Giving Warms the Heart

As most of you know Bannor Toys makes a promise to our customers to pay it forward.  We do this through out the year in several ways, as the year comes to a close I want to share a few stories with you of how our small toy company has impacted people from our own neighborhood to around the country.  As always, we tell you this not to gloat or show off the good deeds but to thank you for your help in supporting our mission and our family.  We want you to know that buying our toys really does help us do everything from sending our kids to little league to helping to feed America.

1. A young girl who attends Ethan's elementary school, a couple of grades ahead of our six year old son, was diagnosed with cancer this year.  The family has come under tremendous stress to pay the medical bills and still continue treatment so the school reached out to parents for help with small fundraisers (wear a hat to class for a buck, etc.) We were happy to be in a position to help that family, even with a small donation thanks to the success of the toy company.

2. We are still making donations to the Feed America program that supports quality, honest food banks around the entire US.  See www.feedingamerica.org to help!

3. Just this weekend we were at the grocery store filling the carts with non-perishable items for the youth emergency shelter and the food bank.  We were able to buy more then 300 items in just one trip!  We feel really great that with your help, we have been blessed enough to be able to give back.  Not only did this last trip help the Youth Shelter, http://www.yessiowa.org/ but it affected our direct neighborhood and our family as well.  Several times at the store people asked us what we were doing with all that food, they asked if we had a huge family and it gave us the chance to talk about who was in need this season.  A woman, complete stranger, overheard what we were doing and came over and put a ten dollar bill in Stacey's hand and said I wish I could do more but I want to help you with what you are doing.  How very cool, it was really great for us to experience the generosity, and for our kids to see that display of selflessness.

Merry Christmas everyone, thank you for your help this year, please count your blessings and pay them forward when you can.  Also, please consider supporting the charities listed above.