Veteran's Day Activity

A member of our neighbor's church has a family member stationed in Afghanistan. There are 90 members of their unit, and that person set up and organized a care package making party for each soldier in that unit. We all meet up on Veteran's Day to assemble the care packages and to meet a real soldier. Levi and our neighbors are very much into playing Army, so they totally were into this. Only one thing was requested of the children, that they donate some of their extra Halloween candy to the soldiers in Afghanistan, since it is hard to get American candy there. Surprisingly, my children were extremely generous and actually gave away some of the best Halloween candy they got! I was so proud of their unselfishness.

Here they are sorting out their candy before we left:

We got to the church and the kids got to meet a soldier in the Air Force. Although it was a great talk and he answered a lot of thoughtful questions from the kids, you could tell that the older ones were unimpressed that he had never flown a plane. It takes all kind of people though!

Here are the tables before the kids got to them. It was such a well organized event! The children were split into similar age groups and then they got to put one of everything (toothbrush, toothpaste, gum, chap stick, candy, granola bars, floss, Kleenex, etc) into each bag. If there was left overs, they got to add more to each bag.

Claire and her buddy, Owen.

Here they are, loading up their care packages.

After they made all 90 care packages, each kid wrote a card. Claire's age group just scribbled and drew pictures, but the older kids were very creative. They drew pictures and said "Thank You."



Here is our neighbor, Gavin. He wrote "thank you for serving us."
On the front of Levi's he wrote "Dear Army." Here is the inside of his card.
Here are Gavin and Levi with their finished products.

And now they get boxed up and mailed to Afghanistan.

This was a great way to spend Veteran's Day. Levi was super excited to send care packages to the Army and he and Gavin still talk about it. Even if politically we disagree with the wars, I still feel it is important to support the men and women who put their lives on the line daily.