Holy Cow this week has been unbelievable! About 2 months ago I decided to volunteer to be the contact for the annual Cookie Drive they have on the Air Force Base for all the single airmen here. (Some are deployed to here and some are just young, single airmen who live in the dorms). We give them a dozen homemade cookies each to show that we care about them especially as they are so far from their families for Christmas.
The way you do this is you Advertise, Advertise, Advertise and then you beg your friends to make 100's of cookies.
So we set a date of December 18th for the drive but also provided a drop-off date of Monday night on the 17th. Then I had to figure out how many airmen we had to provide for....775 airmen. Then we were notified that we had Marines deployed to the Air Force Base as well and were asked if we were going to provide for them as well. After some research, we decided that we would give them all the leftover cookies but we couldn't provide individual sacks for all those Marines. They will be home for Christmas anyways.
Anyway...775 airmen (and some Navy and Army soldiers in those numbers). So the 17th came and we began receiving donations at 6pm. I wasn't expecting this to be a big night for donations. It was just a convenience thing for some people but by 8PM we had 360 dozen cookies! I had some amazing helpers to help me deal with this, of course. So we wrapped them all up tightly and went home.
The next morning at 5:45AM, we came back to start the real Cookie Drive day.
We had many tables with cookies on them.
These are the individual bags that we give the airmen. The kids at the school decorate them (and the homeschool group took a bunch). Some of them were so funny. They just add to the fun-ness of getting a dozen cookies.
We bagged and packaged and bagged and packaged.
Here are the leftover cookies. The tables were full of cookies. It was overwhelming to see the number of people who came to drop off cookies!
After we had already bagged 800 dozen cookies, these 2 cars took all these cookies to the Marines.
Then the "First Shirts" (the people in charge of all the airmen in a squadron) came and picked up the cookies. These guys were there to pick up 250 dozen for the EAMXS group. They said their airmen were so excited to get them.
So in the end, I had 100 dozen leftover and we gave them out to anyone who would take them. We took them to the USO and the fire department too. It was very successful and I had some awesome volunteers who came to help and all my friends made cookies because I asked them to.
In the end, I spoke with Chaplain Boyd on base and told her about how successful it was. She was very impressed with our hard work and she thanked me for organizing it...so she "Coined me". (This is a military tradition to award someone when they do something great. They physically give you a coin that they designed through a handshake. The coins are beautiful. This is the 3rd coin I have earned. (At our last base my team and I raised $25,500 to give away in scholarships over a year as I served as President of the Officers' Spouses' Club. I got to hand each of the 15 scholarship winners their certificate at a ceremony and at the end the General "coined" me for my hard work. I also earned one for being a "key spouse" which is kind of like a Relief Society President over your squadron.) Some perspective...Jeremy has 6 coins and he actually works for the Air Force. I am pretty proud of my 3!
So as part of the drive this year we decided to make it a squadron competition in hopes of bringing in more cookies. In the end the Medical Group brought in 189.5 dozen. I had a trophy made and was able to present it to their commander. Here is the picture of that:
So that was the beginning of the week. I was still trying to catch up on Thursday after being consumed but then we had our squadron Christmas Party on Thursday night. That was a lot of fun.
Friday night was the CRG (the group that we are a part of) kids' party and Saturday I was in charge of coordinating the Ward Christmas Party. There are a lot of pictures taken of that but I don't have any. I have to say, though, that it was awesome. Everyone did their part and followed through with what they were assigned and we had a huge dance party at the end and it was fantastic.
Now I am looking forward to spending some time reading or playing with my kids. I am currently not signed up for anything crazy and I am going to enjoy the next 3 weeks! Merry Christmas to all and peace out!
The way you do this is you Advertise, Advertise, Advertise and then you beg your friends to make 100's of cookies.
So we set a date of December 18th for the drive but also provided a drop-off date of Monday night on the 17th. Then I had to figure out how many airmen we had to provide for....775 airmen. Then we were notified that we had Marines deployed to the Air Force Base as well and were asked if we were going to provide for them as well. After some research, we decided that we would give them all the leftover cookies but we couldn't provide individual sacks for all those Marines. They will be home for Christmas anyways.
Anyway...775 airmen (and some Navy and Army soldiers in those numbers). So the 17th came and we began receiving donations at 6pm. I wasn't expecting this to be a big night for donations. It was just a convenience thing for some people but by 8PM we had 360 dozen cookies! I had some amazing helpers to help me deal with this, of course. So we wrapped them all up tightly and went home.
The next morning at 5:45AM, we came back to start the real Cookie Drive day.
So in the end, I had 100 dozen leftover and we gave them out to anyone who would take them. We took them to the USO and the fire department too. It was very successful and I had some awesome volunteers who came to help and all my friends made cookies because I asked them to.
In the end, I spoke with Chaplain Boyd on base and told her about how successful it was. She was very impressed with our hard work and she thanked me for organizing it...so she "Coined me". (This is a military tradition to award someone when they do something great. They physically give you a coin that they designed through a handshake. The coins are beautiful. This is the 3rd coin I have earned. (At our last base my team and I raised $25,500 to give away in scholarships over a year as I served as President of the Officers' Spouses' Club. I got to hand each of the 15 scholarship winners their certificate at a ceremony and at the end the General "coined" me for my hard work. I also earned one for being a "key spouse" which is kind of like a Relief Society President over your squadron.) Some perspective...Jeremy has 6 coins and he actually works for the Air Force. I am pretty proud of my 3!
So as part of the drive this year we decided to make it a squadron competition in hopes of bringing in more cookies. In the end the Medical Group brought in 189.5 dozen. I had a trophy made and was able to present it to their commander. Here is the picture of that:
Friday night was the CRG (the group that we are a part of) kids' party and Saturday I was in charge of coordinating the Ward Christmas Party. There are a lot of pictures taken of that but I don't have any. I have to say, though, that it was awesome. Everyone did their part and followed through with what they were assigned and we had a huge dance party at the end and it was fantastic.
Now I am looking forward to spending some time reading or playing with my kids. I am currently not signed up for anything crazy and I am going to enjoy the next 3 weeks! Merry Christmas to all and peace out!
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