• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Soldier's Wife, Crazy Life

  • Home
    • My Disclosure Policy
    • My Privacy Policy
    • Contact Me
  • Advertise
  • The SWCL Shop
  • Duty Stations
  • Want to Write a Guest Post?
  • Fort Campbell
  • So Your Spouse Just Deployed??? Click Here!!!
  • The Military Spouse’s Directory Of Military Discounts

Julie

The Ocean Between Us Book Review

April 22, 2010 by Julie Leave a Comment

 

OceansBetweenUs BOOK COVER

I love to read a lot of fiction books.  Since becoming a military wife I haven’t found too many stories out there that are based on a military family.  So when I heard about this book I was super excited! I can say it hasn’t let me down.  I am really enjoying the book.  The characters are likable and the emotions seem pretty real for a military family going through what they are going through.

The Ocean Between Us by Susan Wiggs

The Ocean Between Us is a powerful novel of love, duty and second chances.  Susan Wiggs deftly portrays the struggles and triumphs of an American family facing life’s greatest challenges as they come to understand the timeless lessons of the heart.

Grace Bennett has it all—three wonderful children, a devoted husband and a life of adventure and travel. But beneath the calm demeanor of an efficient Navy wife, Grace stands at the crossroads—of her life and her marriage. When she looks in the mirror, she doesn’t recognize the person staring back. She’s tired, out of shape and feeling invisible. Somewhere between her husband’s demanding career, raising a family, the constant uprooting and the Navy’s routine, Grace has lost her sense of self. Something needs to change. She needs to change.

Steve Bennett simply can’t understand the unraveling of his wife’s heart. He thought he was proving his love to her with each promotion. He believed he could still be a good husband and father while juggling an officer’s myriad duties. But he now realizes they were seeing their marriage through different eyes. And when a nearly forgotten secret resurfaces, Grace’s discontent comes into sharp focus. Now Steve must try to make their marriage right again before his next deployment. For himself. For his family. For the twenty years of shared history that have always anchored him to home.

Then duty calls.

Separated by an ocean of regrets and longing, Grace and Steve take a hard look at their faltering marriage, the love that brought them together and the family they cherish. They confront the choices they’ve made, the sacrifices they’ve rationalized and the dreams they’ve set adrift. 

But just as they come to grips with their marriage, the unthinkable happens—a disaster aboard Steve’s aircraft carrier shatters Grace’s world. As she gathers her children around her and waits for news, she faces a Navy wife’s worst nightmare—the cold truth that life’s biggest chances can slip away while you’re looking for guarantees.

 

Susan Wiggs Author Photo Don’t forget to visit the Author’s Website at http://www.susanwiggs.com/

 

I was contacted by Big Honcho Media about this giveaway.  They sent me a review copy of the book and will provide the prizes for the giveaway.

This post contains affiliate links!

Filed Under: Giveaways & Reviews

The Life of the Military Child

April 21, 2010 by Julie 4 Comments

April is the Month of the Military child. These special boys and girls have different lives than children whose parents are in different careers. They see more, do more and experience more than anyone else. Some of these experiences are amazing like visiting other countries or getting to live in them. Other experiences are not as great such as going a year without seeing their dad or having to say goodbye to one more friend.

The Life of the Military Child

 

The military child lives a very special life.  They start serving their country from day one.  They have to say goodbye to daddy (or mommy) more times than a child should.  They have to say goodbye to friends all the time.  They have to be the new kid every 2-5 years.  They usually don’t get to grow up around grandparents or cousins.  Sometimes it can be years between seeing family.  Daddy might have missed their birth, first steps, the first day of Kindergarten or high school graduation.  And anything in-between.  The children of the military are the little heroes.

 

The Life of the Military Child

They get to see the world and meet all types of different people.  They get to experience so many different things.  I can ask my oldest son if he remembers that time we walked on an airfield in Newfoundland at 3 in the morning.  I can tell my 3 year old that he was born in Germany, across the ocean from the country we call home. I often wonder what kind of mom I would be if my husband never had to go away?  I wonder what our family would be like?  This lifestyle isn’t easy but it is ours.  The good with the bad.  All I can do is help my children through what they may have to face.  And pray that daddy won’t have to deploy as often in the future.

 

The Life of the Military Child

 

 Do you have military children? How many?

Filed Under: Military Children, Military Life Tagged With: military life

Writing Handwritten Letters When Your Spouse is Overseas

April 6, 2010 by Julie 2 Comments

I left for college in 1997 and email was very new. My dad hooked us up with Prodigy and then AOL when I was in high school but it wasn’t until I started college that most of my friends had email too. For the first few years, we still wrote handwritten letters to each other. 

I loved that and I miss how we use to do that all the time. I had this box filled with stationery and I loved getting it out and writing my friends letters. Updating them on my life and what was going on.

