Soldier's Wife, Crazy Life

Military Life

Space-A Part 3 The Return Trip

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my experience flying Space-AI have posted about my Space-A trip that I took last summer.  Space-A part 1 and Space-A part 2.  But I haven’t posted about the return trip.  Since it is almost summer again I figured I better post it before I forget too much 🙂

 

After spending a wonderful summer in California it was time to head back to Germany.  Instead of trying to get a flight out of Travis AFB which is about 8 hours from where I was, I took a commercial flight to Charleston, SC to meet up with my friend who was heading back to Germany too.  I had a hotel booked in the city so when we got to the airport we just had to get the van to the hotel.  I was so tired once we got in that I was glad my plan was to meet my friend the next day.

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The next morning I woke up and called a van to take us to the Air Force base.  He picked us up and dropped us off right in front of the Pax Terminal where you catch your flights.  Inside the terminal they do have a kids room with toys, cribs and tvs.  That was nice.  We chilled there for a few hours and then decided to get something to eat.

 

I decided to walk the boys to Burger King.  Well it was about a 10 minute walk and we get there and it was closed.  Keep in mind it was the end of August in Charleston so it was very hot and humid but also suppose to rain.  Also keep in mind that you must have all your bags with you at all times.  Not fun to walk anywhere!

 

We went back to the Pax terminal and just decided we would get stuff from the vending machines until my friend got there.  Well the problem with that is that it only took $1.00 bills and I had a bunch of $5s and no one would give me change.  It was so frustrating.  I asked the guy at the counter if there was any place to get change and he told me the bowling ally.

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So we got all our stuff and headed there.  Another 10-15 minute walk.  We get to the bowling ally just in time for it to start pouring down rain.   They had a little food place in there so I decided to feed us and just relax.  After we ate we bowled a little bit.  I think we spent about 3 hours there just killing time.

 

We made it back to the terminal at about 6ish and I was hoping my friend would be there soon.  Well by 9 she still hadn’t showed.  I was getting worried.  I couldn’t get ahold of her at all.  I didn’t know if I should go for a hotel or wait there.  The boys were getting crazy and I had a major “why did I decide to do this crazy thing?”meltdown.

 

At about 10pm my friend finally made it.  She had been in a minor car accident and that was why she was later than she had planned.  It was so stressful for both of us that we decided to skip the first flight out they had the next day.  That was probably our mistake but it was what we decided to do at the time.

 

We ended up having to stay the night in the terminal which was ok for the boys but I hardly slept at all.  The next day we were able to get a hotel on post which was really a house.  It was very nice.  We all got to shower and rest a little bit.

 

Well what ended up happening was the flight we were trying to get out on kept getting cancelled and changed to the next day.  It was suppose to leave on a Thursday and we finally left on the next Tuesday.  This was so hard and why I would never do Space-A again with small kids.  Just the waiting and wondering, having to find a hotel, not knowing if we were really going to fly each day.  We would call each morning only to find out that the flight had been moved again.  Thank goodness we were together.  I don’t know what I would have done if I was without another adult.

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We finally flew into Spangdahlem, Germany 6 days after I had arrived in Charleston.  That was when it got even more frustrating for us.  I will talk about that in the next post.

Post 9/11 GI Bill Benefits

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How To Receive Your Post 9/11 GI Bill Benefits

I was contacted by  The United States Department of Veterans Affairs to post the steps to take to receive the Post 9/11 GI Bill Benefits.

When a military member uses their GI Bill benefits they can go back to school and it will allow them to find a job post-military life or will allow them to do more with their military career. There are a lot of benefits to going back to school and it is great that the GI bill is there to help those that have served their country get ahead. Some do not take advantage of these benefits but it is important to look into if you have them. They can be a way to get to where you want to go in your career. You can use them to get your AA or BA or even just go to technical school or complete a month long program in order to gain a skill that can help you find a new type of job.

1. Check your eligibility online at www.gibill.va.gov

2. Submit your application VA Form 22-1990 or 22-1990E.

3. After you have enrolled in school, check with your School Certifying Official (SCO) to confirm that your VA enrollment certification has been sent to the VA on your behalf.  This form certifies your actual enrollment period and triggers your payment. *Here’s a little hint: the school’s designated SCO will be found in the Financial Aid Department, Admissions and Records Department, or Registrar’s Office.)

4. And last but not least, enjoy the education benefits you earned!

And here is the main website:

http://www.gibill.va.gov

You can also send the text GIBill to 99702.

Make sure to double check on the website what you need to do. Sometimes things change or will be a little different and you always want to be aware of your military benefits so you can use them.

 

The Life of the Military Child

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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?

Writing Handwritten Letters When Your Spouse is Overseas

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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?

How To Use Flickr

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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

 

 

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.

 

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.

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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…