It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Now that I'm taking a break from training, I get to enjoy one of my favorite activities of the year -- The Family Giving Tree.  From approximately Dec 13-23 every year, the Family Giving Tree collects over 60,000 gifts from Bay Area companies and organizations to distribute to local agencies supporting families in need.  Sadly, last year, I only made it to the warehouse for a couple of hours.  However, this year, I was able to give a lot more time.  


What makes the Family Giving Tree different?  It gives a gift to the child that wants that specific gift.  If Yesenia wants a Barbie with a convertible car, then that is what we try to give her.  When I lived in Phoenix, there were different giving trees for Salvation Army, the homeless shelter, the women's center, etc. at the various malls.  In the Bay Area, rather than each of those agencies fight for resources, they go to Family Giving Tree, which services over 200 agencies.  It creates a brand that gets PSAs on TV, news coverage, and over 6000 volunteers.  Power is in numbers.


My favorite day is drop-off day.  This is where hundreds of cars and trucks pull up all day long with trunks and truckbeds and backseats full of gifts.  I get my workout in unloading cars, pushing gigantic boxes around, and unloading the boxes into "the pile."  I am always sore the next day!

Then we work on sorting the pile into smaller piles by agency code.  This is a great job for little ones like Girl Scouts.  Family Giving Tree really promotes having children in the warehouse to instill a sense of philanthropy at a young age.  

From there, every child has a number so we "row" the gifts by number.  We find out which child has two gifts (remove the duplicate and put in "The Store" and find which children are missing a gift and "shop" for their desired gift from "The Store").

This past weekend, I twisted the arm of some Iron teammates to come work in the warehouse with me.  

According to Sedonia's calculations we did the equivalent of approximately 700 toe touches.  I did a lot of squatting, too.  And, my hammies were *very* sore by the time I walked out of there that night.