This Saturday, the Fort Lewis Family Morale, Welfare and Recreation organization will be hosting a Children’s Deployment Fair at Evergreen elementary school on the Fort Lewis base. We’ll be there with laptops, webcams, and hopefully some decent internet access ;) giving free recordings to as many families as possible. One thousand families are expected to show up to make care packages to send to a deployed parent overseas. We’ll set up a booth where the kids can record stories for free all day, and send links to their deployed parent to watch them reading over the net. In some cases, the parent who’s overseas may have left before their child learned to read.

While we originally conceived of A Story Before Bed for grandparents and parents to read to their kids, there’s been a clamor for kids to use the service to read to their parents and grandparents. We’re excited for the site to be used in any way that brings families closer who can’t be together.

In addition to free recordings, we’ll be giving away coupons to put in the care package, so those deployed parents who can get access to a computer and webcam with internet access can record their own stories to send to their children here at home. Families will also be encouraged to sign up for our Military mailing list for regular free offers.

If you’re an eligible family, we look forward to seeing you there. If you know of an eligible family, please pass the word. And if you’re a family with a deployed parent in the U.S. Military who would like us to provide free stories for a similar event, please get in touch with us to arrange.

Saturday should be fun!