and then some

Thought I would bring you up to speed and then some seeing how I missed a couple posts since the weekend. Thankfully, I have been keeping busy! Not gonna lie, my heart is a little crushed that Lee isn't here. I'm struggling but I know a lot of other people are worse off during the holidays so I'm keeping my chin up. Lee sent me these festive flowers to my office on Monday:

This past weekend I kept busy preparing for my big Project Elf gift drop. I shop for all the lists that aren't selected by my company's employees on my company credit card. It's fun but also stressful when you can't find something on a kid's Dear Santa list. I went to Toys R' Us, three WalMart stores, Target, Dick's Sporting Goods, Academy Sports, JCPenney's, Buckle, Finish Line and Aeropostale to fulfill the lists. Whew. I was beat.

But then I go home to dump all the gifts our employees and I purchased on my living room floor to sort by each kid's control number. It's a mess when I do but I've got my routine down pat.

I label large trash bags by control number and line the bags in numerical order on the floor. I then add each child's desired gifts to their bag. When all gifts are bagged, I carry them to my garage and create a LARGE mountain of bags.

Yesterday myself and a coworker (that has a large truck) hauled all the gifts from my garage to the designated gift drop for our community.  DHS will then gather ALL gifts and prepare them for pick up by foster families or placement home parents to come get their child's bag. This ensures all kids in Oklahoma's state care will receive a Christmas. I'm going to go to the viewing when they have ALL the donated gifts sorted before pickup. My company sponsors 50 of our state's kids and there are 900+ kids sponsored in our county. I haven't been to a gift viewing due to scheduling conflicts in the past but I def want to go this year. I've heard it's incredible. I'll be sure to take a pic when I do.

Speaking of pictures...Kimberly and Rusty came over to the house for me to take their Christmas card photo. I enjoyed putting my new photog skills to work on my buddies!  Here's a few favorites from my backyard: