I Heart Mail

I'd like to take a moment to wish the faithful, unsung heroes of the USPS a very merry Christmas. Do we give these guys and gals enough credit for the job they do? My love affair with mail started as a teenager when I wasn't a fan of fitting rooms--my mom let me order my clothes through catalogs. When I served a mission in Portugal, I loved mail, too--my most faithful correspondents entertained me and encouraged me on the hardest of days.

Now as a mom I'm making mail-lovers out of my children. Christmas time is especially exciting because we get packages AND letters when the mail arrives each day. We not only await the mail lady with her occasional Christmas card deliveries, but we also look forward to the UPS and FedEx trucks, too. The surprises inside are appreciated and celebrated, but here are some added bonuses of the mail system.

1. An abundance of cardboard boxes. Each one that arrives at our house is almost immediately turned into an imaginary vehicle of some sort. If it's too small to sit in (and the bottom is the only part of the body that needs to fit to qualify for "sitting in") then it becomes a hat. Here are the boys on an airplane ride to Grandpa's house.
2. Trips to the post office. It's a little bit of an ordeal to get the twins into our local post office due a tricky entry, but J is the champion of every visit to the post office. At five years old he takes seriously the task of selecting the correct slot or chute. He loved making our first Christmas package send-off two weeks before Christmas.
3. Easy-access sending in our neighborhood. I love the big blue mailbox in my neighborhood. If I don't think we have time to go to the post office, we walk the block to this neighborhood destination. Sure, these 20 or so cards could have waited until the next day in this photo, but on this night I was grateful for the our big blue mailbox to give us a reason to get out and see Christmas lights.
This next photo has nothing to do with mail. It's a photo of J pretending to be someone. I'll send you something in the mail if you correctly guess who. (Hint: the cup is for a sound effect and the flyswatter is supposed to look red, not pink.) I'll reveal the answer in the next post entitled "What to do when church is canceled due to bad weather."