It's our fifth year of the WakeWorld Toys For Tots Holiday Fundraiser. Our phenomenal success is thanks to some very generous sponsors and some great bidders that have grabbed some outstanding deals on wakeboarding equipment while helping a good cause. Over five years we've raised over $34,000, which has been donated to the U.S. Marine Corps Toys For Tots program.

For 2009, sponsors jumped on the holiday spirit like never before and donated OVER $80,000 worth of wakeboarding gear packages! Tige Boats even went so far as to include a boat in the auction! Then the ever-generous readers of WakeWorld took over and bid like crazy on all 100 items! We had another great year generating almost $13,000 for U.S. Marine Corps Toys For Tots.

The fun part comes when we take the money raised and see how much we can spend with one trip to the toy store. My wife and three kids join in and we've made it a family tradition. Five shopping carts, a long bed truck and the spirit of competition to see who can leave the store with the most toys makes it something the kids look forward to every year. This year we even had some rain added to the mix to make it extra fun!

$5,000 And 452 toys and bikes later, we headed down to our local NBC affiliate's toy drive to drop off the toys and present the Marine Corps with a check for the balance. We even got to do it live on the local news! Since we brought a video camera along, you can see for yourself the result of all this generosity...

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