Letter No. 2: Reedsville, Pennsylvania

Only a single day after receiving her first piece of mail, Freja got her second card in the mail. This one came from Charlene, the mother of one of my former dance students, and baker of fantastic eatables, who lives in Reedsville, Pennsylvania. (I also learned on this occasion that Reedsville is a census-designated place, something I had never heard of before, but I didn't bother to explain it to Freja, because I doubt her interest in the minutiae of local municipal governments (or the lack thereof)).

The card was bright, and Freja was really not into waiting for me to take pictures of it before I allowed her to open it.

... really, really not into having her picture taken.

Inside was a Halloween card with "a baby spider on it"!

"With a trick-or-treat bucket!"

The next day, we looked up Reedsville online, and Freja really, really liked the pictures of the Amish and horses that we found on a Google Image Search (because growing up in Pennsylvania, she's NEVER seen either of those things before. *ahem*) Then, she sat down to pen her reply to Charlene.

The headband is imperative to writing success.

She also decided to include a drawing of a princess on the back of the letter, because PRINCESS. 

It's a bit boxy up top, but I like the puffy sleeves. 

The finished letter: 

Dear Charlene,

Thank you for the card! There's a spider on it! It opens! The spider has eyelashes! That means it's a girl spider.

I drew a princess for you. I don't know her name. No, it's Rapunzel with a colorful dress. It has four colors. There's pink and purple and red and a darker purple mixed with red. 

Thank you for the card again!

Love, Freja

Yes, thank you, Charlene!

... PRINCESS.

Letter No. 1: Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania

I have a daughter.

I actually have two daughters, but this is more about my oldest daughter, Freja.

Freja is four years old. She is precocious (which I'm sure when looked up in the dictionary bears a definition somewhere along the lines of: "will constantly ask questions which will lead to more questions which will lead to some level of dissatisfaction for the answers received"). She is also eager to learn about new places and things, as are all children her age. And she's obsessed with mail.

And so I decided to do a project with her. I put out a call on my Facebook page(God bless you, Internet) that went something - or exactly - like this:

"Okay...

I'm thinking about doing a project with Freja. She's become really interested in two things lately: Places (in other words, learning about town names and wanting to know where we are when we drive someplace) and mail. So I'm posting this to measure the interest level in doing something in which people will volunteer to send a piece of mail, addressed to Freja, and then we can locate it on the map, maybe look up the towns online and so on, and she will reply back to the person who sent the original letter/post card/what-have-you. I'd love to get a mix of local, out-of-state, and maybe even out-of-country people, so that she can be exposed to a variety of places throughout the duration of this.

So... is anyone interested in doing this with us?"

And I received a surprising number of responses from a wide variety of people. 

And just two days later, Freja got her first piece of mail.

Of course I blurred out the addresses. I mean, this is the Internet, after all.

She was excited, and so I gave her the card to open.

The envelope barely survived.

Inside was a lovely glossy card from Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania, sent by Gay, a long-time friend of the family (from before I was born). 

"It's a duck fence!"

Excited Freja is excited!

We looked up Boiling Springs online, which included a large number of pictures of water and ducks and some very lovely buildings. Then we looked at the website for The Village Artisans Gallery, where Gay sells her AMAZING folk art. (Freja liked what she called the "Blue Angel" the best.)

And then she set to work on her reply.

She has her thinking headband on.

This is the finished letter (and yes, I wrote the main body of the letter, dictated by Freja): 

Dear Gay,

Thank you for your card. I liked the ducks. I liked the duck fence, too. I liked your carvings. I liked the blue angel the best. I want to come visit you soon. 

Love, Freja.

So thank you, Gay! And thank you, Boiling Springs. We may just have to come and visit the both of you very soon. :)