Hi, and welcome to The Soldier's Family! I'm Trevor, and I wanted to add a page to this site that lets you know a little bit about who I am as a person, what this site is all about, and why I launched it to begin with. Helping people like you make and maintain the deep, enduring personal connections with your absent friends and loved ones is what TheSoldiersFamily.com is all about, but if you'd told me ten years ago this is what I'd be doing, I'd have said you were crazy! Well, crazy is as crazy does, I guess, because here I am. Let me see if I can explain things for you.
Ready? Here we go!
As I said before, my name is Trevor. I come from a military background myself, so I know exactly the sort of unique stresses and situations military personnel and their families face as a result of being separated. In fact, there isn't much of the world I haven't seen. In my eight years of service to Uncle Sam, I was sent first to Italy (which gave me a great glimpse into Europe as a whole), Turkey (a fascinating mash-up of Europe and Asia), and Japan. After that, it was off to sunny Latin America. I would eventually live, work, and play in Colombia, Ecuador, and El Salvador, all of which are home to various examples of extraordinary natural beauty. In between these round the world jaunts, I managed to snag the occasional visit back home, but they were few and far between.
So, you ask, why this site specifically? Well, it's simple, really. I loved my time in the military, and I have immense respect for my fellow veterans and their families. Even so, military life is really hard sometimes! You live your life out of a few pieces of luggage, and letters from home are like gold. That goes double for care packages!
Knowing this as I do, I wanted to give as many people as possible the tools they need to stay connected to their family and friends as fully as possible, no matter how far away they might be from each other. In other words, I wanted a way to give all of you reading this the same feeling I always got when I received my own letters and packages from home. I figured that the Internet and modern technology could help me reach the broadest audience possible, so I put my thinking cap on, and presto: TheSoldiersFamily.com was born!
I hope that helps answer all the "But why would anyone do this?" type questions!
Incidentally, I know I talk a lot about the military and military families, but that's just because it's my own background coming through. It's the world I know best. If you're reading this, rest assured that when I say I want to help everyone, I really mean it! This site is designed to help you build and send care packages to anyone who needs them, whether they're in uniform, in the hospital, in school, or just in need of a little pick-me-up! If you're separated by distance and you want to fix it, a care package is just what the doctor ordered.
So that's that! Now you know who I am and why I'm here running this little slice of the Internet. I hope you'll stick around and get involved now, too! Once you do, I think you'll find that you get as much enjoyment out of making these care packages as the recipient gets in opening them up and diving in!
Getting started on your very first care package is easy. Just click around the site for a bit, get settled in and acquainted with what goes where, and then start the assembly process! Trust me, you'll have a top-shelf gift put together before you know it. Don't blame me if you find yourself addicted to making and sending care packages to all of your far-flung family and friends, though. These things are like potato chips, you can't stop at just one!
Anyway, that's all I've got to say for now, so I'll stop here and let you get started. Just one final tip for you before I go: I plan on taking an active role in the direction and activity on this site. I want it to be a real community, so feel free to come to me with any questions you might have, suggestions for new features or improvements to the site, and so on. I'll do my level best to read and address everything that comes my way as quickly as I can.
Happy packing!