Hot Chocolate for Haiti

One of Cash's classmates at preschool is the son of Haitian immigrants. The school sent a note home indicating that they were taking up a collection for the classmate's family because they still had several relatives living in Haiti that were in need after the earthquake.

Cash told me that he wanted to have a hot chocolate stand to raise money for his classmate because he thought that would be easier than going door-to-door collecting money from the neighbors. I explained to him that the school didn't expect him to collect money from the neighbors; they just wanted him to bring some of our money in for the collection. Cash was adamant that he needed to have a hot chocolate stand because he wanted to bring in "lots and lots of money" (said with his arms outstretched). I looked out the window at our snow covered driveway and shivered thinking about having a hot chocolate stand out there. Then I had an idea – we could have the hot chocolate stand at Hy-Vee, our neighborhood grocery store. Travis called Hy-Vee and they said no problem! We decided we would give half of the money to Cash's classmate's parents and half to the Red Cross.

Travis and the boys made the sign. We bought all the supplies and rented two big coffee urns to keep our hot chocolate warm. Cash decided that West would be the security guard for the stand. West took his job very seriously and asked several people, "Did you pay?" Luckily no one got too annoyed with him. Steve, the Hy-Vee manager was great – every 20 minutes or so he would make an announcement over the intercom about Cash's stand. Steve tried to interview Cash over the intercom but Cash said, "I'm too busy to talk," which Steve thought was pretty funny.

I couldn't believe how many people stopped by our stand and gave Cash 5, 10 or 20 dollars. Most of them didn't even want any hot chocolate in return. We had a lot of family and friends go out of their way to come and visit too.

Cash's stand earned 334 dollars! I was so proud of my little boy for wanting to help out his friend. Cash likes to make grand plans all the time and I was glad we could actually bring one of them to fruition.