| 09-13-07: On Saturday, September 8th The Holy Cross Lutheran Church hosted a golf tournament at Great Rock Golf Club in Wading River, NY. There was a great turnout and it was a ton of fun. There was a great lunch served prior to the 1:00p.m. tee off, and then following the round of golf there was a delicious buffet style dinner served. After dinner there was a Chinese auction and 50/50 drawing which was a great time. Everyone was laughing as Price Acoustics Inc. employee John Riley paraded around in his newly acquired pink hat. Everyone had a great time and look forward to doing it again sometime. We would like to give an extra special thanks to Joe Rizzo who coordinated the entire event. Thanks to the Holy Cross Lutheran Church for sponsoring the event, thanks to Great Rock Golf Club for hosting a great event and providing first class service at an outstanding establishment. And of course thank you to everyone who came out to support us. We had a great time and are forever grateful. Please click here to see all the photos from the tournament. September not only marks what most people consider the end of the summer, but it also means that its back to school time for the kids. Riley has been looking forward to being a big boy and starting school himself. So we enrolled him in a program called "Little Scholars" at Scholars Edge in Eastport, Long Island. Riley couldn't wait to start and was talking about it for weeks. He loves to goto school and play with all his friends there. 08-21-07: There is still time to sign up for the Golf outing on September 8th. If you are interested please call Joe Rizzo (631) 981-4028, the cost is just $150 for golf, dinner, and a gift. Charity Softball Challenge: On Thursday, August 16th The Town of Brookhaven Parks Dept. challenged The Riverhead Parks Dept. to a softball game at their new baseball fields at the Moriches Sports Complex. Brookhaven Supervisor, Brian Foley and Parks Commissioner Jim LaCarrubba were not only in attendance but were playing for "The Brookhaven Bombers" as well. With matching baseball shirts and hats the bombers came out on top of Riverhead with a score of 20-6. There was a $5 charge to come and see the game, and some of the Parks employees from Riverhead town were selling pretzels, and snow cones to raise money as well. Prior to the game Supervisor Foley and Commissioner LaCarrubba chose to give The Smiley Riley Fund all of the proceeds from the game. After everything was said and done, over $500 dollars was raised and we sold a few of our T-shirts too. It was such a huge success it will most likely be an annual event with next years game possibly being held in Riverhead at a field they plan on building soon. Each year the town that hosts the game will choose a charity to benefit from the game. It was a lot of fun to watch and it was great to be a part of such an event. We would like to thank the Town of Riverhead Parks Dept. for coming out and supporting us. Thank you to the Brookhaven Town Parks Dept as well, and an extra special thanks to Supervisor Brian Foley, Parks Commissioner Jim LaCarrubba, Patrick Daniels, and Kristina Baumgartner. We will definitely be there to support the players and the charity that is chosen next year. 07-07-07: Hope everyone had a great 4th of July !!! We also met with Dr. Steele who is Riley's pediatric ophthalmologist and we received what appears to be great news. He believes that Riley has excellent sight out of both eyes. Although we won't know for sure until next year when he can read the eye charts, after two extensive evaluations he truly believes he can see fine. Despite the lipodermoid and epibulbar cysts on his right eye his eyes are reacting normally. The cysts will eventually be removed but may be too risky while the eye is still developing so much. Most likely he will have a surgery to remove them at the age of 4. Unless you have pop-ups blocked on your browser you already know that the Holy Cross Lutheran Church is holding their annual golf outing and will be donating the proceeds to The Smiley Riley Fund. If you didn't see the window when you brought up this page you probably have them blocked so here is the information. When: September 8th 2007 at 1 p.m. Also we have been doing some remodeling on the site and you may have noticed some changes already. One of the new changes is an online store so you can purchase any of our items to help raise money even easier than in the past. Also new items include Smiley Riley Fund T-shirts (pictured on right) Adult sizes Small-2XL for $15.00 and Toddler sizes 2T and 3T for $10. Please click here to visit the store. Also we found that some of the links were not working on the "links" page. We have fixed them and will be adding a few more very shortly. 04-19-07: It's been two months since the last update and there is so much to report. First we hope everyone had a Happy St. Patrick's Day and a Happy Easter as well. Riley had a great time hanging out with all his cousins on both occasions. He has so much fun with them, and it's great to see them all together. Way back in early March a few of the Seniors at Mcgann-Mercy High School put together a European Handball Tournament and decided to give the money raised to The Smiley Riley Fund. In the end, the Juniors upset the Seniors and took home the win. The main thing is that everyone had fun and after all was said and done over $300 was raised for Riley. So we would like to again thank Mcgann-Mercy High School for the incredible support they have given us. Also we want to again thank the Seniors who came up with the idea and arranged the entire event. We have had some amazing support from The Iron Crew Motorcycle Club. The president and founder of the club (pictured on right with Riley's daddy - *photo taken by Anthony J. Luisi*) is a long time friend of ours and he is a great individual. All of the club's chapters decided to support The Smiley Riley Fund and have made an amazing contribution of over $1000. As if that isn't enough they have inserted a link on their website to purchase an Iron Crew Supporter t-shirt, and they are donating all the proceeds to us as well. I have had the honor of meeting many of the Iron Crew members and they are all great people. We want to thank the Iron Crew Motorcycle Club and its members/supporters for their amazing support. Please check out their website www.ironcrewmc.com and maybe even buy a supporter t-shirt to help show our appreciation for what they have done for The Smiley Riley Fund. Having to go through all of this is definitely tough to say the least, and we have been extremely fortunate to have such amazing support. It makes