Our trip to Florida was to visit my grandparents. I immediately knew if it rained, was too hot or was dark out early, we were going to have some bored kids. I knew I couldn’t fit Hi-Ho Cherry-Oh or puzzles and Barbies into my checked bag and I didn’t want to risk overcrowding our carry-on bags. So my husband came up with a pretty in-expensive way to handle this problem. We shipped them to my grandparents about a week in advance of our trip.
With the high cost of extra bags on the Spirit flights, or most any airline for that matter, we knew a second suitcase was not an option. Being that the overhead bins were $45 if you paid at the gate, we didn’t want to overload the carry-on bags with toys and then be screwed into paying that ridiculous price. So my husband brought him a decent-sized box from work and I packed it up with lots of stuff we might need.
Barbies, cars, chalk, coloring books and crayons, life-jackets for the pool and even their magnet board made the journey via FedEx to my grandparents porch in advance of our arrival. All of $18.
We considered using the USPS Flat Rate boxes, which I use quite frequently to send care-packages to my sisters-in-law in college, but the largest box was $15.45 and it didn’t even hold one life jacket. The Fed Ex box was a much better option.
He sent it standard ground and it made it to their house in three days…even arriving on a Saturday.
Going home was slightly different. My grandparents live up here in the summer time, so because they were going to be making the drive, our box(es) hitched a ride. And yes, there was more than one coming back! My girls picked up some souvenirs, as did I, and we packed them up. The only downside is that my grandparents didn’t really know when they were coming back, so I did have to wait. And honestly, I’ve already forgotten what was in the box!