My daughter is a junior in college.

My husband and I usually send her a care package every semester exam week, courtesy of a school organization fundraiser that sends parents a letter with a range of care package prices and hints that you don’t want your daughter to be left out on goodie day!

Oh, yes, my husband fell for that pitch when she was a freshman.

But, actually, the school fundraiser worked out pretty well. The two least expensive options didn’t cost much more than to buy and ship our own goodies, and the daughter told us those selections were plenty enough for her. Sometimes she was bringing home unopened popcorn bags and Pop-Tarts at semester break!

Do I need to tell you my husband also would also follow up on the spring flower fundraiser pitch sent from school?

So that’s $20 to $25 spent in the fall; and $40 to $45 spent in the spring, for goodies we ordered on her behalf.

This semester, the daughter is in South Africa on a study abroad program. Yes, students on financial aid can do such things, and you can to follow up on my archives where I discuss international student exchanges if you are interested in those details.

Before the daughter went overseas in January, I asked her “Do you want a care package sent?”

The answer was yes. We planned it so she would receive the box just before Easter.

During the past few days, I’ve been stuffing treats into the box. Do you know how DIFFICULT it is to find non-chocolate Easter candy? Yes, we love chocolate. But we cannot ship chocolate in a box that has a two-week delivery time. She’s getting Peeps, her favorite brand of jelly beans, a sugar egg and assorted other goodies. We also put in one box of Girl Scout peanut butter cookies. There is a request for a specific flavor of gum that I’m looking for before I close that box and ship it out.

Those of you who ship packages know about Flat Rate Boxes from the US Postal Service. We started using them a few years ago when we had a couple of relatives serving in the military overseas and were sending them care packages.

Flat Rate Boxes work for international shipping too.

The medium box that costs $10.70 to ship in the U.S. or to an APO/FPO address will cost me $43.45 to ship overseas.

And my mom paid $55.95 for the larger box that is normally $14.50 for domestic rate. She sent her care package out last week with some of the daughter’s favorite grocery foods (Mexican ingredients, to be specific).

That’s a lot of money for shipping one box, but then I thought about it:

It’s spring semester.

My husband would normally have ordered flowers and a semester exam care package from her home campus. So that’s $45 right there.

The candy and cookies I’m sending are about $15 at most – and she would have received most of that in her Easter basket here at home.

So while it’s an expense we normally don’t bunch up in one week, it is money we would have spent on the girl anyway during this semester.

It will be a budget-friendly box of happiness from Michigan.