Adventure Kit

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about my younger cousin's prom.  Now, in between her mother's funeral and her prom, my younger cousin moved in with my parents two states away.  For the past two years, she'd been living with another cousin of ours (who is ever-so-slightly older than me) and this particular cousin had tried to explain the move as an adventure.  After talking with my older cousin, I decided an "adventure kit" was exactly what my younger cousin needed while making this transition.  Since my husband and I live equidistant from my older cousin and my parents, we all decided that a week at our house was just what my younger cousin needed to decompress and deal with the complex emotions (and it helped my mom get some much needed rest after a hectic two weeks during tax season -- did I mention she's a CPA and this was not a good time for her?  Not that it's a good time to die for anyone, but dealing with everything else that happened as a result of this death was a little much...).  So, while my husband and I let my cousin just sit and veg out on couch (in between some shopping for blue jeans and a first ever 3-D Imax movie for my cousin), I thought more about what my older cousin had said about making this an adventure.  This gave me an idea: I made her an "adventure kit!"

This is everything I put in her adventure kit:

There's the suitcase/box (at the very top); a journal and colorful calligraphy pens (top left); directly to the right of that is (in her favorite scent from Bath & Body Works) lotion, body scrub, and a loofah in her favorite color; a hibiscus water bottle from Target (also in her favorite color - top right); "I Love You" hand sanitizer (from Bath & Body Works) and a hand sanitizer holder for her purse/bookbag with a toy compass on it (center, left); zebra print duck tape (center); a handmade card (bottom left); Bath & Body Works flavored lip gloss (bottom middle-left) - because in my family, if you go out looking "ugly," everyone in the family will call you Elzie Marie or Bueler May (real people in my family that apparently went out "looking ugly" at all times...); patterned Band-Aids (bottom middle-right); and a pair of underwear in her favorite color (bottom right) - because my mom and aunt have always told us kids to carry a pair of clean underwear with us at all times "just in case" (my mom's reasoning was, "What if you get in an accident?  You don't want to be wearing dirty underwear when the paramedics cut off your clothes, now do you?" To which I replied, "I'm pretty sure my dirty underwear is the last thing on the paramedics mind if they feel it necessary to cut off my clothes.")


This is what I wrote inside the card to tell her why I put everything in there:

For those of you that can't read my handwriting (I'm sorry, I write like a 5-year old...), it says:

"Everything You Need For Adventure
 A map for exploring
A compass to find your way

Hand sanitizer to keep you clean

A water bottle to keep you hydrated

Clean underwear for your purse

Lip gloss to always look your best

Duck tape to hold life together

Bandaids for life's little accidents

Lotion and body scrub for the rough patches

A loofah to wash the grime away

A journal to write your story"

This is the box I put everything in.  It's a decorative suitcase I got from the craft store that has a map on the inside and the outside:

This is how I arranged everything so it fit inside the suitcase/box before I put the journal on top:

I put the journal in last on top of everything else because I wrote in the first page things I think she needed to hear at this stage in her life, but also things that I think she'll look back on during the next year.  I know it's going to be hard on her, and she'll need reassurance often, but she's a little shy to open up about her feelings to people, and I want to be there for her even when she doesn't want to ask me for guidance.

So that's my cousin's adventure kit.  I thought it would be great to put this here since I shared the pictures with the teenagers at work and they thought it was a great idea (and now want their own "adventure kit"), and especially since I couldn't find anything helpful to me when I put this together.  Most everything I found when searching for ideas for this were for "children's adventure kits" that were centered first aid kits geared for mothers to pack/carry for their preschool-age children.  Hopefully someone out there will find this post helpful if they find a teenager in need of some smiles and uplifting words - and maybe just for people in general that need to be reminded that someone cares for them.