Soldier's Wife, Crazy Life

Julie

Grandma in her Army Wife Days

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1943???

Army Wife From World War 2

This is my Grandma Ruth.  She was an Army wife too although for a shorter time.  But it wasn’t easy.  My grandparents got married and about 6 weeks later he went off to fight in World War 2. He didn’t get to come home for 3 years.  No R&R, no email, no Yahoo.  I just can’t even imagine what that would have been like.  On the back of this photo, there is a stamp that says “Passed by the Army Examiner”  So I can only guess she mailed him this photo while he was gone.

When I was about 13 years old she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease 🙁  She passed away when I was 24.

When I was a little girl I asked Grandma how long she would live.  She told me she would live long enough to see me get married.  I feel like she kept that promise in a way even though she wasn’t physically at the wedding.  She died about 7 months after my wedding.  She also met my husband which was so important to me.  I have no idea if she even knew what was going on when he met her because by that point she really wasn’t there anymore at all.  A part of me believes she could have known deep down that this was the man that was going to marry her Granddaughter and she just couldn’t show any response because of the disease.

She would be turning 90 this year. There are so many things I want to talk to her about. So many questions about being an Army wife during that war that I will never be able to ask.

 

Things to do in Germany with Kids : Playmobil Park

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Playmobil Park

I grew up playing with Playmobil and I love the stuff.  We have been collecting it the whole time we have been married.  Now both of my boys LOVE it.  It is everywhere in Germany and they even have a Theme park.  We took the boys there for my son’s 4th birthday.

There are so many fun things for the kids to do.  It’s great!  Lots of water play and climbing fun.  They also have this huge inside area where they have almost every set they ever made for the kids to play with.  It is all set up by theme too.  So pirates in one section, Egypt in another.  They even have places for the toddlers to play with the special toddler sets.  I believe that part is open throughout the whole year but the outside stuff is closed in the wintertime.

Here is the link for all my friends living in Germany…

Playmobil Park in Germany

It is just outside of Nürnberg.

They also have one in France, Malta, Greece, Palm Beach & Orlando.  Playmobil Parks

Playmobil Park in Germany

Playmobil Park in Germany

Playmobil Park in Germany

Playmobil Park in Germany

Playmobil Park

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Playmobil Park

Playmobil Park

Playmobil Park

Playmobil Park

Playmobil Park

Playmobil Park

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Faith Deployed: Review & Giveaway

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Faith Deployed Book

I love this book!  I know I have mentioned the book before but the author, Jocelyn Green recently asked me to write a review. I will also be hosting a giveaway of this book!

The book is made up of little devotionals for those going through a deployment. Right after my husband deployed last year I saw this book at our PX.  I just had to have it.  As a Christian and a military spouse, I knew this book was written for someone in my situation.

The book itself is divided into sections.  This is great so that if something specific is on your heart, you can look up devotionals under that topic.  The different sections are:

Taking Every Thought Captive: Training Our Minds to a Biblical Perspective

Guarding the Heart: Protecting Ourselves from the World’s Temptations

Ambassadors for Christ: Viewing our Role as a Ministry

Taking Orders: Living the Life that has been Set Before Us

Total Surrender: Giving Up our Attempts to be in Control

The Price of Duty: Overcoming the Trials Inherent in Serving

Active Duty Faith: Leaning on a Faith that Sustains

Hope of Victory: Recognizing God’s Goodness

The setup of the book makes it very easy to read.   You could sit and read several chapters in a row or just take in one at a time.  During my husband’s deployment I did try to read at least one devotional a day.  Some days I would end up reading two or three of them.

These 14 writers along with Jocelyn Green make up all the devotions in the book:

Pamela Anderson, Sarah Bell, Rebekah Benimoff, Paulette Harris, Jill Hart, Sara Horn, Denise McColl, Lori Mumford, Vanessa Peters, Lasana Ritchie. Sheryl Shearer, Ronda Sturgill, Marshele Carter Waddell and Eathel Weimer.

What is great about all these authors is that they come from all branches of the military, both Active duty and the Reserves.  This helps bring perspective and a sense of realness to the devotions.  I enjoyed the different tones and experiences that the different writers brought to the book.  There were several devotions that I read and thought, “Wow that totally hit home!”  Then others I could not relate to as well. The book was also able to address some of the fears I have had or do have about having a husband in the military.

Each little devotion starts with a Bible verse.  I love that after each devotion there is a prayer and a question for the reader.

I would say this book is a necessity for anyone who is going through a deployment or military life in general.

