My family has members from many generations that have been active members of the military. In 3 different branches over 3 generations my family has served.
My grandfather, Nana's Dad, served in the Marines during WWII. He served for 4 years than reenlisted to further serve our country. I have great memories as a kid looking through his scrapbook from his time in the Marines. The book was a dark green with black pages that has all sorts of pictures and other memorabilia. My mom even let me take some of the pictures to school for show and tell one year. He was a dashing young man in the pictures and I loved seeing the smiling face of a grandfather I never met.
My father in law and his dad served in the Navy. My father in law during Vietnam and his dad during WWII as my own grand father did. My father in law has shared pictures of him during his service time and its amazing how much he looked as my husband does now.
My brother in law, Sam's husband, served 5 years in the Army. He enlisted a year before 9/11 and when it happened we knew he would be going to war. He served his 4 years but then was required and did so honorably serve an additional 1 year in Afghanistan. My sister was one tough woman being alone for a year while he was gone. He missed her so much and the letters, phone calls and care packages are what kept him smiling. Our little brother enlisted to the Army to train to be an Airborne Ranger but due to an injury during training could not continue his service. We are all so proud of him and our families continue to support the troops. There are many military families that are still friends with my sister and her husband who continue to serve. We are proud of Jodi and her husband for all their sacrifices.
My son on both sides of his family has a great history of military service that we are proud of that he will learn more about as he grows up. Every year since my husband and I have been together we always are sure to buy a few toys to donate to Toys for Tots to help the Marines collect toys for kids. The last two years we have taken our son with us. We are very excited for this year as he can now put the toy in the collection bin himself.
I can only imagine how lonely and how much soldiers must miss their loved ones back home so we are happy to be apart of the sendCHEER campaign from Cherrios and General Mills.
Cheerios has teamed up with the USO to "send cheer" to military families by sending encouragement and thanks using special postcards you can cut out from specially marked Cheerios boxes. Once stamped, these pre-addressed postcards will go to the USO to be distributed by them to military families. As a result, for each card received, $1 for each card will be donated by Cheerios to the USO to help fund programs that help support the military and their families. How wonderful is that? You can do all that, just for the price of a stamp, and a few words of encouragement and thanks written! You can shop for these specially marked boxes at local Walmarts, and be on the look out for special displays. You can see the other families that are sending cheer by visiting the
sendCheer website.
We will be on the lookout for the special sendCheer displays at our local Walmart. You can read about how to participate in the
Cheerios sendCheer campaign. Later in the week we will be cutting out our cheer cards and decorating them to send to a military member. My son recently has really been into coloring, using stickers and painting. We are going to have a blast doing this project.
*This post has been compensated as part of a sponsored charitable opportunity for
Collective Bias.All opinions and stories expressed in the post are my own.
