DrawnInFaces.com

So, I had these grand plans for posting something every day, and clearly that didn’t work out. But I figure this is as good a way to get back into the routine as anything else, right? So here goes!!

1. Which was the best day of your life – Wedding day or Homecoming day? Pink Champagne, Gatorade &MREs
I’m fairly certain that for us, neither is all that “memorable” by anyone’s definition. Our “wedding” was 4 days after our son’s birth, and only barely enough to call it a “ceremony” to make things legal, with an audience of our families and each of our best friends. Then Homecoming was just another day in our lives of living apart. He called when they got settled in, since he hadn’t gotten his phone reconnected yet, and I drove down with my mom about a week later, to finally bring him home with us. We’re keeping hope alive for Homecoming this time around, but I’m not holding my breath.

2. Were you a part of the joining the military question, or did you sign up for the relationship when your man was already in the military? Cammo Style Love
Definitely didn’t factor into The Husband’s decision. By the time we even met, he was nearly 3.5 years into his contract. In fact, he was technically supposed to ETS right before the deployment. I like to tell myself I factored into his decision to re-up, and that’s probably true, but The Husband wanted to be in the military almost before I was born.

3. What is your favorite Disney movie? Raising Roscoe
I’ve always been pretty partial to Peter Pan – something about never growing up and having a family you pick that lasts forever always appealed to me. Guess it doesn’t hurt I get along with guys better than girls, thereby always being the tiniest one in our group of hooligans, and eventually that turned into being nicknamed Tink. It’s just always fit.

4. What is your favorite family activity to do on the weekends? Destination: RN!
I like all day park expeditions, broken up by family naps. Little kids keep things predictable, with a side of tiny tot exciting!

5. Where do you secretly wish you could be stationed with your/SO’s line of work (realistically speaking, since not everyone can be stationed on NAS Fiji)? Wookie & Co.
The Husband’s job is pretty widely necessary, so we could probably go just about anywhere we wanted to – even if he decided he wanted to re-class. Makes it a more difficult decision with so many options and no idea what they are, being a Reserve family. But I think I’d like to live somewhere tropical, overseas. I want to die having gotten a passport and a nice tan.

I decided to do something a little bit different this week, since I’ve been struggling to find anything inspiring or worth the time to talk about without complaining about people’s insensitivity lately. So, I went with answering questions other people had already posed. Here you go.

1. Have you and your spouse agreed to live in separate locations (a geographical bachelor tour) knowing that the short-term inconvenience would have long-term benefits for your family? How did it work for you? submitted by When Good People Get Together
   I guess our situation is a little different than most. Since The Husband is in the Reserves, that has never really been an issue necessary to discuss. Recently though, he mentioned a desire to do some civilian contracting in the Middle East, doing the same thing he does for both of his jobs – diesel mechanic. I’m not sure how I feel about it – not because of the danger or the separation (as we’ve obviously dealt with that before), but because it would mean leaving his full time job & not having anything guaranteed to come back to at contract’s end.
2. What is your favorite thing about being a MilSpouse? submitted by Sarah Ruth Today
   I’m really rather partial to this community. I love having other spouses who truly understand what it’s like to be married but sometimes live completely without them for extended periods of time. As much as I love my 100% civilian friends, it’s hard to have any sympathy for them talking about this week long business trip their spouse is on is making their life so impossibly hard, and they miss them so much, and they’re so afraid with them away. Call my a cynic, but the two things aren’t even comparable.
3. If you could still have your spouse/significant other and your family, but take the military life out of it…would you?  submitted by Trust. Love. Believe. Bake.
   I’ve never known The Husband without him being in the military, and our kids obviously came after that. I’m not sure we could have what we have and live the life we live without The Husband being at least partially in the military, so I’m gonna have to say no, I wouldn’t take the military out of our lives.
4. What have your homecoming experiences been like after a year long tour of separation? submitted by Army Soldier, Army Wife
   I feel like homecomings are different for Reserve families than they are for Active families. In a way, deployments on the whole are different between the Reserves and AD. But for homecomings, specifically, there really was no fairy tale or romantic reunion aspect to it. When The Husband came home in 2008, he called me once they flew into Bragg, had a lot of debriefings to attend, medical out-processing to do, and I was still back at home in Virginia. My mom drove down with to help me manage baby man, and we spent 4 days living in a hotel while we waited for the OK to bring The Husband home with us.
5. If you have a child(ren) why you chose their name(s)? If not, why you would name your child something?  submitted by Tiara’s & ACU’s
   We named baby man by a process of elimination. As soon as we figured out I was pregnant with him, I started dreaming about curly-haired little boys, and insisted we would have a son. I made lists of anything that came to me and stuck around for a while. It finally came down to asking The Husband, “which one makes you feel anything at all?” as he wasn’t hugely invested in picking a name. As for little girl, The Husband fell in love with my middle name a long, long time ago, and had always said he’d love to use it for our daughter’s name if we ever had children. So, despite making a list and taking votes on I believe a list of 3 different names, it really came down to “what middle name do we like best with *MY middle name* for our daughter?” Not a hard process at all.