Tools For School!

Tools for School time is back! For us anyway. For Aunt Amy and Hal (the

'head honchos) :) It's been going on for months...

Monday was Dixon's school registration day so I went and took Hal's place

part way through the day so he could go off and work on other things.

While I was there I got to pass out tickets and schedule what

times people were coming to the backpack distribution day!

And explain about Tools for School to anyone who wasn't familiar with it

and had no idea 'why somebody from the other table sent them over here with

this peach piece of paper...'

Then Tuesday morning and afternoon, Rachel, Jared and I sorted and counted all
of the supplies gathered from the donation barrels that were placed around Dixon.
It took a while, but it was fun working together and some of us like sorting stuff...And Today (da da da DAAAAAAA) was the packing day!
over 500 backpacks filled according to grade requirements and then "banded"
(we put a little wristband on the bags that were filled according to what grade
they had been filled for, and then as the kids arrive to pick out their backpacks
they will also get a wristband that matches the grade so they will know which ones
they can choose from!)
This was all done at ShopKo. Let me tell you, those people are AWESOME!
They let us use one of the back corners of the store to pack all the bags, and are
storing all of the supplies and filled backpacks! They even have had their workers
getting the supplies ready and working on packing the bags too! I can't think of
enough good things to say about them, but we'll just leave it with, 'they are a
wonderful team of people and I'm glad I got to work with them today!'

I love this picture!

This is Jared and his Grandpa.

There was somewhere around 15 volunteers that came to help

fill all the backpacks. So between Aunt Amy, Hal and the Shopko workers

getting everything set up, once the volunteers arrived and they got started

filling the bags all of the bags were filled within 2 hours!

They would start with an empty backpack that had already been unzipped,

then walk through the setup of tables and fill the bags with all the items they needed.

By the time they had made it around all of the tables they would zip the bags, and then

pass them off to either Jared or I who would then put the wristband on the top of the bag

so that everyone would know that it was completed!

:) Us.

A little above-shot so you can see how the tables were set up...

Good stuff happening! I (and I know I speak for Rachel too) feel blessed

that I get to be even just a small part of what's going on!