Elves & More

My husband and I have just returned from downtown's Reliant Center.... we were there with the "Elves & More" organization. Each year, this group puts together bicycles for children of families who are living way below the poverty level. The man who started this group had a first year's total of 11 bicycles that he put together himself and distributed to children who had never owned a bike before. That was in the year 2000.

In 2001, the number of bikes given out was 23. The following year, 385 bikes were put together and distributed on Christmas Eve. The next year.... 8000 bikes. In 2004, the number was 20,800. For the year 2005, there were 13,000 bikes given out...... the lower number may have had something to do with Hurricane Rita & Hurricane Katrina. This year, they are giving out 20,000 bicycles. And seven of those were put together by myself and my husband.... he did the putting-together, I did the unboxing and unwrapping mostly, but I did put together the training-wheels on the little bikes, and I learned how to screw on the foot-pedals. Seven bikes may not seem like a lot, but it is to us, considering that we'd never done that before.

I also took three bags of Christmas gifts up there tonight.... story books, coloring books & crayons, and teddy bears. Before I helped my husband with the bikes, I wrapped up those gifts and put labels on them (boy or girl, and the age group). 19 gifts in all....... to add to the piles already there which will also be given out on the day before Christmas Eve. The volunteers start filling up the trucks early in the morning and head out to communities where children won't have much of a Christmas at all.

Twenty thousand bicycles. The number is staggering........ and when you walk into Reliant Center and see boxes upon boxes of bikes that need to be put together on one side of the building, and then look to the other side and see those that have already been assembled.... it just makes you melt. We put together a pink bike with training wheels, and two blue ones with training wheels.... then a green one that didn't need the extra wheels....... then larger blue bikes for the older kids.

I was amazed at all the people who were there to put those bikes together.... some were alone, some were in couples (like us), and there were also entire families there, setting up their own assembly lines to make the job go quicker. Just amazing.... there's no other word for it.... other than heart-warming. This has been going on at Reliant Center since Dec. 12th, and will continue until the 21st. They load the trucks on the 22nd, and deliver them on the 23rd. Everyone signs up on-line, and works in shifts... this way, they won't have too many people there on one day, and no one there on the next day.

As we were leaving, we stopped at the tables where they were selling things with the Elves & More logo, which brings more donation money to the organization. My husband bought himself a tee-shirt for $15 and we wrote out a check for $100 and told them to keep the change. We will definitely do this again next year.... but we'll wear sneakers next time, because the floor there is all concrete and awfully hard to stand up on for so many hours. And we'll bring a few different tools, to make the assembly go faster.... and I will bring a tiny scissors to cut through the bubble-wrap that the manufacturer wraps around the painted parts of the bikes. And who knows... maybe I will learn how to assemble more than the pedals and the training wheels. (But I was really great at tossing all the trash into the big dumpsters and flattening-out the packing boxes.... everyone has to toss out their own boxes and packing material, and keep the area around the assembly tables neat.)

Seven bikes for us this year.... next year, we will try to double that amount. What a great organization.... we kept saying that we felt like elves as we put those bicycles together. Jingle bells indeed.......!