Vote For Us!

City Bank will be rewarding 5 local Lubbock causes with $10,000 each. Please go to City Bank Texas Community Rewards, then cast your vote for Lubbock Marine Parents.

How it works:

City Bank is dedicated to giving back to the community. That's why, during this holiday season, we are asking you to help us choose five local community causes to give back to in a big way. City Bank will reward these five community causes with $10,000 each.

Here's where you come in: Every day you will be eligible to vote for your favorite cause. At the end of December, the votes will be tallied and the winning causes will be rewarded. So let yourself be heard! Vote early, and often.

Lubbock Marine Parents is an all volunteer 501 (c) 3 organization whose mission is to provide loving emotional and spiritual support and encouragement to the parents, families, and loved ones of our military and to support our troops and veterans. We do this with:
monthly meetings,
supportive email group,
care package drives,
helping either directly or through referrals to community resources for counseling and financial assistance as needed for troops, veterans, and families in need,
Adopt a Medic

Vote every day until December 21st!

New Website

Lubbock Marine Parents now has a new website! Come by and visit us at lubbockmarineparents.org. We will eventually move the blog over, but for now we're staying right here.

We've also added a new program called Adopt a Medic (and added a new 2nd VP in charge of that program). Look for more info to come.

A Big Thank You

Lubbock Marine Parent officers had the opportunity to present a "thank you" plaque to the Elk's Lodge today. They were instrumental in making our Christmas and Valentine care pack drives such successes. We truly appreciate all that they have done for us. I forgot to take a picture of the plaque, but did get a picture of us at the lodge after we presented the plaque. See the Elk in the background?

Donations

**Just bringing this back to the top for those who might have missed it**

Most of you know that Lubbock Marine Parents is a non-profit organization and that we collect donations in order to send out care packs to our troops serving overseas. We have had such great response from Lubbock and the surrounding area. Our goal for our Christmas care packs was 200 and we wound up sending over 250. Our goal for our Valentine mail out is 50 care packs. It would not surprise me a bit if we surpassed that.

For some reason, it never occurred to me that people outside the Lubbock area might want to help or even that it might be easier for people here in town to donate via our blog. Thanks to a suggestion from Pamela at Atlas Shrugs we now have a Paypal account. Our EIN number is listed on the donation form for tax purposes.

**Edit: Pamela has already given us our first Paypal donation (and a really nice one too)!! Thank you SO much!

Lubbock Military Parents?

As far as we have been able to find out, we are the only military family support group in the Lubbock area. We don't want parents or family members of other branches of the military to be without the support system that we have found to be so invaluable. For that reason, we have been tossing around the idea of changing our name to reflect a broader mission. We are a non-profit organization, so it would involve some red tape, but we are happy to do it if there is sufficient interest. If you know of anyone in our area who might be interested please email (through my profile),or leave a comment. We don't want ANY military family member to feel alone. Remember though, that even if we do not change our name, any military family member or loved one is welcome to join us.

A New Team Member

We now have a new contributor to our blog! Blondiebee (another Marine mom and Lubbock Marine Parents officer) has joined me and I know the blog will be twice as good now. I can't wait to see what she has to say! I'm thrilled because now if I post something stupid, it won't be blamed on the whole group! ;) Too much responsibility!

Oh, and I have an update. Steven (my oldest son) has his plane tickets! I can officially go into high gear excited mother mode! He'll be here in less than 2 weeks!

How we got our start

I thought there might be some who would like to know how our group came about. We got our start in September of 2004. Two moms, one whose son had recently been injured in Iraq, and one whose son had recently left for bootcamp, started desperately searching the internet hoping to find another local mom to talk to. They were thrilled to find each other on a Marine Parents message board and made plans to meet for lunch. After a long lunch with plenty of laughter and tears they knew they needed to reach out to other parents who must surely be feeling the same way. They were soon joined by a third mom (also found on the message board) and then another and on it went.

Soon we decided to send some care packages to Iraq so that not only our own children, but others who were serving our country would know that they are loved and appreciated. The first mail out (with only 3 members at the time) was completely out of our own pockets. We sent 10 packages. Every few months we had more members and more friends to help and we sent out a little larger mail out. Soon we realized that we needed to become a formal support group, so we organized, elected officers, adopted bylaws and became a non-profit organization so that we could begin fundraising. This past Christmas (2005) we sent over 65 packages. We also sent a Valentine mail out and an Easter mail out. The Valentine mail out was sent to an Army chaplain so that he could distribute the packages to those who needed them most. Much of our shipping costs are paid for by the bracelets we sold at the 4th on Broadway Street Fair and the Wolfforth Harvest Festival, but money for shipping continues to be our biggest need. We feel that sending these care packages is just a small way to honor the men and women who sacrifice and endure so much so that our freedom is preserved. We are so very proud of each and every one of them!

"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem."
-President Ronald Reagan, 1985

Our Mission

The mission of Lubbock Marine Parents is to provide loving emotional and spiritual support and encouragement to the parents, families, loved ones and friends of active duty or retired Marines, recruits, and poolees.

*We do not address political issues at our meetings.
*We do allow freedom of spiritual proclamations, support, and prayer.
*We do believe in God, Family, Country and the United States Marine Corps.
*We are always faithful to the United States Marine Corps and our Marines.
*Thank you for your prayers and support of all our military as they serve our country!

Our New Blog!

Welcome to the Lubbock Marine Parents blog! This is our first post. We are a support group for parents and families of United States Marines. We are currently gathering donations for our Christmas Care Pack Drive. We hope to gather enough items for 200 packages. Our deadline for gathering items is November 15th. More info about needed items to follow.