Here we go again!

It seems like just yesterday that it was Christmas...

Last year, my mom and I headed up the community holiday project to ensure that 1500 children had a Christmas! We spent from Thanksgiving weekend until the first weekend in Jan. working on this amazing project. It's really the best way to spend the holidays. We weren't even half way through the project last year when we were already talking about the next year.

So, here we go again. We started even earlier this year - we made nearly 4000 tags in Oct and Nov. Starting writing letters to get someone to donate space for us to work and MONEY to buy toys. The tress with tags went up all around town over that thanksgiving weekend.

We have been a little worried about how the current economy situation is going to effect us this year. We already have requests in for over 2000 children and a huge donor ($5000) from last year, isn't able to come close to that donation this year, bummer.

While my mom and I were hanging tags on trees - we got a little hope for the season of giving. One lady came up and said - "tags, I am so excited - this is my most favorite part of Christmas, getting the toys on the tags" then the one that killed us both - another lady come up to get a tag and told us that her daughter has cancer and she doesn't want any toys this year, she just wants to get toys for other kids. My mom started crying on the spot.

When I am not packing up my house to move, you can find me at the "toy box" filling requests for the little ones. It really is the best way to spend the season!

On Black Friday, 6 of us got to Wal-Mart at 5am to get the best deals $500 could buy. We had a donor give us $500 and we wanted to make sure we could get the most for the money. As we were standing in line our 3 carts full of toys caused a few comments, when people found out we weren't shopping for ourselves, they were touched.

I think the most fun I have ever had in my life is filling cart after cart full of toys, spending other people's money to give children simple toys to ensure there is still magic at Christmas. Last year, I went into Target one day - 5 carts later the bill was close to $2,000 bucks and barely fit in the car.

Here we are with our three carts of goodies from Wal-Mart!