Holiday Card Project!

Today was an amazing day, probably one of the best of my life. The card project went great, the caroling went awesome and the rest of the day was super fun too. I'd just like to tell you all how it went if that's alright

First we started out with getting up and eating food. Exciting right? Then was a 4 hour drive there, in which time we slept and got rested up to get to the hospital. We practiced our carols for 20 minutes before getting there and we headed in quickly because it was really cold out. We headed up to the transplant floor and talked to the nurse.

Our first roadblock came in the form of that they have 32 beds that can be filled... and they only had 15 patients there at the moment, 8 of which who were sleeping and didn't want to be bothered. Deviant art... sent me 50 cards even though I only requested 32. We just shrugged and went with it, going room to room to spread holiday cheer.

The first people we went to were two patients visiting in the hallway with too ladies. We handed them cards and told them Merry Christmas. They were so surprised to get the cards and I couldn't stop smiling at how happy they were to get them. Then my mom had me tell them how far we'd driven and why we'd picked the transplant floor in general and all 4 of them started to tear up. I wanted to cry too but there was the rest of the floor to go through so I smiled, we wished them a happy new year again and headed off to our next patient.

Some of them were really funny because they were older and couldn't hear and thought we were room service and tried to give us our card back, thinking we just wanted artistic critique on it. Others I felt bad for because one only spoke Spanish (he accepted a card anyways) and this young lady that had been in there since October. All of them were really touched by the cards and really happy to receive them. A few had just gotten their transplant a few days before and none of them really wanted a picture taken of them since they were still a little out from surgery which we respected.

Since we had so many extra we counted out the remaining patients and left some cards with the nurses to deliver to them when they woke up. They told us we couldn't carol because so many were resting but that was ok. The nice nurses said we could have a picture with them at least to prove we went and handed out cards. That's me in the middle, my sister PoorLittleTruffle and Zee itsinthesoul on the end plus the two lovely nurses.



After that we left some cards with the caner unit across the hall and they said they'd have to deliver those themselves since we couldn't bring germs. They thanked us a lot since they have a lot of patients that get no mail for the holidays and that would brighten up their Christmas. We took the remaining cards over to the children hospital since what was left was more appropriate for younger people since they had homemade bracelets and coloring pages inside etc. We left 20 over for them and same story, they had to deliver them since we might be sick. So some kids will be getting some holiday cheer tomorrow or so as well.

All in all it was a very lovely and successful outing. We made a lot of people very happy and tear up. It felt amazing and I'd gladly do it all over again and deliver to even more people if I could.  From there we talked to security who said we could carol outside the doors if we wanted but we just couldn't get any patients in our videos if we videoed our caroling. So we went out and did that. Our voices echoed all awesome like throughout the parking deck and stuff and that was a lot of fun.



Video 1:


Video 2:




After that we napped in the car a little longer before heading to the mall. I got some fingerless gloves I've had my eyes on for several years and a mini replica of the Witch King's Sword from Lord Of The Rings. It's really pretty and I love it. Zee gave me a paint and brush carrying kit for my art supplies which will come in mega handy. She also gave me a beautiful steam punk necklace that says "Slay your own dragons!" on it and its awesome. We had a lot of funk dinking around in the mall for a few hours, listening to a live Bluegrass band that was playing while we ate.

From there we headed home and now I'm telling this wonderful tale to you. All in all it was an amazing day. I had so much fun bringing all that holiday cheer to these people and seeing how much it meant to them and brightened their day. Tomorrow Zee and I are going to the local Nursing home and caroling some for them too since they've been requesting people to come sing for them so the holiday cheer spreading continues!  

Thanks to everyone who donated cards to this project! The few of you that left deviant art names in them will be getting a llama from me sometime soon as a thanks. All of the cards were beautiful and the patients loved them. Some were from the Ukraine, some from Australia and all sorts of other amazing place across the US and world. Thank you so much to Deviantart for hosting this project and allowing myself and sister and friend to help out with it.

Merry Christmas everyone!

AJ