The Power of the Internet

I'm the office manager of a local dance studio.  On Wednesday afternoon our dance director showed me the Mini Competition team's costume for their hip hop dance.  It was adorable, and all from the Children's Place.  The great part was that the shoes and vest were on clearance, since they were holiday items and at the end of the season.  Great, right?!  Well, turns out these puppies are hard to find.  (Hard is sort of an understatement!)  The dance director had asked me to see if we could find all 14 pairs of shoes and vests for the team, so I started making calls.  Thankfully, we were able to find 9 pairs of shoes right off the bat, but we still needed 5 more.  We only had 2 vests, so I needed to find 12 more.  I didn't think it would be that difficult to find them, just call a couple local stores and *voila*.  Well, after calling 70 (yes, SEVENTY!) stores throughout the country, being on and off the phone with our receptionist, parents, and tons of TCPs for nearly 7 hours, I was able to find 3 pairs of shoes and 6 vests in Logan (thanks, Marina for picking those up for me!).  I found 3 vests in St. George and am having my good friend's friend, Sara, pick them up for me today and ship them.  Then I found 3 more vests and 1 pair of shoes in Boston, and my brother is taking the subway out to the mall to pick them up for me today.  (Justin, you're the best!!)  Then I only needed ONE more pair of shoes, a size 12 or 13.  I was lucky enough to find them at a store in San Mateo, CA.  I had a sweet girl named Holly, who frequents this LDS online forum I go to occasionally, go out and buy them yesterday and is shipping them to me today.  I had nearly 20 people on this forum offer up their services to go get them for me if their local TCP had them.  Some were in TX, NE, AZ, CO, CA, MN.  So sweet.  These people don't even know me, but were willing to go out of their way and help out a nearly complete stranger.  So awesome!  The power of the internet amazes me!  Thanks Holly, from San Mateo.  You're making one dance studio in North Salt Lake, Utah very happy!