Sue Biles knew she needed something to keep her mind off her daughter's deployment to Afghanistan. 

"Being a mom, I had to find a way to deal with (it)," said Biles, who works as a school nurse at Clover Park High School.

So before her daughter, Capt. Tammy Childs, deployed to Afghanistan last November with the 31st Combat Support Hospital, Biles set the wheels in motion.

She committed to knitting and filling 150 stockings with goodies that would be handed out at Camp Dwyer in Afghanistan by her daughter's unit.

Biles and her friends in the Washington State Internet Quilters and Runaway Quilters - with support from the Evergreen Quilt Shop - got to work knitting the stockings.

"Quilters are such a giving group of women," Biles said.

The school's Life Skills classes made 300 candy cane ornaments to accompany the stockings. Biles also sent out feelers in the community to help gather small items to fill the stockings. Her dentist donated floss, toothpaste and toothbrushes, and she worked with a local casino to secure 150 packs of playing cards.

"I tried to work as much as I could to get quality items," Biles said.

Students from the school's Air Force JROTC classes and other school staff members adopted a stocking of their own and committed to filling it.

"People here (at Clover Park High) really embraced it," she said.

The opportunity to adopt a stocking really gave cadets a chance to think how they could personally make a difference in the life of the person who was receiving the stocking, said Senior Master Sgt. Maureen Arroyo, one of the program's aerospace science instructors.

"It was a chance for them to think about what it would be like for them or their loved ones to be in that situation and what they might want to see in a stocking," Arroyo said.

Cadets filled stockings with everything from energy bars, Pop Tarts and Ramen noodles to travel sized lotions, sunscreen and hand sanitizer.

"We really focused on things that troops could carry in their pockets," she said.

Along with the goodies, cadets wrote out personalized notes with words of encouragement.

"Everything was very personalized," Arroyo said.

Instead of exchanging Christmas presents to each other, Biles and her husband used the money to send the stockings overseas

Childs, a Lakes High School graduate, returned home from her deployment on March 9. She brought with her a flag that was flown over Afghanistan and presented it to the school last week.

A group of cadets made a formation along with an honor guard unit and accepted the flag.

Childs explained how the gifts lifted the spirits of the recuperating soldiers and Marines and helped them to better enjoy the holiday season away from home.

"(The flag) showed the cadets that their efforts were appreciated and it did make a difference in lives over there," Arroyo said.