Happy Spring to each of you! Your team of leaders here at Cypress Cares has been traveling all over the city, gathering donations, hosting packing parties and doing what we love to do best - welcoming Soldiers home from war! On that note, let's start with a story that will warm your heart.

On Saturday, March 19, CC Advisor Jimmy Baughman helped to welcome home LT Thomas Perrin, USMC. Cypress Cares supported Thomas throughout his 12-month deployment to Iraq. Thomas' wife, Ashley organized a surprise welcome home party for him and it was covered on News 39. You can watch that clip if you click here. We are thrilled to welcome Thomas home from war. Then, on Tuesday, March 22, a couple of our board members who couldn't attend on the 19th, were bestowed the honor of meeting Thomas and Ashley out for an informal dinner, and had the opportunity to talk about his experiences overseas and how Cypress Cares is doing in their support of our troops.

We're shining the volunteer spotlight on two volunteers from Cy Fair ISD this month: CFISD parents Amy Eagen and Dana Quinlan. With the help of these two ladies, the Cy Woods High School band and band boosters held a donation drive that resulted in 56 boxes for the troops. Amy Eagen organized the effort and Band mom Dana Quinlan paid to ship all 56 boxes, which has more than a small impact on the checkbook! Thank you notes are already flowing in from the generosity. Read this month's "From the Frontlines" section to see CPT Brian K's thanks for their efforts.

Donations are keeping our packages rolling out the door. Thank you for all of your donations this month. Read on to see some of what was provided and by whom.

• Girl Scout cookies are a huge hit downrange! We received bulk donations from seven troops and 648 boxes from a one-for-one donation campaign hosted by CDM Resource Management for our April boxes. The Soldiers are going to love these! Special thanks to troops 14252, 15307, 14164, 15237, 14364, 13980, 5660 for their hard work and contributions, and to Ms. Denise Berrett from CDM for spearheading the one-for-one effort at this remarkably supportive company for the third year in a row!  A couple of the girls from troop 14614 and a friend from 14096 are pictured here, delivering cookies to CC Director, Raquel Cunningham),
• We received bulk donations for packages from a couple groups in the past few weeks, including some AVON products (shower gel, sunscreen, deodorants, and much more) which we know will come in handy! Special thanks to Longwood Veterinary Clinic, the F.R.I.E.N.D.S group of Holy Family Catholic Church in Missouri City, TX, and the Elisha Roberts Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (Ms. Glynda Fletcher, AVON rep). 
• Our Soldiers will now have another resource to help handle deployment related stress and fear, thanks to publishers at Guideposts^®. The magazinehas volunteered to ship a supply of devotionals to Cypress Cares for our packages downrange.
• Barron Davis and Joshua Graham are working hard as Boy Scouts to collect and box items for the Soldiers. We are thrilled that we get to help these young men accomplish the coveted goal of Eagle Scout.

Finally, one last story to remind you of the willingness and kind hearts of Cypress Cares volunteers; none of our efforts would be possible without your support:

Several weeks ago, we received an email from one of our US Army CPT recipients. He identified four Soldiers in his chain of command as "hard working guys" who deserve special support. Cypress Cares put out the call for help and in no time at all, each young Soldier was adopted by a volunteer (some families, one local corp) who committed to send at least one package and one letter per month downrange, if not more. These packages will certainly help to enhance the life and increase the moral of these young men. Let us know if you would like to adopt a service member sometime. We'll start keeping a list of volunteers and match them up with requests from the front line officers as they come in. If you have adopted one of our troops, please let us know how it's going. We'll include you and the Soldier in our newsletters as well!

Until next month,

The Cypress Cares Team