Wednesday, December 30, 2015

2015 Year End Review


Man, a year sure flies by! It's especially true watching our little ones grow and change over the year. Some of you may have started the year not even knowing you'd have a new little one in your life to wear and some of you may suddenly have a walker who refuses to be worn at all anymore. Wherever this year has taken you I hope that our group has helped you with the wonderful tool of babywearing. This was our 2nd year as Babywearing International of Knoxville and we've definitely grown faster than we ever dreamed. We thank you so much for being on this amazing journey with us!

I want to take a minute to give a huge thank you to the volunteers who work very hard behind the scenes to make our group possible. They're unpaid and often go without appreciation, only having the joy of knowing they're helping other caregivers as compensation. This group wouldn't be possible without them. Your 2015 leadership team was Mary Rodio, Sarah Murray, Jenny Arden, Brittany Ridley, Nikki Moore, Carrie Plemons, Anna Hurley and Ashley Teller. Mary, Jenny and Sarah have unfortunately stepped back from leadership. Mary is moving out of state and will be greatly missed, Jenny is focusing on her work at Bohemian Baby, and Sarah is focusing on work and school but will still be at meetings when available as a VBE. We appreciate all of their hard work and dedication to the babywearing community of Knoxville. 

Your 2016 Knoxville leadership team will be Ashley Teller, Anna Hurley, Carrie Plemons, Emily Gentry, Heather Wood and Linda Nunes. We're also very excited to be adding a Maryville sub-chapter some time in the new year which will be co-lead by Nikki Moore and Brittany Ridley with the help of Rebecca Alcorn. Stay tuned for more details about those meetings. We look forward to having some new blood in our leadership team with hopefully some fresh ideas for Knoxville. We've also added a new team member, Chris Marcano who was already a VBE and recently moved to TN. We'll also have a new batch of educators coming out soon after the beginning of the new year and look forward to all of them joining our team.

This year we had some great events. Our anniversary open house at Remedy Coffee was our most successful event to date. We had our lending library available to see and a wonderful silent auction. Everyone even got to see me smash a pie in Carrie Plemons' face. We had food and babywearing mini sessions and a lot of fun! October brought International Babywearing Week. Everyday had events to join. Our biggest was the fall block party with Bohemian Baby where we had a Halloween costume contest and trunk or treating. We had some other playdates and meetups around Knoxville that week and finished up with a fun Mom's Night Out at Painting With a Twist.

We're so excited about everything that 2016 has in store for us. We have some fun events already in the works and will be adding some new meetings as well. Our regular meeting days and times have changed so make sure to check the events in our Facebook page for more details. Thank you for your continued support of our chapter. And Happy Babywearing in 2016!!

-Ashley Teller

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