The Past Few Weeks

Y'all heard how crazy life has been, but man oh man it sure has been great as well! After I got all moved out, I spent a few days at home with some good 'ol R&R. In between my resting and relaxation I was able to shoot my new gun, make a pumpkin pie, and see my beautiful friend, Lovely Country Mess. It was pure bliss!

A few of my favorite shots from my trip back home.

True to my nature I ended up leaving home later than I had expected and ended up checking my mail when I had got back into town around 11 pm. Well folks I think I might just start doing that from now on because I seem to always get good news when I do that. Remember what happened last time? This time I actually received another letter from a soldier. This letter was completely unexpected and awesome. My soldier has been putting all of my letters and care packages in the aid station to share with the other soldiers. Turns out the soldier that is taking his spot as lead physician has been seeing them and wanted to write a letter to thank me. How sweet is that? It completely made my day. It is amazing how much one simple gesture can completely change your day!

Next thing on the list was Mermaid Barbie's bachelorette party! Now a little background on Mermaid Barbie: She just graduated pharmacy school and is one of the most sweetest, genuine, caring people I know. I met her the summer before I started pharmacy school. She was doing her first rotation at Roden Smith Pharmacy and I was shadowing the pharmacist. We bonded over Bahama Bucks dates and late night movies with Baylor Babe (another one of my absolute favorites)! Anyways, she is getting married June 15 so before everybody left town, we had a night to celebrate her. As you can tell from the picture below, we all wore wigs and had a blast! FYI if anyone you know is getting married, I definitely recommend having some wigy fun :)

The beautiful bride and a few of my other favorites!

The next couple days were spent in the classroom getting my concealed carry handgun license. So y'all better watch out, because homegirl here qualified 100% on the shooting portion!

After the fun was over, the rest of the week was spent sorting and packing and organizing my clothes. Gosh this is not a fun task! How is a girl supposed to fit all her clothes and essentials in a compact car to live out of for a year? Well I will just tell you it is not fun!

Until next time my lovelies!

Soldiers Angel: My Final Box

First off, thank you for sticking with me through the craziness of the past few weeks. I am officially done with the didactic portion of my pharmacy career. The next few weeks are pretty hectic as well with packing, moving, and getting everything ready for rotations. I will do my best to keep y'all informed along the way.

 

This one is a little bitter sweet, this is my last soldier's box that I will be sending. On the bright side my soldier will be coming home and reunited with his family at the beginning of June. Since it was his last box I wanted to make a "New Mexico Thanks You" box.

This box was divided into three different parts. The first part of the box was filled with goodies from the good 'ol Land of Enchantment. I sent lots of different types of chile, salsa, chili flavored popcorn, peanut patty from Leslie's candy company, candied pecans from Las Cruces, and pistachios. Along with all the goodies I added a few postcards with NM facts on the back of them.

 

 

The second part of the box was a Thank You portion. I must admit this portion of my box I got inspiration from good 'ol Pinterest. I actually had the picture saved on my phone since January and was excited that I finally was able to use it. The original version had the candy bars taped to a poster board, but since I am mailing this overseas I just made a smaller copy and added the candy bars in the box.

 

The final part of the box was done with the help of my parents. Originally my parents wanted to send a box of letters and goodies from the school they teach at (House HS), "From Our House to Yours". Unfortunately with the craziness of life and the time frame shrinking, we combined our two boxes. They were able to get some of their students in elementary and high school to write letters to my soldier and his medical team.

I am sad to see this project come to an end, but I have thoroughly enjoyed it and plan on adopting many more soldiers in the future. If y'all are interested in finding out more about adopting a soldier, I encourage you to click here.

 

Soldier's Angel: Letter Box

First off sorry for being MIA lately and this post has been a little delayed as well, my apologies!

This is by far my favorite Soldier's Angel box I have sent! As y'all heard, I was recruiting friends to help me write letters to send to my soldier and his medical unit. Lucky for me I have the best friends in the world and was able to recruit several letters to send! A big shout out to Laker Lover, Miss Artesia, My Little B, and Bob for getting me letters to send. I also wanted to thank A Desert Girl, Miss Football, and Lovely Country Mess for trying their best to make our schedules conicide to get me their letters as well!

Now on to the goodies! In my letter I received from my soldier he told me about the 5 other guys in his medical unit. I was already planning on sending him a box of letters for him to hand out to his unit, so when I heard about his medical team I thought, "PERFECT"! I was even able to get a list of their names, how cool was that? I was able to send 16 letters total in this box! I was thrilled!!

My cards! Not my best work, but they are all personalized at least.

