the end of round one...

****My apologies if you are tired of reading about Toy Time by now!  I sincerely will not be offended if you close this window and walk away from my blog for a while.  You may want to take a loooonnngggg walk because I still have five days of Toy Time to talk about! ; )

my 4 year old friend, Rachel, working hard cleaning toys

This evening marks the half-way point of Toy Time... the end of Day 5 in a 10 day journey.  However, it's only the end of Round One and we still have 3 more rounds to go.  Today ended our toy drive.  Over 100 volunteers came together in 4 1/2 days and collected, cleaned, sorted and priced over 12,000 toys!! Yep, 12,000!!!  Isn't that a crazy amount of play apparatus?

a partial view of ALL of the toys!

Round Two of Toy Time begins tonight with the consignment toy sale.  Consigners have been invited to pre-sale the toy sale tonight to purchase new and gently used toys at a reduced price.  We had A LOT of brand-new toys come into the toy sale to be sold.  We also had some GREAT used toys... a FurReal S'more Pony, a Powerwheels Harley-Davidson motorcycle and a stuffed Nintendog.  It was fun to see what would come in next!  Tomorrow the sale opens to the public.


On Sunday afternoon the sale will close and my incredible friends, Ami and Tena, will spend several hours settling accounts.  All consigners have the option of earning 50% of the sale price of their toy or the consigner can donate their profit for the purchase of brand-new toys.  When all accounts are settled, Ami will have money to go buy new toys to pass out to needy children in our area.


Monday is Round Three!  Shopping day!!  Ami and Tena (and sometimes an extra helper or two) will go shopping with the proceeds from the sale.  They will purchase as many toys as they can and will bring back a trailer full of new toys.  One of my favorite Toy Time memories was the year that Tena's husband, Mike, pulled in with his semi-trailer full of toys!


Tuesday and Wednesday will be Round Four... toy give away!  It's for toy giveaway that we work so hard.  We love to pass out toys to needy kids and their parents because when we give them a toy, we can tell them about Jesus.  He is the greatest gift ever given!


Stay tuned... I'm sure I will have more to say about Toy Time 2010... until then, I'm down for the count after Round One...  g'night!