I'll keep this fairly brief (for me), if only because most of my blog in the past week has been devoted to this effort.To date I have received $425 toward the package fund, including my own $50 donation to the fund (excluding the cost I will pay out of my pocket for shipping and shipping materials). This money is from a total of only 15 donations (including my own). If you can or cannot afford it, think of our troops overseas who may possibly be wounded, killed, or just far from home either freezing their behinds off in a foxhole, or spending the holidays on an military base on foreign soil in a hostile land over the holidays. Am I trying to shame you into giving, nah no way, not my style. Am I trying to kick your butts into gear - you betcha. I am just trying to get you to remember these guys even if with only a dollar. By the way, one of the donations I received was from 2 young girls, sisters, who broke open their piggy bank to donate $9 and change, then their mom rounded it off to $10, and sent it to me via PayPal. Here is part of what the mom wrote to me:
"My daughters, age 6 & 7, are excited to donate the contents of their piggy banks, (9 dollars and 18 cents, which I am rounding up to 10 bucks) to this cause. "
These two girls and their mom did a really nice thing for our soldiers, my thanks to them. If they can do it, so can you, a buck probably will not even make you break your piggy bank. See the links at the upper right hand side of my blog to donate via PayPal. You do not need a PayPal account to donate, and PayPal does not charge you a fee to donate (they charge me the fee to accept payments, and I will cover those costs out of my pocket).
I also received 12 tactical flashlights, with extra lithium batteries, from STREAMLIGHT absolutely free of charge! Can you say THANK YOU STREAMLIGHT!!! Wow that was nice of them. I made a price inquiry and they sent free lights.
Today I went shopping for items for the package(s). I picked up: A 6 quart Crock-Pot (something these guys requested), Various seasonings and spices (they said they wanted to cook for themselves for a change, so I guess they can cook it slowly in the crock-pot while out on patrol), a package of Chap-Sticks, Zip Lock Freezer Bags (these have lots of applications in sandy environments), a box of chewing gum, hard candies, chocolates and other candies. I spent $150.87 today on the items mentioned above, the Crock-Pot was only about $40, but are spices ever expensive, and I got nice sized jars of them! Thank goodness for Costco (click on the receipt to enlarge). Other items I plan to purchase are: at least one box of 25 good cigars, possibly 12 pairs of high quality wool socks (one pair per each person in the unit), 12 folding knives (I have the Buck Bantam 285 BLW model in mind), sharpening stones (12 - one for each guy in the unit), other snacks (something of a holiday nature), and whatever else I can think of with any funds left over.
I have decided to split this into 3 or 4 holiday packages - still all for the same unit. This will make the package less bulky, and in the event one of them gets delayed, lost or stolen, the others are likely to make it through. I will probably send some of the stuff before the end of this week, and hope to have everything shipped by December 10th or thereabouts.
I hope to remember to take pics of the contents of each package before I ship them, and to post the pics on this blog once the items ship.
To those of you who have contributed, and/or provided links to my page for this effort: THANKS.
All the best,
Glenn B
PS: if you are wondering why I input all the below keywords, well I want to get as many people as possible who read my blog to read this post.
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