Chronicles of a Military Wife

Wow! It has been almost a year to the date since I wrote my last piece. So many things have happened since then.

Joel started, graduated, and has maintained his peanut therapy dose. He has his 9 months post therapy appointment in a few days, and we are praying for even lower numbers. Finding firsthand experience information about Peanut OIT was almost impossible, aside from one momma who wrote a blog piece about it, so I feel very passionate about committing an entire piece to Peanut OIT in hopes it can help at least one other family out there considering this treatment. It will be my next piece and I promise it won’t take me another year to get it written.

Big news that happened recently – WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!!! And not just any house, our forever home! After being an active-duty military family for so long this is such a big deal. Andre still has a handful of years left in the military before he can retire but we know we want to retire here so we struck while the iron was hot. Due to Joel’s peanut therapy and asthma and being on the Exceptional Family Member Program (EFMP) with the military, the children and I aren’t eligible to move with Andre (he will have unaccompanied orders) until Joel can be taken off that program – earliest 2023 but it’s very likely it will be longer than that. It just made the most sense to buy a house, have a home base, give the kids some stability and our family some roots. I am super not sad to never have to move again unless we really want to.

With that being said geobaching will be starting at the end of next month until Andre is eligible to retire or he can land another position again with the unit here. How am I feeling about it? Not awesome but we will get through it. We haven’t told the kiddos yet as we weren’t totally certain he was going to have to leave but it’s looking pretty certain now so we are going to tell them over Labor Day weekend. Joel won’t be super phased by it, but Raina will be devastated. I’m incredibly confident that she will do alright though. Between family, friends, school, church, swimming and taekwondo she has so many people loving on her and supporting her. Speaking of Taekwondo that is something she started just a smidge over a year ago and that girl is a force. We are so very proud of her. Girlfriend is almost halfway to blackbelt and she is only 6! She has competed and brought home medals (4 total) from two competitions and we are gearing up for her next one this Fall. It’s so fun to watch her. It makes me want to get back into martial arts something fierce.

Another endeavor that took place this past year was that I started working again. I work in Accounts Payable for a construction company. It could not be any more opposite of my healthcare degrees and licenses, but I am learning so much and really enjoy it. I’m part-time (although my hours over the summer have looked more like full-time), I get to work from home, getting paid again is awesome and I can still be available for everything related to the kids because I set my own hours. I will say it has been quite the juggling act but I’m starting to get a routine down now that I have a feel for what the busy season and the down season look like. I also started working with a nutrition coach and am on a weightlifting regimen. It feels good to be throwing weights around again. I didn’t realize how much I have been missing that. I’m also down 5.5% body fat since April. Still have a little way to go to hit my goal but progress is progress. We also acquired my childhood piano and I have been carving out time almost every day to sit down and play it and, much to my surprise, I’m not as terrible at it as I thought I would be.

I’m already collecting thoughts and pictures for my next piece about Joel’s peanut therapy so I can make good on my earlier promise. While you’re waiting, or if you’re new here and need a chuckle, you should check out this piece because it never gets old.

Here we are, almost 2 months since my last blog post. Time really does fly and in true to form military life, the highs and lows come barreling at us even faster.

Shortly after I last published, Joel had his maturity test with the allergist and passed! He will be starting Peanut OIT (oral immunotherapy) THIS WEEK! I am an anxious Momma, but ultimately I know we are making the right choice. On Day 1 Joel will receive 12 doses, incrementally increasing, of peanut protein. We have been told these are typically tolerated well but there is always a chance a reaction is possible. We could be in the office anywhere from 4 to 8 hours depending on tolerance or reaction. After that we will bring daily doses home with us and then Joel will be seen weekly in office for up dosing. His up dose will then be given daily at home until the next weekly up dose and so on until he graduates to peanut flour capsules which we pick up from a pharmacy and give at home mixed into food. Not having to go into the office every week will be a huge milestone for his therapy. After he graduates from peanut flour capsules he moves on to actual peanuts, peanut butter, or peanut M&Ms, and the number he gets daily of those will vary on how he tolerates them.  The entire Peanut OIT process will take however long his body needs it to take but typically around 6-12 months. Successful desensitization means he will never have an anaphylaxis response to exposure as long as he maintains his maintenance doses of peanut which could be needed daily or even as few as 3 times per week. The year after therapy is complete will consist of quarterly office visits to check peanut IgE levels in his blood. ZERO would be an amazing number to see considering right now he is at 535.  If you have ever watched someone go into anaphylaxis, it’s one of the scariest things to witness. It doesn’t really look like anything they portray it to be on TV shows or in the movies. They don’t grab at their necks and gasp for air immediately. It’s almost like you’re watching in slow motion, except everything is happening at the speed of light, the life draining out of them. Their eyes get big and are open but it is like no one is behind those eyes. Then, in Joel’s case, the projectile vomiting starts which leads into the shortness of breath. If you work in healthcare and you have ever had a patient with a severe Pulmonary Embolism (PE), it looks very similar to how they present when they come into the Emergency Room. I’ve seen a number of allergic reaction patients working with Computed Tomography (CT) contrast and PE patients, but nothing can prepare you for when you see that look on your own child’s face. As worried as I am about how Day 1 is going to go, I know that while there is a risk, we are so lucky that this type of treatment is something he can take part in. The end goal is so wonderful for him. 

