supporting our soldiers (two)

As many of you know one of the passions that I have is supporting our military and their families. I am so incredibly thankful for each and everyone of our servicemen & women who are protecting our freedoms, ensuring our country is secure, and who sacrifice so much for the sake of others. I shared in a post last winter that during my first graduate program I had the amazing opportunity to live in a "military town". I had always had a high respect for the military and the way that our service men and women serve our country, but after living in a military town my respect grew in leaps and bounds. I had the opportunity to meet, work with, teach kids of, and life life with military families. It was such an honor and I was incredibly inspired by each person who I met who sacrificed so much to serve and protect our country. I wanted to find a small way to tangibly thank those who were serving and I was introduced (through a former student) to the organization Adopt a Platoon . While I have volunteered with other organizations over the years I have been so honored to be apart of Adopt a Platoon for over nine years. I am in my 9th year of being apart of Adopt-a-Platoon and have had the privilege and honor to support over 29 soldiers through the pen pal adoption program. What an HONOR! If you are looking for a way to support our service men and women then I highly recommend looking up Adopt-A-Platoon. There are opportunities for everyone that require a variety of different time commitments. Just click HERE to see the website if you are interested in supporting AAP!

Last time I shared with y'all about this I was putting together a birthday box for my soldier at the time. My previous soldier thankfully completed that mission and so I have been assigned to another soldier. I can't tell you what a delight it is when the soldiers that you are supporting are in contact during their employment. It is not a requirement, or an expectation with AAP that you will hear from your soldier at any point and so I am always so honored by the ones that take time out of their incredibly difficult and demanding schedules to drop a note, an email, etc. My last few soldiers have done this and it has blown me away. One of my current soldiers is honestly amazing.  As I said above, I am so honored to know that we have such men & women in our military who are sacrificing so much!

A couple of weeks ago I thought it would be fun to put together a "football box" for my soldier and their friends. Many of the soldier miss Saturday/Sunday football times and so I hoped that this would bring a little bit of cheer to them! 

I gathered a couple of football movies, candy, and football themed items to add to the box. I also made one of the cupcake garlands so that they could "decorate" a little to bring a more "homey" feel to the day. 

I found some of the cutest decorating supplies, including the cupcake wrappers from Michael's! I used some white elastic cord from my grandmothers sewing box to string the cupcake wrappers together.

It was small, but there is not a lot of room on bases (or in the box!) so this is the perfect size! 

I enclosed a small note with the box that I hope will bring a smile.

Here is what the box looked like before I closed it up with the note inside!

After I closed the box up I used the remaining cupcake wrappers to decorate the outside of the box. Hopefully this brought some joy and happiness to our soldiers! Thank you to each of you (and your families) for the incredible sacrifice that you make for us everyday!