Thanking the Troops:

     In September of 2009 one of our employees Heather Newman, found out that her boyfriend Bill, was being deployed to Iraq to serve our country. As the 2009 holidays started to roll around our office was discussing what we wanted to do for our holiday project. It was decided to gather some items and make up some care packages to send to his unit since they wouldn't be able to spend that holiday season with their families back home.

     To our surprise, the community got very involved and what went from a small holiday project amongst our staff became a booming sensation around the town. Our office deemed this the "Triple T Maneuver." People were bringing boxes and bags full of items to send to our troops, as well as donating money to help cover the shipping costs. Next things we knew we were clearing extra room in the back of the office to put all these items, Everything from random snacks to clothing, medical supplies and fans were being dropped off. A HUGE thank you goes out to everyone involved, you truly made this a great surprise to our office and made a happy holiday season for the men and women serving our country.

These are some of the items brought in by members of the community as well as our staff members. We ended up covering 3 long tables as well as the floor surrounding them. For these pictures we had to stack the items several feet high.

As you see there were many Beanie Babies brought in from people. Those are small and easy for the soldiers to carry in their pockets to hand out to the local Iraqi children as a way of showing them that they are not there to harm anyone. The children love these.

Since we gathered a lot more items than we ever expected, we decided we would ask the community if they had loved ones currently deployed that would like to receive some holiday care packages for their units. We ended up shipping over 40 boxes and well over eight hundred items, not just to Iraq but to Afghanistan as well. Many of the local soldiers serving our country received some kind of care package from the community if their addresses were given to our office.

When Bill returned home from his deployment he brought back some of the disposable cameras that had been sent over for the soldiers personal use. The soldiers took these pictures with the cameras we sent over and wanted to share some of them with us so we could see just how thankful everyone was for keeping them in our hearts around such a special time of year.

**Stop into our office today and check out the poster we made with even more pictures taken by our soldiers on it!**