 Faith Deployed: Daily Encouragement for Military Wives ~ Amazon Link

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Faith Deployed Website

Now for the giveaway!  Jocelyn Green has offered to giveaway 1 copy of this book to one of my readers 🙂  The winner will receive the book directly from her.

I will be using Random.org to pick the winner.

All you have to do is leave a comment between now and Friday Jan 22nd at 11:55pm Eastern time.

Good luck!!!

 

 

 

Click here for my full disclose policy!

Space-A Adventure Part 2

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We arrived in Ramstein on May 20th.  We were happy to see that they did have things for the kids to do…

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We found out right away about cancelled flights.  Every single flight we were going to try that night was cancelled.  The next flight was not until about 9 or 10 am the next morning.  The terminal was also not open 24 hours like we thought.  After calling around a bit, we were able to get a 4-bedroom apartment at the hotel on base. The central registration told me all of the hotels at all the bases in the area were totally booked. However, when I called the hotel directly and asked if we could sit in the lobby during the night, she offered me a room. It was very stressful not having a hotel booked. If I were to do it again I would have had a hotel booked just in case.   We live 5 hours from Ramstein so we could not just go home. 

There is a Taxi service that took us from the train station to the terminal and then from our hotel to the terminal the next day. The hotel had a bus that took us to the hotel from the terminal but did not run in the early AM.

I needed to get to CA. Southern or Northern it did not matter since I have family in both locations. My friend needed to get to AR. So our goal was to get to the US and then make our way to where we needed to go.

We woke up May 21st and headed to the terminal ready to get on a flight.  There were a few flights for Travis (CA) and one of those stopped in McGuire (NJ) which would be perfect for us. We checked in and waited around for roll call which was around 11.

Checking in means you are telling them you are there.  You have to do this every 24 hours in the base you are leaving from.  If you do not check in you won’t be on any list to fly out.

Roll call is when you find out if you made it on the flight.  They start with CAT 1 and list who made it on from each category.  Sometimes flights fill up at CAT 3 and others will take anyone who wants to go that is waiting.  It just depends on how busy things are and how many seats they have open.  You will stay in the system until you get a flight out.

We both got on the flight and were so excited.  We checked in our luggage, got our tickets and went through security.  Then we waited again. 

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About 4 hours later we were sitting on the airplane all ready to go. They even gave all the safety information and then it got cancelled. So this is why you have to be flexible with Space-A.  We were upset even though we knew this could happen.  I think it was because it took so long to even get on the plane that the thought of having to do it all over again was so overwhelming.

We got off the plane and went back to the terminal not sure what we were going to do. We were worried we would be stuck in Ramstein for the night and really did not want that to happen. The only flight out that day was to BWI (Baltimore.)  So we went for that one.

I couldn’t truly relax until the plane was in the air.  I was worried it would be cancelled.  In reality, BWI flights don’t get cancelled that often.  The BWI flight is the most like a normal commercial flight.  It isn’t a cargo plane.  It looks just like a normal plane. 

We got into BWI at about 11pm Eastern time and were greeted by people thanking us. We had been stationed in Germany for 3.5 years and had never been thanked like that before. I started crying just in awe of total strangers being there welcoming us and the soldiers back to the US.

We were able to get a hotel right away and spent the night. We ended up only sleeping about 2 hours because of the time difference. It was nice to shower/regroup though.

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The next day we headed to Andrews Air Force base where there was a flight to Travis and a flight to Jackson where my friend needed to go. We took a Super Shuttle from BWI and split the cost.  One benefit of traveling with a friend is that you can split the costs of some things and that will make it cheaper.

Roll call for the Travis flight was at about 11:40 and we walked in the door at 11:40, which was a little nerve-wracking, but it all worked out. I got on my flight and my friend got on her flight (although her flight was a little delayed.) We took off from Andrews at about 1:30pm. I really enjoyed being on a Cargo plane vs the BWI plane. It was so much easier with my kids too. They both slept a lot and I was able to stretch out my feet.  I get a little claustrophobic on a normal flight so all the space was very nice.

I arrived at Travis AFB at about 6pm and was able to call my Mother-in-law to come pick me up.

When she came and got us it finally hit me what I had just done. I flew all the way from Germany to my home state of California Space-A.  Unfortunately, the way back to Germany was very very hard and I will blog about that later.

My advice to anyone wanting to do Space-A would be: Sign up early, bring lots of snacks and little toys for kids if you have them, be flexible, expect waiting & waiting and more waiting, bring extra money & do your research!!!

Traveling with a friend was great too because we could put our heads together to figure out the best way to do things and we could run and do something while the other watched the kids. 

