Pickles: A Care Package

Finding out you’re pregnant days before your husband deploys really puts a kink in life. I don’t mean that in a bad way at all; I simply mean that for me, everything turned upside down. 

I had great plans to shower my husband with tons of care packages filled with homemade goodies, little trinkets, and plenty of love notes to keep him occupied over in his “sandbox.” But when I could barely walk into the kitchen without feeling like I was going to puke and when I would rather sleep than drive to the store to get “fun things” for his box, I knew those care packages would have to take a back seat for a little while. 

I did send him one box within the first couple weeks, but it was pathetic and I filled it with things he forgot here at home. The only “fun” thing I managed to squeeze in there was a package of unopened Oreos that had been sitting in our pantry for way too long (sorry, babe).

Mail is always so much fun to receive that I felt horrible about not sending him anything else. I was back in America when I saw this post by The Journey of a Navy Wife about a pickle-themed care package pop up in my reader and I instantly knew my husband would LOVE it. (I don’t know if I’ve already mentioned this, but my husband nicknamed the little baby “Pickles” shortly after that second line popped up on the pregnancy stick, and lucky for him, the name stuck!)

Staying true to my chronic procrastination problem, I waited until two days before I was leaving the states to start gathering goodies for the package.

Mini pickles to eat on the go! I’m pretty sure Pickles was a little smaller than one of those pickles at the time.

I’m sure I could’ve found more pickle-flavored things had I kept an eye out for them from the beginning, but I ran out of time and energy going from store to store.

Did you know they make pickle juice so you can eat it on
the go or you can freeze it and eat it like a Popsicle? Pure
pickle-genius, right there!  

Fun pregnancy-related tidbit: After I bought the pickles above (ALL from one gas station, where the lady at the register definitely thought I was crazy), I had an INTENSE craving for pickles—go figure. I was about to open one of the packages I just bought, but rushed home instead, opened the jar of pickles my mom had in the fridge, and devoured two of them in 1.7 seconds. Then, still craving more of that delicious sour flavor, I drank some of the juice. It. Was. DELICIOUS. And then, about 30 minutes later I felt incredibly sick. The pickles and juice were totally worth it, though.

To decorate the box I took a cue from The Young Retiree and her awesome care packages, and found some funky and fun duct tape at WalMart. I decided to go with the shocking neon green to really make a statement. 

To finish the whole thing off, I went back to The Journey of a Navy Wife’s post and used her “big dill” saying, along with a few other filler messages on the other sides.

All in all I was really happy with the way it turned out. I wish I spent a little more time finding more pickle things, but considering the circumstances, this was pretty darn good. 

Oh, and my husband got a kick out of it, too 🙂 Mission accomplished!