Christmas Giving

Last Sunday Nick and I volunteered at the Family Giving Tree. I'm not trying to toot my own horn AT ALL - we should have volunteered longer and/or brought more toys, but maybe net year - and maybe we'll bring more people.

In any case. It's a pretty impressive operation. Less fortunate kids write down what they'd like for Christmas - clothes and toys typically. This information gets put on a tag and those tags get distributed throughout the bay area (with a large number in Silicon Valley - good call, those guys are loaded).

When all of the clothes and toys are purchased, they are delivered to a large warehouse in San Jose. And that's where we helped out. For one minute, you have to pretend like you are a 10 year old child and you just walked into the world's largest toy store. Literally. there are toys all over the place. It's incredible. This is the tail end of the operation and I still had to stack 20 identical Tonka Trucks - Nick had the remote control cars (and 1 remote control dinosaurs). There were barbies everywhere and enough pillow pets to make any 6 year old scream.

I ended up working in the clothing section - they wanted someone who could fold clothes well, and apparently I looked like I could.

It was a great way to spend Sunday, helping fulfill kids' Christmas wishes.

Merry Christmas Eve!