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My Experience Flying Space-A

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my experience flying Space-A

 

This past summer Ben was deployed and I decided I wanted to spend the summer in sunny California!  I did not want to spend almost $3,000 to fly there from Germany.   My friend T also needed to get to the US so we talked about maybe trying out Space-A together.  We knew it was crazy but we were up for the adventure.  Space-A with children is very difficult but it can be done.

We made the decision about 5 months before we were going to leave.  During that time, we went to www.pepperd.com and looked over everything.  We had so many questions and did not understand the process at all.  I had another friend who had done it and she explained it to me and it started to make more sense.

space-A

First of all, there are different categories of travelers.  Active duty is Cat 3, Deployed Spouses are Cat 3b (if the soldier is deployed over 365 days) and Cat 4 (under 365 days but over 120 days) Cat 5 is for spouses flying without the sponsor when the sponsor is not deployed and Cat 6 is retirees.

If you travel with your sponsor, you will be a higher priority than a spouse without their sponsor will.  If your sponsor is deployed, you will be higher than a spouse whose husband/wife is not.

We ended up being Cat 3b because of when our husbands left and when they were supposed to return.

The first thing we did was get a signed letter from our husband’s command that allowed us to do Space-A.  We also knew that we wanted to fly out of Ramstein so we signed up with them.  We did this by sending them a simple email with the attached letter from the command.  Ramstein Information can be found here!

I did this on April 9th so that was my “sign up” date.  That meant that anyone in my category with a sign up date later than me was behind me in priority for getting on a flight.  This was any flight leaving from Ramstein.

I needed to get to California and my friend needed to get to Arkansas.  Our plan was to get to the US on the first flight we were able to.  I could have waited in Ramstein for a flight to CA but I did not want to wait there.  If I was going to wait, I wanted it to be in the US.  And we wanted to make that long flight together.

Now because we did not know what base we would end up at, we signed up to fly out of any base we thought we could end fly into.  Most of these were on the East coast.  I think we signed up for about 9 different bases.  If you sign up for a certain base and never show up there, oh well.  That is why we were able to sign up for so many.  What we wanted to do when signing up was put ourselves between days 45-50.  If you signed up April 9th and wanted to fly April 12th you would be on day 3 when you went to fly.  This is not very high up on the list.  You also do not want to be at day 59 when you try to fly out because the maximum amount of days you can be on a list is 60.  So if you try on day 59 and do not make it you will be back to day 1 the next day.

Space-A The thing about Space-A is that you need a plan, then a plan b, then a plan c.  You need to be able to change things and get creative about it.  You need to be flexible.

This is a great web page to read.  There is just so much good info there!  And Pepperd Message Board for Space-A travel is a must.  There is a ton of information about the flights there that you need to read.  Basically, you need to figure out where you should fly from and where you should fly to because not all bases are equal as far as where they go, how often they fly there and how many people they will take.

 

Too be continued…

The Best Time for a Military Family to Have a Baby

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When IS the best time for a military family to have a baby?When IS the best time for a military family to have a baby?

I think this is something that a lot of military wives struggle with.  With all these deployments and not much time at home, how do you plan the perfect time to have a baby?  Is it better they miss the pregnancy but are there for the birth?  What if you plan it perfectly but then deployment orders change?  What if it takes longer than you think to get pregnant?

Deciding to have AJ seemed easy.  We had been apart for 4.5 months while DW and I were waiting on Command Sponsorship.  When we got to Germany we just decided to see what would happen.  When Ben left for Iraq we thought that he would be home when the baby was about 3 months old.  At the end of the deployment, he was 11 months old.  I have several friends that got pregnant on R&R that deployment.  They were due about 2 months after the guys were supposed to be home.  It was ideal!  They would not miss the birth and should be home for most of that first year.  But then we got extended and a lot of the dads missed the whole pregnancy and didn’t meet the child until they were a few months old.

You can plan what you can but things always seem to change.  When my husband got home in Nov 2007 I knew that I wanted another baby but I knew I did not want one in Germany.  I also knew I did not want to go through another deployment in Germany with 3 kids.  I know a lot of people do it and I know I could have done it if it was what happened, but I didn’t want to plan for it.

I have talked with a lot of my military wife friends about what would be easier.  They miss the birth but then get to enjoy an older baby?  They miss the pregnancy but can be there for the birth?  They are there through it all but miss the 2nd year?  I don’t think there is one right answer.

