From all of us...

- With Love -

I cut all these in two and enclosed them in a card for each family.

There were a few businesses who contributed after I had printed these...

They were Krispy Kreme, Noah's Bagel, and Panera.

Thank you to all!

We made this beautiful thing happen

❤

Winner Winner Chicky Dinner

There are all these random name generator type things for blogs. We chose to go even more high tech than them. It's pretty scientific, so if you are not savvy, please feel free to ask any questions you may have. 

So this is how we chose to generate the winner...

First, I secretly counted up the people who guessed the right answer.

Then, I haphazardly ripped up five pieces of blank paper.

While hiding, I then scribbled the name of each of the five people.

I folded each of them into tiny little squares.

I shook them vigorously and walked into the family room to Dave.

I shook them one more time for good measure.

I held my hand out and...are you ready for this, I asked Dave to pick one.

Here is where one might get lost, I then unveiled the winner to both he, I and R dog.

Drum Roll please.

And the winner is....

Judianne

(confetti release here)

I must say, I was pretty happy because she was the first to say Prius and had this to say in her comment, 

"Ok. call me silly but i'll say the prius....you CAN cram a lot into those little cars!"

Judianne ~ you da bomb!!

Your undisclosed gift will be arriving shortly after we recuperate from, Mission Elfkins and Christmas ;o)

So many of you knew the right answer, even after me trying to deceive you by putting the Prius in the (A) spot of the multiple choice ; )

I was in complete and total shock to discover the Prius fit the most. It sure is the little car that can! Everyone who has a Prius, answered it almost before we could finish the question. What a neat little car it is. 

I chalk its discreet, wonder space up to small tires, which means less wheel well room. What'da ya think? I need some sleep? Yes, I agree. I feel extra punchy tonight. More than the normal amount of punch. Uh huh.

There were also boxes all over the floor and front seat.

On our last delivery today, my friend Summer's car did end up holding the world record of care packages. 

Amazing! I can't tell you what kind of car it is, because I don't know. If you know me, this is strange, because I seem to know every single make of car on the road? That, my dear, is called a stupid human trick if I do say so myself!  

You might notice the People magazines in place of the O mags. I went back to Costco 3 full days after I bought them out of stock and sadly, they still didn't have any :o(

Today was our very last delivery...more to come on that.


Over and out.

Enquiring Minds Want To Know

Everywhere I went this past month, I encountered the same line of questioning...

Are you a teacher?

Why are you buying all these composition books?

What are you going to do with all these DVDs?

Where are you going with all those Sudoku books?

Why so much anti-bacterial soap?

That's a lot of compositions.

Wow! You really like ChapStick.

Why so many composition books?

(as you can tell people were most fascinated by these)

***

Back story ~

It was my first trip, and when I thought we would be making a max of 30 care packages.  I purchased 30 Oprah magazines, amongst a ton of other stuff, and had not separated our own personal stuff out on this one (rookie move). 

***

And the best line of questioning was...

Costco Dude: You must really like Oprah.

Me: Yeah, I really do :o)

Costco Dude: What are you buying all these for?

Me: I am planning on reading one a day - for a month.

Costco Dude (looking stumped): You know they're all the same, right?

Me: Yep.

Costco Dude:  Are you serious?

Me: Yes. 

(I have a fairly good poker face, at least in the beginning)

Costco Dude: No seriously, what are you doing with them?

Me: We are making care packages for the Kaiser Pediatrics ICU.

Costco Dude: That's pretty cool.

* He keeps ringing up all of the items and finally gets to our own personal stuff *

Costco Dude (scanning the life sized bottle of Johnnie Walker): Well then, what's this for?

Me: That is for the family with the most hurt kid.

We laughed, but I was actually crying on the inside, as I have one of the most hurt kids!

Laugh or you'll cry...

always.

Christmas Trivia

You know I love trivia and I haven't done a game in a while, so here you go...

Which car carried the most presents at one time? 

Was it ~

A. The Toyota Prius

B. The Chevy Tahoe

C. The Ford Escape

D. The Range Rover

The prize is a little Christmas gift from us :o)

We are going to just open it up for answers now and then at 5:18 tomorrow night we will randomly choose the winner out of the people who guessed the right answer.

Outtakes

It takes a lot of pictures to get a few good ones! I am going to share a little secret with you...

It can be extremely challenging at times to have a child with a floppy head. We couldn't get her to look up for this picture.

