My sister is the best!

I have been completely humbled this afternoon by a group of people I have not had the chance to meet (as of yet) but I have to say to my sister, "You are the best sister a guy could hope for and your selflessness is beyond comparison."

Ok, an explanation...

I stated in a recent entry that I wanted to adopt a small unit and send them some care packages. Now I figured the bulk of this project was going to be on me. It is my idea, I made the contacts and I figured that other then my family very few people, let alone complete strangers, would care enough to help me out. I was wrong, WAY WRONG.

I started putting together my first package for the guys and decided that I should ask my parents and sister if they would like to help me out. I was not looking for a ton of stuff but if they could each chip in a bit it would mean a bunch to the guys. I had no idea what was going to happen next. I knew without a doubt that they would help but not that my sister would wrangle up close to another 10 (and growing) friends of hers to help out.

I called my sister last night to confirm that she got my email and see what she would be able to help out with. Of course she said she would help but this morning I got a great surprise, she had forwarded my email to a group of graduate students that she works with (she is a PhD in a sub-section of psychology) and the response was overwhelming.

She said that the students who responded were excited to help out and that they were printing out my email with suggestions on it, double checking for redundancy and planning on going to the store to get the items they had chosen. Even better was that she was still waiting to hear back from some of them and that perhaps by morning we could have a few more chipping in for the project. I had no clue that this was even possible but I am walking on air here knowing that we should be able to send a few more boxes then I even thought we would.

I think the guys will be excited to receive some boxes, letters and maybe even some pictures from a group of college students who realize it is important to support the soldiers, while at the same time finding out that this is a group of many single, young, cute girls! LOL!

Anyway I will get with my sister tomorrow to arrange the details for this and then when I can come back down and collect the items. I am hoping that I can head out to the campus and do this when they are all in a group because a groups photo is a must. I also want to personally thank them. This is not something they had to do and more so while $10-15 may not sound like a lot when you are a graduate student and trying to survive on minimum wage of not less that is a lot of money. I want to make sure they realize how much this will be appreciated.

I am also excited that my wife's employer (a large national restaurant well known for their support of the troops) has given her the go ahead to help support projects like this. We will be going to corporate HQ tomorrow for some other business so I am hoping perhaps they will be able to contribute in some way. Obviously with this project growing this quickly we are looking at increased shipping costs. Of course I have a few other ideas but I will wait until I talk to them before I post them here.

I would also like to offer the chance to my readers to help out. I know that I am not a huge blog like Kos or Little Green Footballs nor am I a tax exempt organization but I do have a Paypal account and a debit card linked to it. Any donations made from readers would go 100% to the costs of the packages and I would be glad to provide a complete accounting of all donations to those who choose to help.

Once again though I would like to tell me sister that she is the greatest. I only hope that each time we put together these packages we can contiue to have this kind of support.