34 Kids, 3 Vans, 1 Target

The sun is just starting to rise when I drag myself out of bed to start the day. It's 7am on a Saturday! Normally on Saturdays I get to lay in bed all day if I want to, but this past Saturday was different. This past Saturday I was able to be involved, well in charge of an awesome event that helps families in need to make this Christmas a good one. The BMW Car Club - Tejas Chapter donates money and volunteers every year since 2004 to the Guadalupe Community Center to help families that are in need to get presents for Christmas for their family. The goal of this event is to help the families but to also in still in the child the joy of giving.

Before the day of the event staff at GCC prepare by calling families to invite them to participate in the shopping spree event. The families invited did not go the year before, unless there is still a major need in a family that went to previous year. The families invited get to choose one child to go on the shopping spree to purchase gifts for the whole family for Christmas. This one child gets to not only go on an awesome shopping spree, but wrap all of the gifts that they buy that day as well. Each child is paired up with a volunteer that takes them out into the store and helps them shop for the gifts and then helps them wrap the gifts. 

This event is huge and a big tasks to be put in charge, but when I was asked to take charge of the event I took it with ease and excitement. I began to organize the event like crazy in order to make sure everything that might have gone wrong in past years to not go wrong at all this year. 

The day before the event, a Friday so that was my non working day since it is community day, I however took some stuff home to get ready for the event the next day. Around 1pm on that Friday I had James check my email to see if we needed to find more kids for the event happening the next day. I was hoping for no email, but of course there was an email waiting saying that we needed to get 3 more children for the event the next day. I then got dressed and went up to work for a little bit to figure out what we were going to do and to get a hole puncher. Within the 20mins I was there we were able to get a hold of 3 families to ask if they can meet us out at the target tomorrow at 9am then they can have $100 for a shopping spree for their family. After that I thought that ok everything else will go smoothly. Then the inevitable happen and the driver for the van to take the gifts back from the target could no longer help. I was out of answers and just hoping that something would come through and everything would go fine. Well it did and by 4pm everything was ready for the next day. During and after the event I kept on getting comments from everyone about how well organized the event was and how they loved how the event ran so smoothly. Those recognitions and the smiles from the children's faces made me feel that all of the hard work that I did to get this event organized was so worth it!

I have included some pictures of the events. This is just a small portion of what happened. It is great that we were able to help 34 families have a great Christmas this year. 

Arriving at Target

Wrapping Gifts

Group Picture!