Gratitude in a box

    My youngest son and I just went and picked up all of the moisturizers and cleansing cloths from our Mary Kay Branch. Time to fill out the custom form, pray some love over the box, and send it on its way. I cannot express enough how grateful I am to all the troops overseas and all of the families here at home. This first box is just an assortment of what I thought would be useful to the troops overseas. The Soldier who is receiving it will share the products and then get back to as to what was really usefull. That way we can cut the packages down to the most useful items and be able to stretch the money to reach more troops.
    This first package is possible because of some friends who donated to this cause, so I would like to say a special "Thank You" to them. It is a cause that I feel strongly about, but it would not be possible without you.
    If you know of anyone deployed and would like to "adopt" their Unit just let me know. Right now I am looking for friends, teachers, churches, anyone who would be willing to participate.

Getting Started

My husband was in the Marine Corps and went on several deployments. It was strange being the one left behind to carry on the "normal" everyday tasks and continue to live my life without my husband by my side.  The worst part was the waiting, the wondering, and the stressing. You never knew when the next phone call was going to be, when you could hear his voice one more time on the cracking line. I used to tell him, that even if it was in the middle of the night for me, I still wanted him to call. He would stand in line for hours just for a turn at a 15 minute phone call. Those 15 minutes were worth all the money in the world, in those 15 minutes I could stop worrying because I knew where he was at that moment and that he was safe. Then before you knew it the line would be dead and the voice would be gone and you would be thrust back into your world of loneliness and worry once again. I would get letters, packages, and pictures from him and would just clutch them in my hands knowing that 2 weeks before he had been holding them as well.  One picture was of a thermometer that went up to 120 degrees, the gage hand was all the way past the 120 because it was way too hot for even that to register. The only thing that I could do to stay sane and feel like I was contributing to his mission was to stay calm on the phone to keep his moral up, and send packages. I must admit that I failed misserably on that first one because I would break down crying on every phone call when he told me it was time for him to go. So much for reassuring him that everything was fine at home. Packages were another story; I was great at getting packages out and I felt it was my duty to do so. The postal workers came to know me well and I became an expert in filling out those dreaded custom forms. Soon he was back and life had to be figured out again, it is incredibly hard to hand everything back over after you have been doing it for so long. It takes some major adjustments to get used to a normal married life again, but the one thing that I truly miss is sending packages overseas. My husband is now out of the Marine Corps and my package days were all but gone I thought.
       Now I have started this new adveture and hope that it has great success in getting our military supplies that will be extremely useful to them as well as build their moral by showing that people care.  I am a Mary Kay Independent beauty consultant and have several products that would be a great benefit overseas, now I am just tasked with the job of finding enough funding to pay for all of it. I already have an Army Unit in mind to be the very first recipients if the Moisturizers for the Military package, but with the amount of people in the Unit, it will take 550 people donating $5 each to pay for it all, and that is cutting out as much cost as possible. So here we go, lets get ready to do great things!