Military Spouses = Awesome

 

In 1984 President Ronald Regan issued a proclamation, declaring the Friday preceding Mother’s Day as Military Spouse Day.  For more than two centuries, our freedom has been safeguarded by brave patriots who have stepped forward and sworn an oath to defend the principles upon which our Republic was founded. Alongside these selfless heroes, our Nation's military spouses also offer tremendous service and make great sacrifices for our country. On Military Spouse Appreciation Day, these spouses are recognized for the important role the military families play in keeping our Armed Forces strong and our country safe. 

Despite the fact that I grew up in the army and have been married to an Army soldier for the past 12 years, this is the first year I have participated in any of the Military Spouses Appreciation Day activities.  My good friend Chandelle had received a flier announcing that there was to be an activity on post for the military spouses, so we decided we could go ahead and check it out and then treat ourselves to lunch. 

In Raleigh there is an organization called Shoe Boxes for Military spouses.  What they do is collect donated shoe boxes full of goodies and then distribute them to the military families on this special day.  As we sat around waiting for the main event we decided that this was a lot like watching the season finale of American Idol, commercial breaks and all.  It started with one of the representatives getting up to introduce some of their sponsors and then announcing that they would be right back in a few minutes to give out the shoe boxes (our first commercial break).  After a couple minutes another representative got up and talked about their organization, it's purpose, and their goals.  He then announced that they would be right back in a few minutes with the shoe boxes (another commercial break).  Then some young women came in and started handing out papers for an icebreaker game, followed by yet another commercial break.  It continued on like this for close to an hour.  At one point they brought in the Chick-fil-a cow, and then gave us one final commercial break before moving on to the main event. 

I had no real expectation for this shoebox gift, but when I got mine it was really touching to see what was inside.  I had expected maybe a couple sample sized items from bath and body works, instead I got some really nice products from Burt's bees, Yankee candle, and Starbucks.  But these weren't the items that caught my attention.  On the very top of the box was a headband and face wash that had been knitted in the most beautiful shade of blue.  Attached to these items was a note  that said "This face wash and headband were hand knitted for you by either me or my 78-year-old mother.   There was also a note from the military spouse that had donate this box of goodies, stating that she had out together 27 boxes, one for each year her husband served active duty in the Army.   

While we were at this activity Chandelle and I kept getting asked by the representatives if they could take our picture.  "Absolutely! as if you need to ask."  We joked that we were totally going to make it into the paper.  The following week while I was at a dance performance for my kids one of the moms mentioned seeing me in the paper.  Well, of course that meant we had to cancel our trip to the grocery store after the performance and run to post to grab a copy of the paper.   

 

Both of the girls were so excited to see their mommy in the newspaper, but Kaylee is my logical child and for her there has to be a reason for everything.  So as I am fixing dinner she asks me why they put me and Chandelle in the paper.  My response was "because we are stinkin awesome." She wasn't buying it, so she asked "is it because both of your husbands are deployed.  "No honey it's because I am stinkin awesome."  She then suggested "maybe it's because you have two kids and she has two kids." Once again I had to remind her "honey they didn't know how many kids we have, it was because we are stinkin awesome." This kid is persistent, "well then maybe it's because your kids were at school and they wanted a picture for them."  "Sigh, no honey they didn't do it because you were in school, they didn't know anything about our kids, they did it because we are AWESOME". She continued with " well maybe it's because..." This is when I interrupted with, "Kaylee, why can't you just accept the fact that I am STINKIN AWESOME?"

 On a more serious note, I know that I went into this activity with some reservations, but being there I was reminded of all the things I love about the military spouses I know.  Over the past 12 years I have met so many amazing women.  These women have been there offering support and a shoulder to cry on.  They are there to help each other through  tragedy and heart ache.  So many of the women I have met have become family to us.  For some, we may only see each other twice a year, but with a single phone call any of them would drop everything and be there. Being a military spouse has never been easy, and I am so grateful for all of these amazing women who have helped to lighten my load.

Orchestra

 Tonight Jenna got to participate in her first Orchestra Concert.  We missed the winter concert because we were on vacation so she was really excited about tonight.  She has been reminding of this even since January.  The concert was held at the Crown Theater and it is a two night event.  The fifth through sixth graders performed tonight and the high school students perform on Thursday. 

 

 I promised her that since daddy wasn't going to make it to the concert that we would video tape it and email it to Javier. This nearly didn't happen.  We had to arrive at the theater over an hour and a half before the concert was supposed to start and I let Kaylee play with the camera until it was time to begin.  The entire time I was recording the low battery light was blinking at me.  I am surprised it held out for all four song the kids performed. 

 Hanging out at the Crown theater for 4 hours tonight was nothing.  Getting there proved to be quite another story.  Today while the girls were at school a drunk driver ran head first into one of the utility poles that held a transformer.  The pole was located at the entrance of our neighborhood and broke in half when she hit it.  This meant that we lost all of our power.  Yikes, that meant I couldn't do my hair, couldn't fix the girls dinner before we left, and had to manually open the garage door (gasp). 

 The kids were all amazing.  I am so glad we made it tonight.  Jenna has chosen to continue learning the violin next year and even asked for a blue violin.  So we made an agreement, since Kaylee wants to learn the violin as well, we told Jenna that when Kaylee is in the fifth grade we will buy Jenna her blue violin.

