Box 402

We've added a few little things to P.O. Box 143

I found these great European travel themed tissues at Michaels.

And I couldn't pass up these note cards and stationary sets. They are a great reminder of our families ultimate goal for next summer...to travel to Paris to celebrate Gabriella's graduation!

The kids were so excited to open box 402 last night and see what 

weekend surprise plans we would have.

This time it was Benjamin's turn to open the box.

They love putting the key and turning it slowly.

Pulling out the envelopes is almost like pulling a present out from under the Christmas tree!

The girls got to open the envelopes this time.

Lily's "Cha-Ching" envelope had St. Augustine inside. 

What a great city! 

Full of awesome history.

Gabriella's "Free" envelope had GaGa Ball.

I had NO idea what GaGa Ball was!!

Apparently you need something like this.

And the game goes something like this.

We already have a pretty busy weekend. 

It will be interesting to see which activity we get to do from Box 402. 

But we are excited for either one!

Box 401

This past Wednesday was our first time opening a box.

Box 401

Drum roll please :-)

And here are our choices...

Our free option is to play football.

And our "cha-ching" option is to go ice skating! 

Since we have extra money this week we are going ice skating!!

It's hot outside!

But inside it's nice and chilly!

Eight is enough for this family.

There was a little frustration from Benjamin but Gabriella helped keep him going.

Smiles were all around. Even after the frustration.

Our Box 401 brought a great day of skating and now it was time to head home and write our "Thank You" notes!

We thought these were tasty cute for our first box.

 After our weekend activity from each box we decided we would go home and write a TY note to the box. 

Everyone was allowed to write whatever they wanted in the note.

No one was allowed to tell anyone else what they wrote.

All the notes were put back into Box 401. Next year when we have finished opening all the boxes, we'll go back through and open all our thank you notes. 

I am so excited about all the new memories we are making!!

Inside P.O. Box 143

So what's inside P.O. Box 143 that's going to help us make Gabriella's last year our most memorable?

First we started making a list. We planned for 30 weekends because the kids are with their dad every other weekend.

Each person had to come up with 15 ideas that were free.

And 15 ideas that cost money. 

We bought special paper, envelopes, and of course fancy silver sharpies.

We went around the table and each one of us gave an until...

We had 30 free ideas and 30 ideas that required money.

We folded all the memory ideas and put them into our envelopes.

Licking 60 envelopes got a little yuck after a while!

Yup Benjamin is still licking envelopes.

So each weekend there would be two choices. 

We would open the P.O. Box for each weekend the Wednesday before. 

If we had extra money we could choose the "cha-ching" activity. 

If not we could choose the "free" activity. 

And some weekends we could choose to do both!

All the envelopes were mixed up. We had no idea what was where. 

We can't wait until we open our first box!

Why P.O. Box 143?

In just over a year, Gabriella will be graduating from high school. 

I can't believe how fast time has flown by these past 17 years!
We are a family of 4.

So, we have decided as a family that we are going to do something memorable every weekend we are together from now until Gabriella graduates high school.

So WHY P.O. Box 143? 

A few years ago one of my good friends gave me this set of P.O. Boxes. And we are a very creative family. So we put our minds together and came up with a way to plan for all our weekends together. 143 for anyone who doesn't know stands for "I Love You!" The perfect number for our P.O. Box idea.

So we painted the P.O. Box

And organized all the keys.

Added our own tags so we knew where they went.

And started adding the keys to a board.

Everyone helped.

Ta Da! And that's how we created P.O. Box 143! But what's going to be inside P.O. Box 143?

Check out our next blog post for how we made this idea make a plan for memories!