oh. my. GOODNESS!

Hi Blog Friends,

I am simply amazed at what small town America can do.  I shared with you in a previous post that I was working on a little project to send 300 Christmas stockings to the companies of our family members who are serving overseas.  I started the project by just sewing stockings.  Pretty soon other family members joined in and we had a couple of stocking sewing days.  They kept asking me how I was going to fill the stockings.  My response was "I'm not worried about it, the Lord will provide that part.  I'm just going to make them and see what happens." I contacted the local paper to see if they were interested in doing an article on it.  They gathered the information and two days later it was on the front page. Here's the article:

Here's the tricky part.... the day after the article came out, I left for a stamp show in Madison, Wisconsin. The article said to drop off any donations to my husband at his real estate office.  Yikes.  He was gone the next morning and when he came in to work, his office was FULL of stuff.  He had to bring it home in order to work.  By the time he got back, it was full again.  Well, that continued for two weeks!  The donated items filled the floor of two of our spare bedrooms.  The only bad part in all of that was that I have been traveling for 3 weeks in a row - two trade shows, then off to Portland for Thanksgiving.

So you may be wondering where I've been.... I normally work on my blog in the evenings, but for the last month I've been up until 12:00 a.m. or later working on stockings, fillers, counting, sorting and packing. Ho, Ho, Ho, Holy Cow!  Last night was the big "fill the stockings, pack it all up night".  Here's some of the fun:

Dan with his mountain of boxes:

Here's Dan and his brothers working on the stocking stuffers:

Hmmm, I'm wondering if they called each other to color coordinate their outfits?  Here's the post office this morning:

The post office opened up early for us to bring the boxes in.  (Part of that small town America thing I love so much!)  We had four of those racks full of boxes!  And yup, I look just like I was up till 2:30 a.m., lol.

I'm so thankful to the community, our friends, and our family for the tremendous outpouring of love to these guys who are sacrificing so much...to benefit all of us here at home.  We were able to send stockings to every member of two whole companies, with an additional 30 boxes of stuff to share.  AND, I haven't even finished packaging all of the cookies.  I think I made 600 myself, and friends and family made several hundred more also. THANK YOU FAMILY AND FRIENDS... WITH THE HELP OF ALL OF YOU, IT BECAME POSSIBLE.

Whew!  I am soooooo ready to "settle down for a long winter's nap".  Getting ready for Christmas is going to seem like a piece of cake compared to this.  Tonight I'm going to have a cup of hot cocoa and soak in the tub.... and worry about cleaning up the mess in my house later.

Thank you to all of you who emailed to check on me, and I apologize for the absence on the blog.... but it was for a good cause and well worth the effort.  I know our guys don't get a day off to celebrate, but hopefully it will put a smile on several hundred faces...even if it's for just a few minutes.

I'll be back soon with some new products and some new techniques...but for now all I can think about is that hot bath...and bed!!!

:) Darcie

 

Comments

[Darcie Heater]

Lol, yeah, once a room mother....always a room mother. Just on a larger scale! :) Darcie

[Heidi from Michigan]

OMG what an amazing story! It is wonderful what good people will step up for, congrats on such an accomplishment!

[Kathy JH]

WOW! This is amazing! You must be exhausted - take some serious "Darcie Time" and relax. You are going to make a lot of soldiers very very happy. And kuddos to your hometown for all they did!

[Debbie Fisher]

WOW! What an awesome story! It brought tears to my eyes.
I live in the country and I love the small town communities that we live close to. Everyone is so generous and I see that they are the same where you are from. How awesome!!!!! God definitely did provide. Thank you for sharing this cool story.

[Diane Jacobson]

I myself haven't had a chance to check up on your blog, but with what I was doing is nothing compared to you. Last I looked, you and your sister-in-laws were sewing away. It is amazing what you have accomlished, you deserve a great big pat on the back. I hope you can now enjoy many nights of hot baths and hot chocolate. You are amazing!!!!