One of the main focuses around the office the past few months has been Holiday Heroes and the 40 families through Texas that we have adopted. This program is my favorite and I am very blessed that I was able to be a part of so much of it. The shopping was a blast and watching those teams fill up 2 to 3 shopping carts full of toys, clothes, bikes, video games and even bedding filled me with excitement. Excitement that these families are going to have a wonderful Christmas because of this program. Filled with even more excitement for those families that weren’t going to have a Christmas if it wasn’t for Holiday Heroes and the wonderful volunteers.
The HFC staff originally planned to have a Christmas party to include spouses but we were unable to agree on a date that worked for everyone but we came up with an even better idea! We decided that we could choose one of our Holiday Heroes families and that family was ours to shop for, wrap for and provide for. We chose a family that touched us. They are gracious, humble and truly selfless. We choose Caden’s family. Caden is 3 years old and has been battling Neuroblastoma for a year and half. He recently relapsed and is continuing to fight. When we received this family’s Holiday Heroes wish list back in our office we looked over their wish list to find that Caden’s mom, Lexie, hadn’t listed the things that the boys had wanted but instead wrote us a letter back…
Hey Guys,
We wanted to thank you for all you have done for us over the past year. We are honored and humbled to be selected as one of your Holiday Heroes families-what a surprise. As we tried to think about needs for our family, especially the boys, we realized we have been so blessed and truly don’t lack for much in the areas of food, clothes, toys etc. It is hard to give suggestions for gifts because we don’t truly need anything. We are torn on what to do, so we will let you make the decision. Listed below are “family/brother gifts” suggestions (rather than individual child), however, if there is another family that could use your help please remove our name. Thank you again.
Hugs,
Lexie
Their list is:
Gift certificate towards bunk beds
Wii and games
Tickets to sporting events
Gift cards to restaurants or family places
We instantly agreed that Caden’s family was “our” family. We all headed out to Wal-Mart for our shopping day and we did fill up two carts worth of stuff for this family. We had a great time choosing just the right things for the boys and we each personally contributed to the shopping carts. The shopping was followed by our staff Christmas lunch at Kona Grill, and yes there was sushi involved. We even did a little more shopping after lunch!
It took us about an hour to wrap all the gifts and get them ready to deliver to Caden’s family at the Dallas Holiday Heroes Christmas party this past Saturday. It was so nice to be able to meet Lexie, John and the boys. If you were to see Caden on Saturday you wouldn’t have even know he was a little boy with cancer, he was just a little boy playing and chasing his big brothers with a smile on his face the whole time. It made it all the hard work of the Fall pay off to see the smile on Caden’s face!
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