UPDATE: Christmas Reddit Miracle for the 6 children whose mother was murdered, grandma left to care for them.

See previous post about the family's story: http://www.reddit.com/r/RandomActsOfChristmas/comments/mpn5g/request_a_reddit_christmas_miracle_help_family/

A lot of people asked for an update about the family and/or our Christmas service project, so here it goes:

First off.....Reddit, you've been simply amazing! It truly is a miracle how you have helped this family that is in great need! I never guessed in my wildest dreams that THIS many complete strangers would be so willing to help out this family! I was evenly blown away by those who PM 'd me to ask what more they could do after ALL the amazon wish list items had been purchased! Thank you from the bottom of my heart! You helped make this Christmas memorable for this family of 7!

A grand total of $2,000.00 in gifts, gift cards and monetary donations were raised for this family! AMAZING!!!! :)

Members of Reddit/RAoC personally donated a total of $950.00 ($725.00 in gifts, $225.00 in gift cards)...plus the costs of shipping amazon gifts.

An additional $1,050.00 (approx.) was raised through a fundraiser by the teenage girls (I volunteer with) and from collecting donations from members of our church (who were already sponsoring 5 other families on top of this family) and some of my family members and friends. These fabulous teenage girls planned and ran a fundraiser practically all on their own for this family, they helped pick out $873.00 in clothes and stocking stuffers last week and wrapped about 100 gifts for this family last night. Their enthusiasm to do good in this world is truly remarkable.

What did we spend the approx. $1,050.00 in cash and gift cards on you ask?

-$873.00 on clothes and stocking stuffers for the entire family at Target

-$100.00 Target gift card for the grandma to spend on the family for day to day expenses

-$75.00 gift card to Burlington Coat Factory for the 14 year old boy

-$50.00 gift card to Sears for the Grandma

-$70.00 on shoes for the two oldest boys at Ross

-$60.00 in stocking candy and a Pre-Christmas hamper (which had a gingerbread village kit, sugar cookie mixes, frosting, sprinkles, cookie cutters and all sorts of other festive treats to help get in the Christmas mood)

-$45.00 on Christmas ham dinner supplies and other foods

-$30.00 on miscellaneous expenses like stockings, gift wrapping supplies, boxes, tape, tissue, gift tags, etc. (I basically just absorbed the costs of all the small misc items).

The non-profit organization that matched us up with the family was absolutely thrilled to see how many donations came in for this family..they were just completely blown away! There were so many gifts, that I had to borrow a friend's pick-up truck to transport all the gifts to the organizations' headquarters because they wouldn't fit in my car! As we were bringing in box after box of gifts in to their office, the employees kept asking in disbelief "are these ALL for ONE family"? With a big smile on my face, I replied "yes, this family most certainly deserves to have an amazing Christmas"!

It warms my heart knowing that this family will have an amazing Christmas thanks to the generosity of many other kind people. Merry Christmas everybody! :)

Click the link to see some pictures of my adventures in organizing this entire project and all the fun stuff this family is getting come Christmas Day: http://imgur.com/a/bGUs0

Edit #1: Spelling, clarification, spacing

Edit #2: Sorry peeps, the descriptions for each photo in imgur are not appearing and we can't figure out why. I'm sure the photos are fairly self explanatory.