Sunday, November 18, 2012
Tonight's picture was taken in October of 2004. Back then I was teaching at the George Washington University and some of my students invited us to a Halloween event they were hosting for local underpriviledged children. They wanted me to see the event and they also wanted to meet Mattie. Mattie got dressed up in his Halloween outfit and enjoyed the fact that they were giving away free children's books to the attendees. Mattie loved Franklin (a turtle) and Little Bear and when he saw stories featuring his favorite characters, he grabbed the books. Peter snapped a picture of us reading together in the midst of all the activities going on!
Quote of the day: Have you ever lost someone you love and wanted one more conversation, one more chance to make up for the time when you thought they would be here forever? If so, then you know you can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back. ~ Mitch Albom
It is with no doubt that collecting and SORTING all of this candy is a labor of love. Unlike those of you who have children to nurture each day, our nurturing has to be done in different ways. One of the ways to keep Mattie's memory alive and help others this Fall is through our candy drive. The drive has certainly kept me busy, focused, and determined to collect as much candy as possible to keep the snack cart at the Hospital stocked for the year.
The grand total collected is 1000 pounds of candy!!! This is a significant increase from last year, in which we collected 238 pounds of candy. I think the candy drive was a major success this year because I reached out to a couple of my friends who helped to publicize the drive on listservs and through their social circles. In addition, we had Foundation supporters, schools, mom's groups, girl scouts troops, brownie troops, and a temple in Maryland partnering with us to collect candy. We literally collected candy from individuals and groups in DC, Virginia, and Maryland this year!
The picture below illustrates how significant 1000 pounds of candy is, but what you can not determine from the picture is that each of these bags is quite heavy and very fragrant! It took Peter and I several hours to cart these bags down to the car and pack it efficiently in order to deliver them to the Hospital tomorrow. I love the pictures Peter took today because they prominently feature Mattie. Mattie is the motivation behind our efforts and naturally his memory gives us the energy to take on such a large project. For those of you who are interested in specifics you will find a chart reflecting the type of candy and poundage for each item below this picture. To everyone who made this possible, we THANK YOU!!!
Candy
Type
|
Pounds
|
Reece's Peanut Butter Cups
|
63
|
Whoopers
|
22
|
Candy Corn
|
6
|
Baby Ruth
|
22
|
Nestle Crunch
|
26
|
Starbursts
|
35
|
Skittles
|
21
|
Milk Duds
|
11
|
Almond Joys
|
21
|
Butterfingers
|
42
|
Tootsie Rolls
|
42
|
Laffy Taffy
|
22
|
Twizzlers
|
22
|
Peanut M&Ms
|
25
|
3 Musketeers
|
19
|
Kit Kat
|
55
|
M&Ms
|
41
|
Milky Ways
|
43
|
Peppermint Patties
|
8
|
100k bars
|
9
|
Snickers
|
102
|
Mini Peanut Butter Cups
|
28
|
Twix
|
39
|
Hershey miniatures
|
43
|
Lollipops
|
60
|
Hot Tamales
|
3
|
Chips/Pretzels
|
10
|
Hard Candy
|
39
|
Hershey Bars
|
42
|
Chewy Candy
|
33
|
Sweet Tarts
|
38
|
Granola
|
8
|
TOTAL:
|
1000
|
No comments:
Post a Comment