By the time, I graduated college email was more the norm, and these days we mostly use email for business reasons or transactions, or to get promotions to our favorite or not-so-favorite stores and restaurants. As much as I love how easy it is to connect with pretty much anyone these days, I miss those handwritten letters.

Ideally, each deployment would be filled with handwritten love letters between my husband and me but it just didn’t happen that way with us this last deployment. Communication was actually a big issue between us and one I hope we can work out before he has to leave again. There is something special about getting a letter in the mail written in his handwriting knowing he touched the same paper I was reading. There is something magical about it all.

I do have to be thankful, though.  Back when my Grandparents were going through WW2 all they had were handwritten notes.  No chatting on Skype for them.  No phone calls and no emails. They also didn’t even know when my Grandpa would be home. Can you imagine? What a different time we live in.

Writing Handwritten Letters To Your Spouse Overseas

Do you write a lot of handwritten letters during deployment or do you depend more on email/Skype?  Do you write handwritten letters to friends?

Filed Under: Deployment, Military Life Tagged With: Deployment, surviving deployment

Getting Through A Deployment

March 26, 2010 by Julie Leave a Comment

Getting Through A Deployment

Getting Through A Deployment

I have gotten a few emails recently about how to get through a deployment.  So I figured I would do a blog post about it.

When I finally know when my husband is going to deploy, I start making some plans on how to deal with what is going to happen and get through it.  I make lists.  Lists of things I can do for fun.  Lists of things I want to accomplish.  Lists of places I want to go. The lists never seem to end but they are helpful in keeping focused on getting through a deployment.

When he leaves, I get right to my lists!  The first day after you drop them off is so very hard.  The first week is very difficult.  I find myself walking around the housing remembering that last week at that time he was here doing things with us.  I find it hard to do the laundry and wash the rest of his dirty clothes he left behind.  I suddenly lost the other adult in my house.  It can be pretty painful.  But by about the month point I feel like I am going to make it.  I do have horrible, bad and sad days in between but I feel like I can get into a good routine and make it all work.

Getting Through A Deployment

What are some of the things I do to stay busy during a deployment?

I scrapbook

I take pictures

I do picture projects

I plan to read a certain amount of books

I plan to visit family (which will be easier being in the US now)

I find out what is going on in the community and fill up my calendar

I make plans with other Army spouses

I make sure my kids are having fun and taken care of

I fill my calendar up to stay busy

My main goal in getting through a deployment is to stay busy but not to the point where I burn myself out. This can be a hard balance to figure out and give yourself some grace to not get it quite right. It is something that is hard for so many of us but we have to just get up in the morning and try our best. It is all we can really do when dealing with a deployment.

I also try to live my life.  It can be sad to do things without him but I can’t put my life on hold for a year at a time, especially since we seem to be in this every other year deployment cycle.  I hate thinking about everything he will have to miss when he is gone. There will be way too many pages in the scrapbook where he is missing but I can’t just sit in the corner during the deployment. I have to try and make it through the months apart. The best way that I can.

DSC01853

What would your advice be for getting through a deployment?

Want a free Guide for the First 30 Days of a Deployment???

This article contains affiliate links!

Filed Under: Deployment Tagged With: Deployment, getting through a deployment

One Little German Village, Erbendorf

March 10, 2010 by Julie 1 Comment

I wanted to post about where we use to live.  Now that we don’t live there anymore I feel more comfortable talking about it.We use to live in Erbendorf which is about 25 minutes from the Grafenwoehr Army post in Bavaria.

We use to live in Erbendorf which is about 25 minutes from the Grafenwoehr Army post in Bavaria.

The village is cute.  It’s small.  Really small.  The people are friendly.  Lots of cute places to walk.

We lived living off post in Germany outside of Graf. We lived in Gov’t leased housing.  Which in Germany means living off post but the Army runs the house.  You don’t pay rent or utilities.

When we lived in Schweinfurt, we lived on post.  So this was a chance to live off post.  I am glad I got to experience both while we were overseas.  Living off post in Germany can be great because you do get to interact with more of “real” Germany.   What I didn’t like about where we lived was that we were so far from post.  It made it really hard especially since it snows so much in the winter.

Here are some pictures of our little village 🙂

 

living off post in germany

living off post in germany

 

living off post in germany

 

living off post in germany

 

living off post in germany

 

living off post in germany

 

living off post in germany

And let me tell you, it does feel odd seeing these pictures now that we are back in the US.  Weird that this little village is now apart of my past.

 

Filed Under: Stationed in Germany, Stationed Overseas Tagged With: germany, stationed in germany, stationed overseas

So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen Goodbye…

March 3, 2010 by Julie Leave a Comment

Germany

Well…it’s time.  This will be my last post from our home here in Germany.  Our internet is being turned off tomorrow.  I have a Kindle I can post from so I will try to blog again soon but not totally sure about when.

