As a military family we are well acquainted with the spending the holiday seasons apart. Either away from each other or away from our extended families, it is never easy to be apart from your loved ones. The past several years have been some of the hardest of my married life thus far and because of that this holiday season has been a special one. The military has taken my husband away for a large portion of two years ending last March. My husband has spent the previous two holiday seasons, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s, away from us. Two years ago he was in Greenland doing the last leg of a remote unaccompanied and last year he was in Afghanistan. Even the year prior to those wasn’t a great one. I had just separated from the military and had moved to Dallas with our son for work and my husband was still in San Antonio finishing up the last couple of months before he would leave for Greenland. We were together but it wasn’t the same. This is the first Christmas in quite some time that hasn’t been lonely and stressful for both of us. It was also made even more special because we have our beautiful baby boy Charlie and our older son John Braden is finally old enough to really understand Christmas and all that it entails. He could hardly wait for Santa to come and bring him presents. He was counting down the days and I was unbelievably happy that his daddy was home to see this new found wonder of Christmas. More than anything I think it was just nice to be like a normal family; a mommy, daddy, and kiddos, doing the things that family do. To all my guys and girls who did and still are doing it alone this holiday season, just remember that better times are coming.
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