For my contribution to the box I added an individual personalized cards to all 6 soldiers, along with an goodie bag for each, and fun stuff for them to share as well. This box included a bunch of stuff I enjoyed as a kid and thought would be good for them to all share around; Play-Doh, little sports balls, cards, dominos, dice, frisbee, pen and paper, and socks (well don't share these)! I also added a typed out letter on the top of the box explaining everything that was added and what not.

The soldier's individual goodie bags!
Something to keep your mind active, hands busy,
stomach full and mouth clean wherever you may be!

Laker Lover's cards!

The contents of the box, minus a few letters.

Up close picture of the goodies, minus the socks!

The day I left to go mail the box was kind of a hectic one, oh and it was also raining. Before I could mail the box I had to go pick up some socks to completely fill up the box. Lucky for me I was able to find a pack of 6 at Walgreens and killed two birds with one stone on my to do list. After I had the socks I was able to tape up the box and send it on its merry way. I don't know if y'all have ever tried to tape up a box in the driver's seat of a Nissan Altima, but it's not easy! Lucky for me I was able to get it done, and just as I was reaching for the customs form and my purse to go inside I realized I forgot to add my explanation letter. Crap! I had no other choice but to cut open the box and repeat the charade. I was able to get it done and run thru the rain to go mail the box! Thank goodness!

The box double taped up with ALL the letters included and ready to ship!

My soldier's deployment ends June 1, so I am sending my final care package in the next few weeks! If you missed out on the first rounds of letters or are interested in sending something in my "New Mexico Thanks You" care package let me know!

Hope you guys are having a lovely week!

Soldier Letters

Just a friendly Wednesday reminder, I am trying to work on that box of soldier letters this week/weekend if you are interested in writing a letter or two, hit me up! If not I am sure they would appreciate a prayer for them just as much! Thanks :)

Have a great Wednesday!

Exciting News Y'all!

First off, I am linking up with Jamie for What I'm Loving Wednesday! Yep that's right, homegirl here is loving her exciting news so here we go . . .

So Monday night after work I remembered that I needed to check the mail. Weird, I know! Who checks their mail at 10:30pm? Well this girl and I am SO happy that I did. It absolutely made my week! Seriously, I am talking about the best news since we won the national Generation Rx award at APhA Annual in LA. By now I am sure you are thinking, "Hurry up already!" or "I am going to stop reading this blog if this girl doesn't spill the beans in the next couple sentences." Lucky for you, I am too excited not to share soon.

As y'all know I adopted a solider at the beginning of the year and up until Monday night, I had not heard from him. My friend Jen, who has adopted soldiers in the past, informed me that this was very normal. I mean hey they are out there risking their lives for our freedom, who has time to write a letter?? Well much to my surprise, my soldier was able to sit down and write me back!! Y'all have no idea how excited I was. I mean y'all have heard me talk about before how I felt like he was one of my good friends without having met him, well now I have met him via a handwritten letter.

Now I don't know if he would want me to share any of his personal information, so I won't say a lot, but I can say a few things. He has been enlisted for 19 years and is currently serving on his second deployment. He is a doctor, married and has 4 wonderful children. He has been able to share my letters and packages with the other 5 soldiers in his medical team. How cool is that? I have actually been sending letters and packages to 6 different soldiers that are all part of a medical team. I don't think that I could have had a better group of soldiers to send letters to if i picked it myself.

So now this is where y'all come in. Remember back in February when I told y'all I was going to send him a box of letters?? Well that time has come. I am going to try to put together a box of letters from my friends and family to send to my soldier and his medical team. If you are interested in helping a sista out and want to send a letter (or anything) to them, please email me: pharmergirl@live.com. From there I will send you my information about getting your letters to me. I am planning on trying to put together the package the weekend of April 6-7th. If you don't think you can get your letter to me by then, just email me and we can figure something out! THANK YOU in advance! If you don't think you can get a letter to me, just do me a favor and keep these men and women of our military in your prayers! That would be more than wonderful.

I hope yall's Wednesday is going just as terrific as mine!

I am behind...

Yes yes I know, world's worst soldier's angel right here! I was supposed to get this package off at the beginning of my spring break and I mailed it yesterday! (Insert disappointed face and finger shaking!!) As you can tell this package was March themed! St. Patty's Day decorations, carmel apple candy, flavored tootsie rolls, ranch sunflower seeds (one of my favs), crackers, more candy (Do you see a pattern here?), and some toiletry items.

I actually got really lucky that my G-Ma is so on top of things, because she saved my butt this week! I only had about half of those items already bought for the month and she had contributed the rest. Thanks G-Ma, you're my saving grace!!

