Because of our “garage-saling uniforms” and our parade exposure, we are semi-famous (or infamous, according to Kate) in Lockhart. Autographed copies of our parade photo are on display at several Lockhart businesses. Often when we arrive at a garage sale, someone will say, “We wondered if the Queens would come!” or “The Queens are here!” It is so much fun. I’ve even been recognized “out of uniform” around town. One lady claimed she had read about us in the Austin paper. (We’ve never been in any newspaper.) I joked to Kate that we’re so famous now that we have to mind our P’s & Q’s when we are out-and-about, or it will be fodder for the tabloids. Seriously though, I think the exposure is good for our cause. Now that our business cards are floating around, we might just get a phone call from someone with a boatload of blankets, backpacks or sweats they want to unload.

  Our goal every year is 25 blankets, 25 backpacks and 25 knit hats. We pack each hat with a pair of gloves, toiletries, and two pairs of socks. (Oh, and Breezy insists that each hat have a candy cane and chocolate – it is Christmas, after all.) We also pick up sweats, thermal underwear, shoes and coats when we can find them. If we don’t get enough blankets and hats at garage sales, we go to Wal-Mart in December and buy new ones while we’re buying the socks, gloves and toiletries.

  Make no mistake. We don’t do it alone. We have had so much help! My Ma and Gram keep their eyes peeled for blankets and sweats when they go garage saling. Clifford’s mother donates throughout the year, too. My brother-in-law, Robbie, saved up all his recycling money and donated to our cause one year, as well.

  I am truly blessed with amazing friends. My friend Wanda’s husband loves new socks. Stuart gets socks for his birthday, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, etc. He says that if he ever wins the lottery, he will have a brand new pair of socks every day. So a couple of times a year, Wanda brings me all of Stuart’s perfectly good, but no-longer-brand-new, socks. We buy new socks, too, but this way, we can give each person a new pair of socks plus one or two gently-used pair.

  My good friends Ann and Shelly have helped in a big way, too. Usually we can pack everything into one or two cars, but the couple of years when Shelly and Ann helped, we needed four cars! Ann even got her dentist to donate toothbrushes and toothpaste one year.

  My dear friends Vickie and Paul bought the lion’s share in 2004. I came home from work one day and my living room was littered with shopping bags full of blankets, socks, knit hats and toiletries that Vickie and her son Zach had dropped off. That was a particularly lean year for us, and without their generosity, we would have only been able to give a small fraction of what we did. The night before we were scheduled to deliver everything, Paul and Vickie came over and spent several hours helping to stuff the hats; roll and tie the blankets; and load everything into our cars.

  In 2005 my mother emailed our story to a group of internet friends and one of them sent me a check. I immediately went out and bought blankets with it. Another of her email buddies sent a Wal-Mart gift card that I used to buy gloves. My Uncle Jim and Aunt Janet, and Great Uncles Bill and Curt, all surprised me with generous donations, too. So we have some “seed” money for when the garage sales start up again in 2006. I simply cannot find the words to accurately convey just how grateful I am for the outpouring of support.

  One year, as I was digging around in my chest of drawers looking for something warm to wear for our annual delivery, I found two pairs of maroon sweatpants. I didn’t even know I had two pairs of maroon sweatpants - and I certainly didn’t need two pairs; so I put one pair on and threw the other in the bag for the homeless. At our first stop, I noticed a large man standing at the edge of the crowd watching the others dig through the bins of sweats. I said to him, “I have a pair of pants for you.” He looked surprised. (There is rarely anything for the big guys.) I pulled those maroon sweatpants out of the bag and said “3X?” He smiled and said, “Perfect! Thank you!”