A Very Beary Xmas
After getting home way late Friday night, we were up early on Saturday morning to finish getting the house ready for the Show-Me Bears' annual holiday party. Don't ask me why we volunteered, but Matt has been itching to throw a party and Tim & Dennis weren't in a position to do it this year, so there we were. It was, of course, a rousing success. Good friends and good food (and way too much of it...i'm not even sure how many cheesecakes there were). But that wasn't all. We wrapped up about 10 to head down to JJ's for our annual xmas club night! "Elf Squad...REPORT!"
We do a club night every year to raise a few bucks for Project ARK, our favorite charity helping kids with HIV/AIDs. It's time for their xmas toy drive and between our "naughty Santa" pics, a raffle and getting the Elf Squad together to sell candy canes, we're happy to be able to give them $300 or so. Every little bit helps.
But this year, we had a "Secret Santa". Just after Hibearnation, Steve/rexsteed sent me an email and noticed that we're doing a lot of fundraising and would like to help. He works out at Disney and they are helping groups out there on the coast all the time and would like to share the love. It was really uplifting for someone to recognize our efforts out here in "fly-over country" and i told him that we're having a smaller event here in December and he said he'd "throw a few things together" and send them out to us. i was appreciative and got back to work, but i was overwhelmed when i got home late Friday night to see that he'd sent us 4 big boxes of stuff. Everything from xmas ornaments to small Lenox porcelain pieces to a giant wicked queen from "Snow White" and a "Rocketeer" plus a tube of exclusive "TRON Legacy" posters that i knew the fanboys would go nuts for. So now, instead of a pittance, we raised almost $1300 in one night!! When we heard the news on Sunday morning, Matt cried he was so happy. i can't thank Steve enough. This was just amazing. Thank you, Steve!
Full set on flickr.