Not even a week after launching A Story Before Bed we had the honor of attending the Children’s Deployment Fair at the Fort Lewis military base just outside Tacoma, Washington. While we originally imagined our new site would be used by grandparents and parents reading to children, we were surprised to see how many families and teachers wanted to use A Story Before Bed to record kids reading the books themselves.

Fort Lewis has over 18,000 soldiers currently deployed. A large number of those soldiers are also parents. The Children’s Deployment Fair saw over 400 families come to make up a care package for their deployed family member. We set up a conference room at the elementary school where the fair was held with four computers running A Story Before Bed and had a line several families deep waiting to record stories to send to Dad. We’re proud that dozens of families recorded stories on Saturday, and hundreds more took coupons to record stories for free at home. While we understand that internet access with webcams is not always available where soldiers are deployed, at least some of these parents apart from their families should be able to record their own stories in return.

We want to thank Ken Swarner who graciously had us come to the event, and all the families who patiently waited in line to participate. If you’re a military family with a deployed family member, make sure to sign up for our Military mailing list to receive regular free recordings. If you work with military families and would like to talk to us about providing free recordings for a deployment fair in your area, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Enjoy some pictures of families connecting with distant loved ones using A Story Before Bed. Notice the last picture where it was all kids using the software, with more kids standing in line peering in. Neat!