Making Someone's Christmas Merrier

Friday night I met up with some friends who had put the call out to volunteer at Toys 4 Tots. Tampa Bay's distribution warehouse for toys apparently had a huge lack of volunteers this year. So, my group of friends from MeetIN went down there to volunteer for a few hours. There were about twelve of us there and there were three huge military freight trucks to unload and sort.

I didn't realize how much stuff came through Toys 4 Tots !! Task number one was to unload the toys and then sort them into categories. The categories were things like stuffed animals, infants to 2 yrs old, Boys 3-5, Girls 9-12, sports, games, puzzles, books, and crafts. It took us only two hours to get all of the toys sorted off of all three trucks. I reallly wanted to take a running dive into the pile of stuffed animals, but was told it probably wasn't the best idea.

After the sorting we were handed orders for toys brought in from military bases and low-income schools around Tampa Bay. Our job was to take the order and fill some large clear trash bags with toys for the children on our list. This was the funnest part all night ! G and I had a family of three boys 3, 7, and 9 and we had to pick out toys for them. they have a set formula for what goes in the bags: 2 "nice" toys per age group, a ball, a game, some stocking stuffers, and a stuffed animal. I wasn't quite sure how they decided which children got the bikes they had stacked to the ceiling in the back of the warehouse. That part sounded like trouble. We tried to find some nice gifts for our kids, which was very fun and definitely got me in the holiday spirit. (which is why I wanted to go volunteer in the first place) G was talking about all the pressure of picking out presents for kids we don't know... he didn't want to be responsible for ruining some childs christmas by giving them something they didn't want. I told him I was just happy our bag of toys was going to them, since it might be the only toys they get this year!

I had a really fun time and I'll go back later this week if they need me.