it much easier to deal with when you have the help of not only friends and family, but also many caring individuals. One thing is for sure there are some unbelievably amazing people in this world and we are very lucky to have met so many of them. Two that stick out maybe just a bit more than others are Amanda Barone, and Victoria Narici (pictured on right). It started with Amanda, who found out about Riley while volunteering and helping at Cedar Lodge nursing home and decided she wanted to help us too. She started to raise money on her own, this is where Victoria heard about Riley and decided she wanted to help as well. Between these two girls they have raised well over $2000 and haven't quit yet. Victoria and her family even had Smile for Riley pencils made up to sell at their church. It takes an amazing person to have the initiative to go and help others who need it, especially if they have never met them. And the most amazing part of the whole story is that the two girls are only 9yrs old!!! Talk about amazing!!! We were completely flattered to hear about how they wanted to help, but words cannot describe how it felt to hear that they were so young. So we want to thank Amanda, Victoria, the Barone and the Narici families for everything they have done and are doing. We are forever grateful and can't thank you enough. As for a medical update on Riley...His surgery will be on September 5th and we will be meeting the Craniofacial team sometime in June. Mostly to discuss the procedure in depth and go over anything we may need to know. We are both anxiously and nervously awaiting this day for surgery. We are certain; we wouldn't have come this far without the help of everyone. Thank You for everything you have done. 02-19-07: Last weekend we held our first benefit dinner for The Smiley Riley Fund, and there are absolutely no words that can describe the amount of support we received. Over 300 people came out to show their support and love for Riley, and helped us raise over $26,000. We have received nothing but great comments regarding how well the entire night went, and how much fun everyone had. There were over 100 items for the Chinese auction that included everything from plane rides, spa treatments, and baskets of cheer, gift certificates and everything in between. Three individual winners for vacation packages were given away, a lotto tree with $100 worth of NYS Lotto scratch off tickets, a 50/50 drawing for over $1000 and plenty of great food and music by Glen from G N A Entertainment. We would like to thank everyone who attended and shared this very special evening with us. There is no way to express how grateful we are, and we'll be forever thankful. We would also like to thank everyone who made this event possible, from planning the event all the way to running it; we had an incredible amount of help. Grandma & Grandpa Bivona, Grandma & Grandpa Gaynor, Mike & Sue Hegarty, Linda Geremia, Jackie Fitzpatrick, John Bivona, Joe & Donna White, Danielle Cheeseman, Sister Barbara, and Joe & Marie Asaro are just some of the people who went above and beyond helping us in many ways. These are the people who made it all possible, whether it was planning the event, collecting donations from business owners, making baskets for the Chinese auction, setting up before the event, and cleaning up after, without you it wouldn't have happened. We want to thank everyone at Sunset Harbour for providing excellent service and hospitality to all of our guests. Also we want to thank all the individuals, and businesses that donated all the great items for us to auction off. So again thank you for everyone who came out on Sunday, and thank you to all the people to were unable to attend but made a contribution to the fund anyway. A huge thank you to all of our sponsors, please click here for a list of them (platinum sponsors shown in picture). Lastly thank you to everyone who helped in any way to make this event possible, due to its overwhelming success and positive feedback we are considering making it an annual event. Please click here to look at all the photos from the benefit dinner. For anyone who hasn't seen the article on Riley and our family in The Manorville, Moriches Press please log on to www.pressmm.com and then click on the archives to see previous issues. The New York State Columbiettes of Center Moriches, sponsored a blood drive in honor of Riley and Declan Kubik on February 19, 2007 at the Mastic Fire House. We were there to support the blood drive and donate blood. We would like to thank everyone who was able to help and donate blood. 01-23-07: Our Valentine's Day benefit dinner for Riley is approaching real fast. Please click here for more information on the dinner. We sent out tickets to friends and family last week, and are currently selling raffle tickets for a chance to win one of three vacation stays which M And M Travel, in Port Jeff was able to have donated. You do not have to be present at the dinner to win the vacation stays. If you didn't receive a ticket in the mail yet and you would like to attend the dinner ($55 adults $25 children under 12 and children under 4 are free) or purchase vacation raffle tickets ($10 each / $40 for 5) please email us at: rileyfund@optonline.net. Speaking of dinners/fundraisers.....We were invited to goto the Hollywood Premiere Night, "tribute to the stars" held by the organization Contractors For Kids at Atlantis Marine World Aquarium in Riverhead, NY. We were able to bring Riley, all four of his Grandparents and his Aunt Jackie. The entire place was filled with about 600 people in attendance, including Suffolk County Executive, Steve Levy (Pictured on right). We also met the entire board of directors while we were there. It was an amazing experience for us, and we are extremely thankful for being part of it. The organization also decided to sponsor our fund and help Riley with his surgeries. They were able to make an extremely generous donation to the fund. We would like to thank the entire board of directors at Contractors For Kids they are truly amazing people who have helped many families to date and will continue to help many others in the future. There is no possible way to express how thankful we are. If you never heard of them before please check out their website by clicking one of the links above. Also we would like to give an extra special thanks to Mr. Bobby Laneri from Atlantis Marine World Aquarium. He was the person who made the connection with the Contractors For Kids organization. If it weren't for him it would never have happened, so thank you very much.
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