Or Send a Gift for Military Personnel When You Can’t Visit in Person
It’s the phone call or letter every military family member waits to receive: your soldier is coming home! Whether it’s for a short visit or to return home from a lengthy deployment, a soldier returning to their family is worthy of celebration! (And at My Hero Crate, we think our military are heroes and deserve celebration all the time.)
Need to get to planning for your soldier’s return? Choose fun or meaningful activities you can do together as a family to build bonds and celebrate their homecoming. We’ve assembled a list of ideas, but you can also ask your soldier what they want to do on their time off.
Activities at Home
- Family Barbecue: Fire up the grill, make mom’s famous potato salad, and enjoy an all-American meal in the backyard. If you don’t have a grill (or even a backyard), turn your meal into a picnic in the park instead.
- Reminisce: Dig out all the old family albums and ponder good memories of loved ones as you look at photos from years past. Ask your soldier if they’d like copies of any of the photos to take with them back to base or on their next deployment.
- Family Reunion: Plan a small family reunion with all the cousins, aunts, and uncles in the area. Make it a potluck to minimize your workload and costs. The whole family will love seeing your soldier back home.
- Home Project: If your soldier will be home for a while, bond over completing a home improvement project together. It can be something as simple as painting a room, or as complex as a full-scale remodel with wall demolition.
Activities Outside the Home
- Short Family Vacation: Test your travel agent’s chops with a short, but action-packed family trip, or channel your inner organizer and assemble a vacation yourself. Choose a location that’s meaningful to the family, or a place you’ve never been before! For ultimate cost-savings, select a location nearby, perhaps a fun place in your state, so you can drive to get there instead of flying.
- Take in a museum: Enjoy the serene atmosphere of an art museum together. The peace and quiet while surrounded by beautiful and interesting objects can be so relaxing. Take the time to interpret unusual art pieces together.
- Shop for civilian clothes and goods: On base, and especially in combat training, your soldier hasn’t been able to enjoy the simple pleasures of civilian life, like clothes and other items that aren’t military-issue! Pay a visit to your soldier’s favorite store, or show them around a new one in your area, and shop ‘til you drop.
- Take a day trip: You’d be hard-pressed to find an area of the country where you couldn’t drive a reasonable distance to find a fun activity to spend the day doing. Whether you’re mining for diamonds at a state park in Arkansas, kayaking in the Long Island Sound, visiting national monuments in the Dakotas, or hiking through the redwoods in California, you’ll find a family-friendly activity everyone can enjoy before returning home the very same day.
Send Them Off with a Care Package for the Troops!
The bittersweet part of your soldier coming home is that they also have to go back to base or wherever they’re stationed eventually. That’s why it’s important to make the most of your time together when you can, and express your love in other ways when you can’t be physically near.
A great way to achieve this is by sending a military care package from My Hero Crate! No matter what military branch your hero is enlisted in — Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, or Coast Guard — we’ll send a care package direct to them, anywhere in the world.
Choose from our monthly subscription option, or send a one-time military gift box chock full of tasty sweet, salty, and savory treats. Best of all, My Hero Crate is an American company with American suppliers working tirelessly to support the troops. Order today, and you’ll receive free shipping with your purchase!