“Dear Rebound Staff and organizers of the Toy Store,

Thank you so much for providing us the opportunity to purchase “Christmas”
for my children this year! Thank you, Christmas 2008 was wonderful and my
children spent the last two weeks enjoying their toys and their things providing
them comfort and security. We had a wonderful Christmas break. Thank you
for supporting and loving my children.”

“We can’t wait until we are in a position (financially) to donate to the
Community Toy Store because it has meant so much to us over the last
couple years.”

“Thank you very much for providing this opportunity for so many families in Whatcom County. I was very impressed by how well organized it was, and the kindness of everyone I met there. My children had a great time at the childcare, and I had a nice time meeting my neighbors in line (thanks for the cookies and hot drinks as well!). Best of all, I got a bag full of lovely gifts for my children for a very reasonable price, nicely wrapped by your volunteers. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Your organization really displays what the Christmas spirit is all about.”

“Hope with the way the economy is now.  A true blessing and a great help to our family.”

“Everything! We could  not have had Christmas without you all. Thank you.”

“Thanks for helping my family in a difficult time.  God bless this community.”

“It is so nice to be able to afford my owns kids gifts and pick them out myself.”

“It was great! Merry Christmas!”

“What a beautiful thing!”

“I thought it was awesome! If it wasn’t for this, I couldn’t have done anything for my family.”

“Seeing a happy face on my babies face.”

“Saved Christmas.”

“It has meant a lot, since we are a low income family and we’re out of work.  It’s a blessing from God.”

“This program is great for the community.”

“I thought this was great!”

“Very helpful in this economy and as a bonus, the staff was wonderful.”

“Very great! It has helped my family a great deal.”

“It’s wonderful.”

“Greatly greatly! Happy that we can be blessed in this way.  The children will be happy and grateful.”

“I really thank you for everything.”

“I very much appreciate the Community Toy Store, very much.”

“We would not have been able to treat our boys to the Christmas they deserve without you.  Thank you so much.”

“It has been a true blessing to be able to buy affordable toys for my kids.”

“It’s so wonderful, it’s a blessing!”

“Christmas.”

“Our tree will be a happier site…thank you.”

“This was so great! A true blessing!”

“It was wonderful, especially for such a hard year.”

“Better Christmas for my kids.”

“It made our Christmas.”

“It’s a great opportunity for less fortunate families to have a wonderful Christmas.  A fantastic idea and well organized!”

“It has meant that all our kids get a gift.”

“The Community Toy Store helped make Christmas for our family.”

“This is a great thing for our community.  Actually these are the only gifts my kids are getting from us this year.”

Before I begin…a huge shout out to all the folks that made this happen.  Without the close working relationship of Rebound and Roosevelt Community Church an event of this magnitude would be impossible to pull off.  A special shout out to Rebound’s Vista Volunteer (In this instance volunteer means you get paid so little it’s really a volunteer position…except it’s not) Jessica Baumer.  Jessica put in countless hours doing the nitty gritty details of the Community Toy Store….so if you ever meet her, give her a big hug or a thank you or a tip.

Well, another year has come and gone for the Community Toy Store.  There were four of us who got together starting in September to begin the planning of this year’s event.  Two folks from Rebound and two of us from Roosevelt Community Church.

We talked about our expectations of this year’s Community Toy Store effort, we talked about how many families we might be able to serve, and we talked about who was going to do what.  I think it is safe to say that we had no idea of how crazy or successful this year would be.

September came and went, followed by October.  We were all making phone calls and bringing on board Partners from last year and quite a few new Partners…

November came and then it hit me, we were on the home stretch.  About mid November is when the thoughts of…”boy can we pull this off?”  With the right Help, we could…we thought…

Every year the Community Toy Store has doubled in the number of families served.  So we were hoping/expecting about 160 families, based on last years data, to attend the Community Toy Store of 2009.  We had over 270 volunteers sign up to help!

Friday night, December 11th, has arrived.  We had 20+ volunteers show up the day before to help with pricing of the toys at CBF.  We had over 50 volunteers show up to help move the toys over to Birchwood Elementary and get the Community Toy Store all setup!

By about 5:30, 1 hour before the Community Toy Store was supposed to open, we had a dozen or more people lined up at the entrance to the school.

At 6:15, we had amassed enough volunteers to open the doors and get the 2009 Community Toy Store rolling.  At this time there was at least 100 people in line…

At 6:45pm we had at least 200+ people in line.  It was cold and most of them were outside.  We started having volunteers bring small kids to the front of the line and bring out hot coffee to the folks in the cold.  Maybe some cookies too. Like 3 or 4 platters full of yummy Christmas cookies.

By 7:30, we had a line all the way to the stop sign at the intersection of Birchwood and Pinewood.  We had had a run in with a disgruntled individual who did not like the model of the Community Toy Store.  However, we had about 150 friends that DID like the model of the Community Toy Store and so the disgruntled individual promptly departed…

The truth is that at 7:30pm we were not sure if we were going to have enough toys for everyone.  Typically the first night we get a big rush at the opening and then it trickles off.  Not this year.  This year it was like the waves of a tsunami, they just keep getting bigger and bigger until they get to where they wanted to go from the beginning.  We had officially “un-set aside” toys for Saturday as we realized this was going to be it.  We were going to go through all of our toys tonight.  No reason to make someone who has been standing outside for an hour come back in the morning…there were too many people in line for that.

By 8:00pm, we knew for sure that everything would be gone that night.  New shoppers had stopped arriving and it was beginning to look like we were going to run out of toys before we could serve them all.

By 8:30 we were completely out of toys and giftcards.  We had managed to serve every single family that showed up.  No one left empty handed.

In just a little over two hours we served 233 families, representing 779 children.  We sold almost $19,000 in donations.  The average family spent just $18 to provide Christmas for their family.

By all accounts, this year was a tremendous success.  Our only lament is that we did not have toys for a Saturday store and had to turn away about 50 cars on Saturday morning.

We nearly tripled our number of families served from last year!

More will come later…

Let me just say that I am amazed.  This year was incredible…we were able to serve more families than ever and more than we could have ever imagined.  Thank you to all of the amazing volunteers and organizations that helped make this happen!

We are all sold out of toys!  There will not be a Community Toy Store Saturday morning.

More updates after more coffee.

Tonight we kick off the 4th annual Community Toy Store at Birchwood Elementary (3200 Pinewood, Bellingham)!

Any families that are struggling this year and could benefit from the Community Toy Store, are encouraged to come!

Tonight, 6:30-8:30pm

Tomorrow, 9am-12pm

If you don’t need the services of the Community Toy Store we still encourage you to stop by and have some coffee, see what we are about.  This is truly a community event and we are so thankful to all of you that have helped make this happen, year after year.

Thanks and we’ll see you tonight!

You can read the story here!

Thanks to our friends at the Herald hopefully we have gotten even more exposure to Whatcom County families that would benefit from the 2009 Community Toy Store!