My husband was with me during the first part of pregnancy.  I was sick and tired all the time.  I would not look forward to going through that without him.  He missed the birth even though they tried to send him home in time.  I could do another birth without him but I do not want to.  He was there when DW was born and I hate that he missed out on that with AJ.  He was gone during the early months of his life which in a way made things easier at night.  I didn’t have to worry about waking him up when I had to nurse.  But then the extra help is missing too.  I also felt like it was harder for him to bond with AJ.  He got to see him on R&R; when he was a few weeks old but then didn’t get to see him again until he was almost a toddler.   This made bonding with him a lot harder.  Not that it hasn’t happened because it has; just it took a lot longer than it would have.

Both deployments left me with a new 2-year-old.    Hopefully,  that won’t happen again.  He hasn’t ever missed the first steps but has missed first words.  I think as military wives we know they will miss something.  We know other wives have been through it.  We know we will get through it.  We know it is all a part of the lifestyle.  But it still doesn’t make it very easy.

I take a ton of pictures which I know helps but I need to be better about taking videos of the kids.  Hopefully the Flip will help with that 🙂

So when is the best time to have a baby in the military?  Who knows!!! You just have to decide for yourself and see what happens.

 

Auf Wiedersehen and Goodbye

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Life in Germany

We have less than 2 months in Germany! About 8 weeks left!  In some ways, it seems hard to believe.  That we will get on an airplane and our time here will be over. On the other hand, it is a long time coming and I am so ready to live in the US again.

I will miss the bakeries, the church bells and the whole experience of living somewhere in Europe however I am really looking forward to a lot of things I have missed.

Here is my list:

Target

Starbucks (They have these in Germany but not anywhere near where we live)

Favorite Restaurants

Non APO address

Finding a real church to attend

American Houses (I think the German style is cool but just isn’t for me)

Not struggling with not knowing the language

A new cell phone

Not living 30 whole minutes from anything American

Not having it cost over $3,000 to go home and see my family

Having my family be able to come visit often

Only being 2 hours time difference from my family

Seeing my friends in KY again.  It’s been 4 years 🙁

Barnes and Noble

The mall

Not feeling the pressure to go out and see something because it is Europe.  (This might sound weird but being in Germany I feel like we have to go out and see things all the time and when we don’t I feel like I am not taking advantage of living here.  And that is just stressful to me.)

Stores open late and on Sundays

Mail being delivered to my own house

Being able to sell on Ebay again

Going to Old Navy vs having to order online

Did I say Target?

There are reasons that I am “done” here that have more to do with where we live in Germany vs Germany itself.  Living out in the middle of nowhere is no fun in the winter with all this snow.  And since we only have 1 car too, that makes it even harder.

So the next few weeks will be spent getting ready for the movers and all that fun stuff.  I am excited.  It is time to go.  And as I write this I start to cry because we do have to say goodbye.  We will no longer live in this house.  No longer see the friends I have made here.   And the chapter in our lives called “Germany” will be over. So many mixed emotions.  So many memories the last 4 years, both good and bad.  Germany is where my son was born and where my love of photography turned into a passion.  It is where we had our first & second deployments and it will always have a special place in my heart.

But it’s time to move on and make new memories in a new place.  And I can finally see what it is like to be an Army Wife in the United States.

Auf Wiedersehen 🙂

 

It’s Another Military Homecoming and it’s Definetly the Best Day Ever

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military homecoming
Military Homecoming
 
As I am getting ready for Homecoming 2009 I can’t help but think back to Homecoming 2007.  It was a 15-month deployment and it was 11 months between R&R; and Homecoming.  This time seems so different since I just saw him in August.  The whole Homecoming thing is really cool…once you get that phone call of where you need to be.

All the waiting until the Military homecoming just plain old sucks.  But it is worth it.

 
You get to the gym (or wherever you are supposed to be) and you wait.  You wait.  And you wait some more.
 
And then it starts.
 
The gym starts to fill with smoke.  You hear music and then you see them as the brave soldiers march through the door.  You try hard to spot your own spouse and when you do your heart just wants to burst.  But you have to wait.  They usually have a little
 
But you have to wait.  They usually have a little 5-minute speech and then you hear those words you have been waiting for…”Soldiers, you are released”  Or something like that.
 
It’s the words you have been waiting months and in my case, over a year to hear. The words that mean that your spouse is yours once again. That the deployment is over, that the homecoming has happened and that you can go back to living life as a Military couple once again.
 
Then everyone is running for their husband and it is just wonderful.  Hugs and kisses and relief.  Proposals and meeting of children and moms crying into their son’s arms. It beautiful and lovely and something a Military spouse is never ever going to forget.
 
Oh I can’t wait.  I really can’t wait to do it all over again 🙂
 

Are you waiting on a Military homecoming too?

 
Military Homecoming
 
Military Homecoming
Military Homecoming

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