This is my trip report for the Saturday December 13th.
Kathy, grandson Jaden, and myself packed up all of the Pajamas that were gathered and tendered to us for distribution along with toys that we gathered for the Toys For Tots donation. We left our house about 8:55 and headed over to pick up Dede to join us. Mike had to work would not be able to join us. We arrived fashionably Esprit de Four late, at about 9:10am at the Cambrian Plaza shopping center. What a sight! There we found members and friends all involved with conversation and taking pictures of the decorated vehicles. All in all there were 16 vehicles with some decoration on all.
We headed out after a short driver meeting to the County of Santa Clara Children's Shelter. The shelter is only about three blocks away. We were greeted by one of the staff by the name of Mark. Mark was a little taken back at the amount of people and vehicles there for the event. Mark went and had some kids along with some more staff come out and meet us. The kids were quite excited to see Santa Claus and came up and got and gave hugs with Santa. A cart was brought out to the front and bags and bags of PJs were loaded into the cart. The last count that I had was 242 PJs. This was really impressive to me to see that large pile of PJs.
The staff took some of the kids to look at the vehicles while we all went out to the facility sign and posed for some pictures.
The next stop for the day would be the Toy For Tots down at Christmas in the Park, downtown San Jose. As you can imagine, it was a little bit of a challange to keep all 16 vehicles together. We pulled over and waited several times to make sure we were all together. We did our normal circle the whole park before coming in for a landing. What a sight. KBAY came over and asked Santa who we were and where we were from. Esprit De Four did get a little mentioning on the radio station and thanked us for supporting the drive. We all kind of scattered from there to do whatever till the evening.
Some of us went to Fernwood Winery in the Santa Cruz mountains to do a little tasting and buying. We also stopped at Martin Winery, which is very close to Fernwood Winery.
Kathy and I loaded up things once again for the annual ED4 Christmas Party at the Santa Clara Train Depot. This was once again a very special time of meeting with members, families, friends, and future members. Wonderful food, conversation, great intertainment. Santa and his elf Buddy were there. This was a very special appearance for the ED4 group. I hope that Tom is OK from all of the laughing that he did.
I would like to send out a special thanks to my wife, Kathy for the organization of the PJ drive, to Mike for the Toys For Tots drive, to Ellen for the organization of the Christmas party, and a REALLY BIG THANKS to all that made this day so very special to alot of people that are being helped by your generousity.
I also want to wish each and everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, till we meet again happy trails to all.
The Santa Man