Vanderbilt Children's Hospital's Queen for a Day

Our Junior Auxiliary Princess, Leslie Moulton, recently participated in a very special event at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital in Nashville.

Queen for a Day is a program that offers quality of life services through play therapy programs at no charge to pediatric cancer patients (ages 1 to 21) in hospitals around the nation.

Each Queen for a Day event consists of make-overs, manicures and rhinestone tiaras in an upbeat setting. These events provide a distraction from the strain of treatment that these children are having to go through at the hospitals. Queen for a Day measures their success in smiles, laughter and personality transformation in their patients.

The organization is completely volunteer based, relying upon the generosity to give their time, resources and money to fulfill their mission. Queen for a Day strives to create an atmosphere where kids can feel like kids again. Each child that participates gets to keep their tiara from the event as a tangible reminder of how good it feels to reign as "Queen for a Day".

Vanderbilt Children's Hospital recently held a Queen for a Day event for some of the little girls who are patients there to get an opportunity to meet with and be pampered by local pageant queens and princesses!

Not wanting to leave the boys out, Vanderbilt also created a special Hero for a Day program for them! Much like the Queen for a Day program, Hero for a Day gave little boys who are patients at Vandy a chance to meet real life heroes! Nashville firefighters came out to let the little guys know that they, too, are heroes for enduring what they have to face every day at the hospital! Instead of tiaras, the guys get fire hats and fire gear to dress up in.

This is such a cool program and we're so happy that Leslie chose to represent us and to volunteer her time for this worthy cause! She got the opportunity to crown and pamper several of the patients who participated in the event as the official nail painter! She got to spend time with Miss Tennessee USA, Kristen Motil and Miss Southern Tennessee, Katie Hoppel while she was there for what I'm sure was a wonderful experience. Leslie and her mom were both incredibly touched by the children that they met and the stories that they heard while they helped out with this event.

Thank you Connie for sharing this information and the photos with me! I know that you're so proud of Leslie and, you should definitely know; so is Junior Auxiliary! She has an incredibly big heart for such a young girl!

In other Leslie news; She recently won the title of Warren County Princess 2009 in the pageant held by the WCHS Pioneerettes! Congratulations Leslie!

We are thrilled to have such poised, beautiful, sweet and all-around-great girls representing our organization this year!

To learn more about Queen for a Day, visit their website at www.qfad.org.