It's the little things that count..

All four in one place at the same time-it's a miracle!

As a military mom it is not only the big things that get to you-it can be the every day things that most take for granted. For example getting all four of mine in one place at the same time is quite a challenge. As I sit on our hilltop farm and look out on a holiday I can see clusters of families gathering together-not my kids. I may be lucky to get a double or a triple but very seldom do I get a home run of everyone together.

It's funny-when they were home all the time I think they got the basics of hand to hand combat completed in my living room. I would head to town and war would break out. The battles raged, casualties abounded including lampshades and then the phone would ring. " Kids, I am on the way home-anything else we need?" Immediately they sprang into action just like Thing1 and Thing 2-in this case also Thing 3 and Thing 4-and all worked together to put things back in order.  A few days later I might ask, "What happened to this lamp shade? " to be met by silence. Of course all of this has only recently been disclosed now that the statute of limitations has run out.  They work hard to see each other when they can, but that little thing of normal life together is a thing of the past.

When they were home I knew their friends,their comings and goings, and supported them in their activities. I sat on so many bleachers  that I developed bleacher bottom-an increase in girth directly attributed to hours sitting in the car or the bleachers. Now the questions remain unanswered-what did you do at work today, where are you, when will you be home? OPSEC reigns supreme and I find myself reading the news to figure out if my kid might be there. The not knowing-and being less a part of their lives because of it-those are little things I took for granted in years gone by.

I have to say the one thing that really has upped the ante when I think of the little things is my grandchildren. During my sons' first deployments they were newlyweds. Their wives stepped it up and bravely held down the home front. They dealt with all the things that can go wrong. As it says in Mrs
Murphy's Law :
           If anything can go wrong it will happen when he is out of town-or on deployment.

But this time around-well it is different. There is a little girl left behind. Six months when Daddy left and she will be a year old when he comes home. The first tooth, the first steps-no amount of technology can replace missing those milestones.When we talk about personal sacrifice- it can be the little things that mean so much.

Off we go.......

The Purple Family

Why purple? Apparently Joint Force activites are called purple-the blending of the forces together. And since we have one child in each of the services-Army, Navy , Air Force , and Marines-I guess we are purple. Blending is not quite the word I will use to describe the dinner table conversation when it turns to the role of each of the services-but at the end of the day they are on the same team.Peopel ask me how our kids all chose the military. We do have a strong military family legacy. Both my parents were officers in the Army-in fact I was the reason for my mother's honorable discharge. Back in the day even married women could not be pregnant and stay in. My husband and I met when we were both in the Air Force. He left the Air Force and began working in the airline industry; we moved to a farm where it would be a great place to raise kids. They did not grow up on military bases like I did -but every year we traveled to Washington DC for the Memorial Day concert and to visit Arlington Cemetery. The boys were active in scouts. My husband told his stories of flying the C-130 and instructing-and along the way they each got bit by the flying bug.The eldest decided in 8th grade he wanted to try for the Air Force Academy. We encouraged him to reach for the dream-ultimately he and the next two siblings all graduated from the US Naval Academy. Little brother-not so little at 6'5"-rebelled by earning a full ride scholarship from the Army ROTC Helicopter Scholarship program.So now I have three commissioned officers and one on the way due to be commissioned in 2012.Two are still in a training environment but soon it will take a Garmin to keep track of all of them-if I am allowed to know where they are.Ah purple -if you separate the colors you get red, white , and blue. I guess we really are purple.