St Patricks Day

We loves St. Patrick's day. I think it's so much fun to have a day dedicated to something completely silly. Last year Javier and I had stayed up late after the kids went to bet and taped little tiny footprint all over the downstairs. The girls had set a trap to catch a Leprechaun, but he got away, leaving behind a tiny bit of treasure.

One of our favorite St. Patrick's Days was spent at Myrtle Beach, where they have an annual parade. We bought green wigs for everyone and had a great time.

This year the girls wanted to put together an entirely green meal. At first we thought we would do a simple green breakfast and keep it simple, but what would that be. So we had a last minute change of plans and invited several friends to join us. everyone was challenged with bringing something green to share.

The girls were excited because this meant they could create some really crazy looking food. We found recipes for green bread, green pasta, green drinks, and green desserts. We finally narrowed our selection down to 7 recipes, but only had time to make 5 of them. Most of them were desserts, but when you have two girls planning the menu this should be expected.

The girls were planning our St Patrick's day celebration for weeks and made little decorations for the day. We had a couple craft days were we sat around making green pinwheels and little green hair bows. We completely forgot to put the girls decorations out, but we will find another opportunity to use.

Next year we plan to go to Georgia to take part in a true St Patrick's Day celebration.

Long Lost Pictures

I have finally tracked down all of our lost pictures. Yea!! I thought they had been deleted, but they've been hanging out on Javier's laptop for the past year.

Last December we took the family to downtown Fayetteville to learn a little more about about this towns history. Our good friends Chandelle and Mike Walker went with us to take a tour of the Poe House. This late-Victorian residence was built by the Poe family. Mr. Poe owned and operated a local brick yard raised eight children with his wife in this house.

Located behind the Poe's backyard was Arsenal Park. This site contains the remnants of a United States Arsenal. The federal government built this facility in 1836 to store arms and manufacture ordnance goods. At the outbreak of the Civil War, the State of North Carolina ordered its seizure and turned it over to the Confederacy. During the war the arsenal produced the Fayetteville rifle. And on March 11, 1865, Union forces under General William T. Sherman destroyed the facility.


We spent the majority of the day roaming downtown and checking out some old shops when Javier found a few sites he wanted to come back to for pictures. So before leaving we spent a few minutes hanging around while he took a few pictures.










I am so luck I married a man who loves taking pictures. In the beginning of our marriage I was always the one behind the camera. Then we got to a point where we were both crazy about taking pictures. But between me being in school and being intimidated by the new camera Javier has taken charge of photographing most family outings. And fortunately for us he has expanded his interest to include people. When he first started focusing on photography it would be of random objects, and he has always been really talented, but I still enjoy seeing pictures with me and the kids once in a while.

This time last year

I recently found some pictures that were taken this time last year. On December 26 2010 we had a really good snow day. I haven't seen this much snow in North Carolina since 2001.

I think we can without a doubt say our snowman was bigger than any we had build in previous years.

Once the snow man was done we decided to take the girls to the wood behind our house to go exploring. I love that we can get to the woods straight from our back yard, and on this occasion the sight was to beautiful Everything was covered with so much snow, it looked like a magical wonderland. The dog had started out the exploration with us, but it wasn't long before she decided she didn't want to play in the snow anymore and ditched us to head back to the house.


This reminded me so much of the walks my family would go on when I was a kid and we lived in Germany.





Jenna and I were having so much fun we could have spent the entire morning hiking through those woods. But Javier was the more rational one and pointed out that if we walked to far we may not be able to find our way back. So after hiking a little further we turned back towards our home. It was still snowing so we couldn't make out our foot prints and we couldn't see our neighborhood but we still managed to make it back without getting lost. And the crazy dog was waiting for us when we got there.

Day #14- (Dec 23) Back to Adventure Island

Our thirteenth day on vacation was spent at the resort pool. With all of the fun attractions in Orlando, the girls still voted on a day at the pool. And our 14th, and last day (and also my birthday)
was spent back at Universals studios adventure Island. But this time we had my brother and sister-in law join us for the day. Brittney's Family lives in Orlando so we were able to catch them when they came in to visit her family for the holidays.

Spencer and Brittney really wanted to go to the Hogwarts section of the park, so this is where we spent most of the morning. Since there was really no line for the dragon roller coasters we let the girls do it again and again. And this time Kaylee wore her new 2 inch wedge flip flops so that she was tall enough to get on the ride.

The wait time for this ride was set at 15 minutes, but by the time we walked though the castle there was less than a 2 minute wait.


Since the park wasn't as crowded as it had been the last time we were here we took the kids into all of the shops to see what we could find. There was a Candy shop and a shop that sold all types of silly gadgets. Then we saw them, the chocolate frogs. Wow that was a lot of chocolate. We had such a hard time finishing these frogs.





And then we were off to the wand shop. After leaving this park the last time Javier and I had decided that we would get the girls their own wands. Javier thought that this would be such a cool souvenir to give to them. Jenna picked the elders wand and Kaylee picked Hermione's wand.







We got back to the Marvel Island just in time for them to announce that several super heros and villains would be out soon. The girls got to see Dr. Doom.


The got to strike a pose with hobgoblin




And we got to meet Captain America. Javier mentioned to him that it was my birthday while we were talking and he gave me hug a hug and wished me a happy birthday. I think I turned bright red, but who cares, it's my day. This was an incredibly awesome birthday. I couldn't think of anything I would have rather done. I got to my butter beer and birthday pin, we were out as a family, and we were getting a chance to see my Spencer and Brittney. And to top it off Javier surprised me with cheesecake when we got back to the resort, what an awesome husband.