Dinners with Love is very proud and excited to announce that our program is now available to hospice patients and their families in Chittenden and Grand Isle Counties in Vermont. We are incredibly grateful to our community of supporters who have made this possible–you are the fuel in the engine that makes this program go!

Last fall, we had the honor of partnering with both the VNA of Chittenden and Grand Isle Counties (VNACGI) and BAYADA Home Health Care in Shelburne. We have been thrilled to collaborate with the wonderful staff and volunteers at these hospice agencies. We look forward to seeing their programs thrive.

To kick things off, VNACGI and BAYADA have the support of a core group of restaurants located throughout the region:

• Chef's Corner in Williston
• El Gato Cantina in Essex Junction
• Junior's Italian in Colchester
• Misery Loves Company in Winooski
• Papa Frank's Italian Restaurant in Winooski
• The Rotisserie Restaurant in South Burlington
• Sweetwaters in Burlington

Thank you to the owners, managers, and chefs at these restaurants for being the first to join the Dinners with Love program in Chittenden and Grand Isle Counties. The meals you are offering will bring great comfort to the hospice patients and families who receive them.

The Dinners with Love community of supporters never ceases to amaze.

In early January, we asked for your help with a special project: sending Valentine's Day cards to the hospice patients who receive meals through the Dinners with Love program. "Dinners with EXTRA Love," we called it.

And did YOU ever deliver!

Between January 1 and February 5, you donated $1,265 to support the Dinners with Love program. You may remember that we pledged to send one Valentine for every $10 we received.

So, let's see...$1,265 divided by 10 is 126.5. And because you always round up when it comes to love, we'll call it 127.

127 Valentine's Day cards!

No sweat. About 20 community members gathered one afternoon at the Brandon Town Hall to craft 110 Valentines from a buffet of colorful paper, ribbon, stickers, stamps, and doilies. Delicious cookies donated by Quality Bake Shop fueled and inspired their efforts. Behold:

And then an amazing thing happened: Valentine's Day cards from around the state and even halfway across the country began to arrive at Dinners with Love HQ.

Mrs. Becker's preschool class at Sacred Heart in Bennington sent 20 cards...

A family all the way in Colorado Springs, CO sent a half-dozen...

One of our dear volunteers who had friends visiting for the weekend made nearly a dozen more...

That brings us to 147. Enough for each hospice patient to receive not one, not two, but a whole slew of Valentine's Day cards with their meals today!

They are sure to feel the EXTRA love from their community. We cannot thank YOU enough for filling their plates and their hearts. Generosity and creativity are thriving among our friends.