As you can tell by my expression, I was starting to get a little frustrated because I was roasting to death and we really needed to get going. My mom said, "Just grab her ponytail." Dave and I have done it many times before and sadly, will have to do it many more times to come. 

Can you see my left arm behind her head? I am firmly gripping her ponytail and trying to find just the right position for the picture.

I was not doing too well with my left hand, so I tried my right.

She looks so annoyed with me in this picture...and rightfully so!

I lost it again. I had no choice but to hold it tighter.

Poor Miki.

Finally, I decided another position might be better.

She seemed happier to not have me yanking on her hair. She said she wished she was bald again at the beginning of the photo shoot.

I love her sweet little face in this one.

Finally, this seemed to result in the best positioning for both of us. She was comfortable and starting looking around at all of the presents.

Sometimes it's all smoke and mirrors.

* Please note - no small children were actually hurt in the taking of this photo *

Yesterday...

All my troubles were so far away.

Elf Power

"We elves try to stick to the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corns and syrup."

~ Buddy the Elf

Round One:

Kaiser

33 Care Packages

Car 1 - My Mom

Car 2 - Our awesome neighbors ~ Warren and Anna

Car 3 - Us

There we are :o)

Oops...just found out that I forgot to tell the Child Life person Tracy that each of our 33 boxes were 12X 12. Do you see the wagon she has? That was the one we used to wheel Avi around the hospital in. We had to quickly go to plan B for transit ; )

Aviana ~ still guiding us through our day!

Our very favorite nurse ~ Johnna. She was on the phone when I saw her and I was SO excited. I did not think she would remember us, but surprisingly ~ when she hung up, she turned around and said, "Aviana's mom!!" I was so happy to see her. She is so sweet and was absolutely wonderful to Aviana and all of us!

Someone was pissed that she didn't get to go! She said, "how dare all six of you walk out the door and leave me lonely. Especially after all of the hard work I put in."

Yep. That is a piece of our new patterning table. Yes, the one we just replaced because she annihilated the other one. 

She truly is a really good dog. She has only chewed up a handful of things and they have all been broadcast, for all to see, on my blog. I don't want you to think she is a terror. She is our sweetheart ;o)

Amy and me.

Thank you so much for the late, late nights Amy!

Warren & Anna ; )

Love them!

❤ Even more elves to help ❤

Round Two:

UC Davis

55 Care Packages

Car 1 - Us

Car 2 - My Mom

Car 3 ~ Warren and Anna

Car 4 ~ Amy, Megan and Cooper too

Almost all of us are represented here.

One cart full.

Us :o)

Avi and Rainey felt left out of the Elf Power.

Aviana was wiped out from the day.

So was I...

I was sitting at the computer trying to string words together.

Soon after this picture, I gave up!

The clincher was, I thought we had the remainder of the night off, but realized we were going to Christmas with Dave's family, so we had to get our booties up and immediately make the last 20 boxes. We went super fast though. I'll share the final pictures of the assembly process in the next post :o)

Peace & Love

We delivered to Kaiser and UC Davis today!

Ninety gift boxes were given, with thirty more to go :o)

I have many more pictures to share, but am just too tired tonight...

Aviana's Elves

We never planned on doing this, but there's never been a more appropriate time than now :o)

Hope you enjoy!

http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/VXjgBvLZCHjVZAfa

Happy Holidays

❤

One Might Think...

these pictures are duplicates from the other night, but not so :o)  We have officially taken over the neighborhood! We took all of the boxes for the last post and brought them to be safely stored at our neighbor's houses. Thank you Nita, Jay and Mary! 

Amy, Dave & I kicked it into high gear tonight and busted out the remainder of the 100 boxes. This is unbelievably epic! Thanks to you, one hundred boxes is so yesterday and come tomorrow, or today that is, we are moving into the one hundred plus stratosphere. The goodness keeps on coming and the joy we are about to spread is...well, I can't find the perfect word ;o)

Do you notice the odd ball in this picture? Yep. We bought Costco out of Oprah magazines...again ;o) 

And just think, I forgot to take a picture of the coffee table in our room!

We will keep making boxes until every single last item is given ; ) The exciting thing is ~ the more we get and have, the more happiness we can share!

Sweet girl!

Out...again.

I get so severely amped up ~ I can't possibly go to bed. I just finished wrapping the remainder of our own personal Christmas presents, too.

I suppose I should surrender so I am not completely useless tomorrow :o)

Night All

and once again,

Thank you!

❤

Anyone want to come over right now and make Mexican Wedding cookies with me?