Make a DIFFERENCE Monday: US SOLDIERS Serving overseas

Serving in our Nations Military must be a hard job. I wouldn't know - it isn't something I have ever been able to do. My grandfather served during world war II as a medic in the"hellcats." My dad was in the Navy for 20 years and his best friend was a Marine for a very long time. I watch NCIS but somehow I don't think that counts as military service.

When I worked at a daycare in Clarksville, TN for six months last year I learned a few things about the military there.

The daycare where I worked had many "Army Brats" that we cared for. There was a girl who was 1 week older than my baby whose mommy was a soldier in Iraq. She was living with her grandmother. Her mom had not seen her since she was 3 months old and wouldn't get back until the little girl was 15 months old.

If you listen to WAYFM in the afternoons you may have heard Wally on TotalAxxess. I was listening to Total Axxess the other day and Wally was talking about his Operation H.E.R.O.S.
(Helping Everyone Remember Our Soldiers) which I think is a really cool and worthy idea that I am totally borrowing to share with you guys so you can participate too!!

His idea is this...it is our soldiers who keep us safe here in America and they are over there serving us and our country and so many people forget that they are STILL THERE, day after day. There are several programs that you can use to send care packages to one of the thousands of US Soldiers currently serving - but the problem is that apparently it takes time to get them all sorted out and distributed to individual soldiers. Which is a shame.

So Wally had an idea to get around this problem. One of his faithful listeners is actually a soldier over in Iraq. His name is Sgt. Jeff Koopman. Wally came up with the idea to actually send the care packages to Jeff and let him distribute them to the soldiers where he is. I think this is a marvelous idea and I plan to participate. Here is the link to Wally's blog about it.

The boxes he is talking about are these. (You can see the picture above) You can actually order them from the USPS in packages of 10 or 25 FOR FREE!! they cost $11.95 each to mail. The recommendation from Wally and I will echo that is to go by the Post office and pick up a box then fill it. You are stockpiling now right? Or have picked up a FEW extras i'm sure....and if you don't have extras at home - I am sure you have a few extra bucks now from all the deals you've snagged.

Here are some of the recommendations from Wally's blog along with some of my own:

Music: itunes gift cards, other music
Food & 'drink': Snacks (Granola bars, individual packages of trailmix, beef jerky, cookies, gum, skittles, drink mixes (Crystal light, koolaid etc) Plastic bottles for them to drink out of (nalgene reusable bottle or rubbermaid drinking bottle) hard candy,
Stuff to do: books, magazines, Bibles, activity books (Word search, crossword puzzles, sudoku books, cards, card games such as pictureeka and the like) calenders,
flip flops - THESE are in especially high demand right now especially in the smaller sizes and you can find them ON CLEARANCE in so many places right now. Lots of people don't think to send women sized items and the smaller sized items GO FAST according to a comment I read over on Wally's post. The flip flops help the soldiers to feel like real civilians after a hard days work and allows them to take their boots off.
Stuff to use: aka hygiene stuff! Hand sanitizer, Lotion, toothbrush, tooth paste, dental floss, deodorant, chap stick, lip balm, shampoo, soap etc.
Stuff to encourage: Cards and letters for our men and women in service, beautiful post cards from where you live, Say a prayer for them, then write it down and include it written on some pretty paper with a note that tells them you prayed for them.

You also may want to check out soldiers angels if you want to adopt a soldier and can make the commitment to send packages over a long period of time.

Where to Send it:
SGT Koopman, Jeff
A Co. 1-128 IN
APO AE 09342

Can't afford to fill an entire box all by yourself AND ship it for $11.95? Team up with someone else and put together a box to send. :)