2016 Giving Party Update

My lovely little niece with one of the care packages we put together. Each had toiletries, granola bar, V-8, pair of socks, beef jerky, lip balm and a $5 McDonalds gift card.

Here is a quick recap on our Giving Party for 2016! I’m sorry it is so late! If you don’t know,  The Giving Party is an annual party we throw each year where we focus on giving to others in our community. We invite our family and friends to give to a handful of our favorite charities, as well as bring canned foods and toy donations for those in need around the holidays. Below is an update I sent out to everyone that participated this year. If you are interested in being involved next year, please give us a holler! We plan for next year to be even bigger and better and would love for you to join in.

Hey folks!!

I’m sorry it took me so long to get this out to y’all. First of all, Happy New Year!! Mike is out of town this week, but the boys and I have had a great start to the new year (see more below).

The Giving Party has fast become one of our favorite family traditions and it means so much to all of us to have each of you involved. This year, we raised a total of $1,500!! (exactly, which is a little weird). Thank you all for celebrating and giving with us in whatever way you could. Here is the breakdown of the donations:

I requested donations receipts for all the folks that asked for them. If you don’t receive them,  please let me know. I did get verbal or email confirmation from all of them, so hopefully there won’t be any issues.

We want to make the Giving Party even bigger next year and are on the hunt for a new venue that can accommodate more people. The clubhouse we have used the last two years has a capacity of 70. We would love to unabashedly invite everyone we know and let them bring a friend, but space seems to be the main limitation. If you know of any spaces that we could use at a reasonable rate, or for free, please let us know. We are also working on the possibility of piggy-backing on my churches nonprofit status to obtain donations for the care packages for next year, so hopefully we won’t need to spend as much money on them in the future.

A follow up on the family in need: I was lucky to be able to deliver Christmas gifts collected through, The Journey Church, to the local family we supported this year. The mother was grateful for everything and said, “Thank you! I just wish I could pay you back.” I assured her that we all need help sometime in our lives and she doesn’t owe us anything. I told her to pass it on someday. She was very grateful for your support.

We have already run out of care packages to hand out and so the boys and I were putting some together this morning. We picked up some giftcards at McDonalds and ran into a homeless guy named Brendan, while the boys were playing on the playground. I asked him if he needed some help and he seemed a little unsure about me talking to him. I gave him one of the gift cards and he said thank you. We talked a bit and he is a vet with PTSD. After he told me more of his story and I had given him the rest of his care package he said, “Thank you so much—just for being kind.” I told him he was more then welcome – that it feels good to not look through people that are in need. We are all human beings, just trying to figure life out. We hugged and introduced the boys before we left. A man in the restaurant named Leo walked up to me and said, “I just wanted to tell you that I saw what you did there, and you are a really awesome person. Thank you and can I give you a hug?”

It was a lovely morning and reminded me to stay focused on the things that are important this year. Also, I never have a bad day when I have spent it helping someone in need.

Love to you all!

Jackie, Mike, Tommy and Danny

The Giving Party donation table.