Four our soljers

I work with a phenomenal woman named Kathi. With her entire heart and soul she leads charitable drives throughout the course of the entire year, from food drives to working at the soup kitchen to gathering items for the Animal Refuge League to sending care packages for our soldiers overseas. She's taught me alot over the past few years, and I appreciate her more every year.

Every fall she does the legwork and chooses a unit for us to collect items to 'stuff stockings' to send in time for Christmas. In the past I've chipped in items to help out and have gotten my son's classroom to create cards to send with the stockings, and that was the extent of it.

This year was a little different, I decided to take on a stocking by myself. Well, the monkey did actually - he started picking out things that we could put in the stocking back in September! I accumulated quite the pile of loot and was ready long before the time required. I also connected with the monkey's teacher and asked if it were possible to have a couple of the other classes create cards too. She graciously asked and said the other teachers were willing to have their classes pitch in too.

The monkey insisted that we wrap every last gift - every last one - to put in the stocking. We actually found a 'santa bag' to use instead of the stocking, because my son said "if we use the bag, it closes at the top and the stuff won't fall out!". We each wrote a letter, I enclosed a card and some pictures of the two of us and then he drew on the inside flaps of the box. I was so proud, we filled the box to it's limits - there wasn't a bit of room left!

On Thursday morning, I stopped at the school to pick up all the cards made with love and care by the 3rd grade class and found out that there were 130 of them for us to distribute! My heart sang with pride, I can't believe something so innocently easy would become so huge! I brought them into work and a couple of us stood there and read each and every one - they were so sweet!

       Do you know someone named Steven?
       Are you ok? I hope your ok. Well, not hurt ok.
       Dear Jason.... (I suppose he knew the person's name owuld be Jason)
       I wish you could be home because you will miss all the fun
       My dad says that soldiers rock!

We enclosed 8 of the cards into the packages sent to our unit, and will send the rest to two other troops - one in Kuwait and the other in Iraq. Again, I'm so proud of myself. It was so easy to do and will make such a difference in their lives. And it felt darn good to do it too.

Stocking Stuffers











The "Santa Bag" we filled











The cards made by the kids
















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