Hello, Two things today: first, thank you to all the Santas who sent items to Lane Area Ferret Shelter and Rescue. I truly appreciate how generous our Santas were this year! Especially in light of the economy. The kids are having the time of their lives and we received so much stuff, that I had to put half of it away to save for later when the current stuff wears out! Second, here's some info I think you should know. I helped Kris with the Giving Tree this year by creating some of the Snowflakes with ferret's pictures on them, setting up a few trees, creating "bios" pages some of the ferrets, and whatever else Kris asked me to do. I know there were more people who helped (thank you all very much!), but I think you should know how truly time consuming the whole thing is to do. First, you have to collect all the information from the shelters. There were a total of 621 ferrets posted to the trees. Next, make the snowflakes for each ferret which means you have to size and possibly cut down the image of the ferret's face, and paste the face onto a snowflake. Build the bio pages. Take the snowflake and place it on the tree, link the snowflake to the bio page, make sure you have all the other trees listed at the bottom of the tree page to allow people to surf to other trees. Then, try to coordinate various tasks among several different people. And this is just the preliminary work to getting the trees posted! After the trees are posted, Kris has to gather all the information from the Santa form to figure out what ferrets need stockings, then put the stockings up on the tree. This is a pretty simplistic look at the entire process. In addition to this, Kris and many of his helpers have full time jobs as well as possibly running a shelter (like me)! So, if Kris decides to to this again next year, please think about all this and be patient while you wait for trees, stockings, bios, snowflakes, etc. to be posted. Kris does an incredibly good job with the resources he has. Helping him out this year was a very eye-opening experience for me. I hope everyone in the FML community has a wonderful New Year filled with peace and joy. Take care. Melanee Ellis Shelter Manager Lane Area Ferret Shelter and Rescue Eugene, Oregon ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ See our adoptable ferrets at www.laneferrets.petfinder.org! www.laneferrets.org [log in to unmask] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [Posted in FML 6203]