Soldier Boxes (Tuesday, February 2nd, 2016)

Last November our oldest daughter came to us with the great idea of sending Christmas boxes to deployed soldiers through a group called 300 Boodle Brigade.  She learned about it through some of her army contacts, and organized a group from our area that wanted to send boxes.  She gathered all of the information we needed, and we went on the hunt for everything we thought deployed soldiers might enjoy for Christmas, in hopes that it would make being away from home a little bit easier for them during the holidays.  Food, games, books, decorations and game books like word search and Sudoku were some of the things on the wish list.  All together, her group sent 18 boxes.

I wish we had taken pictures of our shopping trip because it was so much fun, but of course we didn't think of it at the time.  A nice thing about the Christmas boxes is that you fill a flat rate US Postal Service box, and pay the regular flat rate to ship it to an address in the U.S, and it ends up in the hands of soldiers who have to be away from home for the holidays. It was such a great experience to share with our daughter, and brought smiles many miles away!

Below are some pictures our daughter was able to find from a few of the soldiers that received boxes this year.

 The map below shows how many community organizers there were in each state.  There were over 1,000 packages sent to soldiers in a dozen different locations overseas!