Tomorrow I say goodbye to all my friends 🙁  That will be hard.

Then it will be time to leave.  Pray for us on our long journey.  It is going to take forever to get there.  But then we will be in America again and I will be super happy 🙂

I think the boys pretty much know what is going on.  They seem pretty ok about it all so far but we will see.  Usually when a big change happens they just can’t sleep well.   They are excited about going on an airplane but I think they think we are going to end up at Grandma’s or Disneyland.

Our family is officially closing the Germany chapter of our lives…and what a weird feeling that is.

 

 

Filed Under: Stationed in Germany, Stationed Overseas Tagged With: stationed in germany, stationed overseas

Garmisch in Germany

March 3, 2010 by Julie Leave a Comment

Garmisch, Germany

 

Garmisch, Germany
Garmisch, Germany         Garmisch, Germany        Garmisch, Germany

 

Filed Under: Stationed in Germany, Stationed Overseas Tagged With: germany, travel

How To Use Flickr

February 10, 2010 by Julie Leave a Comment

If you haven’t ever heard of Flickr…here is the site.  www.flickr.com.  It is a photo sharing community.  There are a lot of people over there and a lot of different uses for Flickr.  Some people just use it to store photos they want to share online.  Others use it just for friends and family.  Some professional photographers use it to show their work.  So why do I use it?  I use it to share my work & meet other photographers.

So basically, this is what I do.  This afternoon I uploaded this photo…

How To Use Flickr

Now I need to fill in information about it.  I added the title, “Little Einstein in Egypt.”  Then I added some tags.  I just put in words that I thought had to do with the picture.   Little Einstein, Egypt, bokeh, depth of field, canon50d, canon, Africa, Pyramids, giza, pyramids of giza,

After that I usually put something in the description.  I try to include the location in either the tags and/or description so people know where it is.  It is frustrating to view a photo of a lake and not even know what country it was taken in.  You can also Geo-tag your photos in Flickr too.

Next, I pick some groups I want to send the photo too.  They have groups on so many different topics.  They probably have a group on any photo you could imagine you wanted to upload.  I sent this picture to 3 groups… Egypt, Bokeh Wednesday & Visit the World- The Travel Guide.  Sometimes I send it to more and sometimes just 1 group.  I also tweet it to my Twitter.

I try to get to some of my contacts photos and maybe a few from my groups every day.  I use Darckr to help me with that.  When you view someone’s photo you can mark it as a favorite, comment and even leave a note on the photo.  It is an easy way to interact with others, make new friends and get some photography inspiration.

On the Flickr home page you will also see a link that says Explore.  This is where you can see the most “Interesting” photos for each day.  It is a fun goal to try to get one of your photos in Explore.  It is based on different things.  How many comments you get, how many favorites you get and how quickly you get them.  I have also heard it depends on who is leaving you the comments, how many groups you send it to and the types of groups you send it too.

In almost 2 years I have had 43 photos make it to Explore.  I don’t really try to have them get there but I do get excited when they make it.  I check if any of my pictures made it by going to http://bighugelabs.com/ and using Scout to see if any photos are in Explore.  Photos go in and out of Explore all the time.  Right now I have 7 that are currently there.

So I think I am going to wrap this up.  Flickr can be a lot of fun!  It is a great way to get your photos out there and let others see and comment on them.  If you have any more questions about Flickr, I would be happy to answer them 🙂  Julie’s Flickr Photostream

 

 

Filed Under: Military Life Tagged With: photography

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Page 1
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Page 137
  • Page 138
  • Page 139
  • Page 140
  • Page 141
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

About Soldier’s Wife, Crazy Life

 

Welcome to Soldier’s Wife, Crazy Life! I am so glad you are here.

My name is Julie and I first became a military spouse in 2005 when my husband of 3 years re-joined the Army. Then, in 2014, he joined the National Guard. In January of 2024, he retired from the National Guard after 21 years of service.

During our time in the military, we got to spend 4 years in Germany as well as Tennessee where we now call home.

We have three boys and have been through four deployments together.

I hope that you can find support for your own deployments, PCS moves, or anything else military life brings you through my articles and social media posts.

 

Sign up for your FREE Guide to the First 30 Days of Deployment!


Thank you!

Check your email for confirmation! 

.
Support Soldier’s Wife, Crazy Life!

Buy Me a Coffee

Archives

Copyright © 2025 Soldier's Wife, Crazy Life on the Foodie Pro Theme

We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
Cookie settingsACCEPT
Manage consent

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
CookieDurationDescription
cookielawinfo-checbox-analytics11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checbox-functional11 monthsThe cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checbox-others11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy11 monthsThe cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytics
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
Others
Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet.
SAVE & ACCEPT