All the goodies laid out!

&& them all packaged up with some decorations on top,
which will probably be the bottom by the time he gets it. Lol

Hope y'all are more on top of things this week than me!

Hope it's not my old age sinking in already?? :)

Soldier's Angel: Book of Sunshine

Never waste any amount of time doing anything important

when there is a sunset outside that you should be sitting under!

--C. Joy Bell

Now tell me this, who doesn't like sunsets? Well if you don't then you have no idea what you are missing out on! Sunsets are one of my favorite things to see and photograph. So I decided this week I would send my soldier a small photo album of all my favorite sunset pictures I had taken.

Since I started writing to him at the beginning of this year, I have told him a good history on me and who I am, but I have yet to send a picture of me or anything of the sort. Mainly because the site that I adopted him from made a big deal about clarifying "This is NOT a dating service." You would think that it is kind of obvious, but I guess there are some people that don't have any common sense. The last thing I wanted to do was to make him think that I was one of those girls trying to make something out of nothing. Before I knew it, when I was getting pictures put together for the album I ended up printing a picture of me to send.

I think the main reason I wanted to send him a picture was because even without having met him or knowing anything about him, I feel like he is one of my good friends. I have been including him in my prayers each day and constantly thinking about what to include in my next letter or care package to make sure he is taken care of. I have put so much time and effort into this "project", that I can't help but feel like I know him. It is amazing how something that starts out as being a little thing in an effort to give back, has turned into being such a important thing to me. On the other side of the letters, I think if I was in his shoes I would want to know who was sending me all the letters. You know put a face with name he has been seeing for the last couple months. Well whether it is right or wrong, I sent it!

Don't forget to take time for the sunsets!

That Time of the Month

That's right, it is that time of the month again! Before you start to think I'm talking about something inappropriate, but it's care package time! This one is pretty fun since there are two festivities going on in February; Valentine's Day and Mardi Gras.

This care package is full of all kinds of goodies besides Valentine's candy. I put a couple different kinds of PopTarts, sugar cookies, Queen Anne's chocolate covered cherries, 4 different kinds of spices, coffee, ramen noodles, chocolate, red hots, gum, and of course some Mardi Gras/Valentine's decorations.

On another note, since I last updated you guys about this project, I have convinced 2 more people to sign up to adopt a soldier. Whoohooo!! :) One of them is our fellow blogger, Miss Football. So if y'all get a chance drop by her blog and check out all the good things she is doing. Also, while I was working the KOB TV health fair Saturday I had the privilege of talking to 2 previously deployed soldiers about ideas. It was nice reinforcement to know that I am working the right direction.

Just a heads up y'all, sometime in the future I am going to send my soldier a full box of letters from my friends and family. I probably won't be sending the package until March or April, but if you would like to volunteer to send a letter to him, email me and I will send you my address! I think it will be a nice spin on the care package.

I hope yall's week is going great!

Soldier's Angel

I started out this new year with a bang! One of the things I am doing is adopting a soldier. I signed up with an organization called Soldier's Angels. If you haven't heard about them and are interested in doing your part to help out our beloved soldier's over seas, check it out!

By adopting a soldier you are committing to sending 1 letter a week and 1-2 care packages a month. Well after I got my first letter sent off quickly, I decided to put my crafty side to work! I sat down one night and made 10 greeting cards. Yep you heard me 10! Now only 7 of them were for my soldier, but hey that's still a pretty good start if you ask me!

A few of the cards I made for my soldier.

Now that I am set for a few weeks on cards, I started to think about what I was going to send in my care packages. If y'all know me, you know I am not going to do anything half hearted. Since I do not have any experience with this type of project I decided to brainstorm with friends and family and do a little researching on Pinterest. Man on man it did not disappoint! I found pages and pages of ideas and themed packages. So true to my nature I copied it all down and organized it in a word document. After I got finished typing it all up, it was at 5 1/2 pages. Yes I am sure you are thinking I am a little crazy and you might be right, but hey at least I kinda know what I am doing now.

For the month of January I am doing a football themed care package. You know with just having the college national championship and playoffs for NFL I thought it would be fun. So I hit up shopping over the weekend and got some stuff together. The hardest part about this entire deal is trying to make it all fit in the boxes. Luckily I made it work and got some snacks, a nerf football, movie, and sports illustrated magazine in the box! Whew, thank goodness!

Its kind of hard not knowing who his team is, so this is pretty generic.

My first official care package!

If any of y'all have done this type of thing before and have suggestions I would greatly appreciate them! :)

I hope y'all are having a lovely week!