would be silly to be jealous.) Are people just lazy? Do people think they'd be tracked and don't have to register? (You do NOT have to register. You just click on the link, find our name, and vote.)

Honestly, I don't know what the issue is. I figure perhaps people are just too busy. I really think that's the reason. So even thought it would only take about TEN SECONDS of people's time each day, they don't to spend ten seconds to do something that could make a world of difference in our lives. It's sad. I've really been kind of down about the whole thing.

So anyway, it would mean so much to us to win this contest and it really only takes a few moments. All we need is for people to click on the link, sort by votes, find our name and click VOTE. This is four steps, but literally takes about 7 seconds - I TIMED it. LOL

I think we can keep us on the first page if people vote enough so that we'd be easier to find. Just click on sort by "vote" and then we're currently on page one under "Sonya H. - Jonesborough, TN, 4/14/2010."

Also, PLEASE, place a request to your FB page, My Space, or other e-mail loops and ask your friends and family to vote every day until the end of July. Even if they'd vote for the next month, we'd appreciate it, but if they could just vote each day - ten seconds - until the end of July, we would be so grateful! Our family works diligently to serve the homeschool community and we rarely ask for or receive anything in return for that. We serve because the Lord has called us to serve. We are grateful that our friend nominated us for this contest and we do believe that this is an opportunity that would help us tremendously with the medical debt that I face on a monthly basis. (My monthly medicines and bills run over $250 - EVERY month. I realize some people have worse bills than that, but we receive no public assistance, no Medicaid, etc. It's just me and my husband working like crazy while homeschooling our five children and doing what we can to help others. That's how we like it.) :)

OK, enough with the pity party! Would you please vote each day until the end of July? And please - ask your friends and family if they would do the same? Forward this - or portions of it - to your pages or websites. Share the link and share our information so they'll vote for our family. If you want to know more about us, please ask. Or, please feel free to read or post my website - www.thehomeschooladvocate.com. We would be happy to share any information you might need to make a decision if you'd like to vote for us. We would really appreciate it!!

Thanks for reading and thanks for VOTING!!!! Here's the link:
http://www.mypigeonforge.com/savingvacations/Story/Page1

Sonya
on behalf of the Haskins family - Chris, Sarah (14), Micah (12),
Christopher (10), Daniel (who will be 9 next weekend), and Hannah (7)