Mid-August we woke up to amazing news – our extension was approved! We no more than brought out the champagne glasses, celebrated and then shelved them again when we received the news that while the extension was granted, Andre would not be allowed to stay in his current position for longer than 4 years. This means that while we have bought ourselves a little more family time and the orders for him to move to Kentucky have been canceled, we are also certainly (unless a miracle falls out of the sky which I’ll never rule out) looking at GeoBaching starting this coming summer. It makes going into Joel’s treatment a little bittersweet but we were made to do hard things. We haven’t said anything to the kids as life, especially military life, is ever changing. Andre has submitted for his top 3 choices which are all within 6 hours from where we currently live but none of them are in Iowa.

Raina and Joel have both started school. Raina is so excited to be in Kindergarten! I feel like she has gotten so much older since starting just 2 weeks ago. She still lets me walk her up to the building and always reminds me that if I miss her she is right in my heart and that I’m in her heart. Joel is a little homebody, so he was not overly excited to start school but his preschool teacher, Miss Amy, is amazing and he really does love her. If you know Miss Amy then you understand how easy she is to love. Joel attends part-time and asked me the other day when he gets to go back so that right there tells me he is loving school. Our mammoth sunflowers bloomed just in time for back to school pictures as you can see below.

With the kids back to school, I have a tiny bit more downtime these days. My goal is to keep the updates a little more regular, especially since I have had grown interest in Joel’s Peanut OIT process. 2020 continues to force us to have grace and remain flexible which isn’t all bad.

And what a homecoming it was! If you read my last piece, I absolutely had to bust out all of the back up plans to the back up plans and then some, but it all came together even better than I could have planned. It was a two-day process getting us all back together as a family, but it made for a very exciting and fun weekend.

Andre returned home on a Saturday just a few weeks ago. Longest. Saturday. EVER! And not in a good way. I have never in my life wanted a Saturday to hurry up and be over. The Thursday before Andre arrived, I sent out a message to our neighborhood’s social media page asking if people would come by and help decorate our driveway and sidewalks to welcome Andre home. Boy, does this neighborhood know how to SHOW UP. Literally. My chalk art/message request transformed into so many neighbors not only chalking but decorating our lawn with flags and lining the street to welcome Andre back as we drove into the neighborhood to our house. It was amazing! Kendra, the neighborhood “mayor” as I like to call her 😊, messaged me shortly after I posted and asked if they could do more than chalk. I knew she was trying to coordinate people waving flags and welcoming him, but I also knew we were facing delays with Andre’s flight. When Kendra said she would make it happen, I imagined about 7-10 people, not 60 people, cheering, clapping, and holding signs and sparklers….at 11pm!!!! I wish I could have taken a picture of Andre’s face. He was so surprised. Of all his tours, he said this was the best homecoming EVER!

We knew that Andre was supposed to arrive after the kids’ bedtimes (prior to the flight being even more delayed) so we had planned for them to spend the night at my parents’ house so he could surprise them Sunday morning. Neither one of us slept much Saturday night in anticipation of the big reunion. Andre wore his uniform and hid behind my dad’s vehicle. I ran inside my parents’ house and told the kids to hurry and get their shoes on because I got them a surprise (if I had to guess, I’m pretty sure they were thinking it was a new Power Wheels Jeep or a puppy because they have been begging for both). Turns out it was the BEST SURPRISE EVER!!! The video is so so sweet. It still makes me tear up. On the video you can hear Joel say “we were missing you” followed by Raina asking Andre if he had to go back and him telling her no. Momma choked up a little on that one.

Back in December, I had shared our split image Christmas card with Eric Hanson from KCCI (one of our local news channels) and he featured it on his Facebook page. Since the world needs all the good news it can get these days, I sent him a message letting him know that Andre made it back and included pictures and the video of him surprising the kids. The next day, Monday, he shared it all on his Facebook page and reached out to me asking if we would take part in an interview. I had no idea it would escalate that quickly nor to that level, but it was such a fun experience for our family. At that point, we shared the video Andre took of us driving into the neighborhood the night he arrived home.

Reintegration has been going very well and pretty much how I had anticipated. Andre has been working from home these last few weeks which has allowed us to just be together and make up for lost time. We are looking forward to a family vacation and a “parents only” vacation at some point but it could be a while before that happens with the virus doing its thing.

We are STILL waiting to hear about our extension to stay together as a family in Iowa, so that has us on pins and needles. Joel has a big doctor appointment coming up in a couple of weeks regarding his peanut allergy. This appointment will test his maturity level to see if he is eligible to start his peanut desensitization therapy (peanut OIT) sooner rather than later. If he passes, he will be one of their youngest patients. Needless to say, there is never a dull moment around here….more to come.

You read that right! Andre is coming home. A lot has happened in the past few weeks and it has been a roller coaster of emotions, but I am happy to report that my hubby is currently in quarantine on U.S. soil!!! This is standard procedure for Service Members coming back from overseas right now. He is passing all of his daily health tests and we are literally days away from hugging him. The plan is to surprise the kids at my parents’ house which is where they will be when I pick up Andre from the airport. There are many reasons why I/we feel it’s not a great idea to take them to the airport, so I will be going solo to pick him up without the kids knowing what I am up to. We are so looking forward to seeing the looks on the kids’ faces when they see their Daddy in person for the first time in a year. Pure bliss – and I’m guessing a *few* happy tears.

Reintegration can be a bit of a bugger. However, reintegration in the middle of a pandemic might actually be a little easier than if it were during “normal” life. Our state has slowly started to open up which means all the hustle and bustle that would have been going on pre-COVID-19 is still pretty much on hold. Everyone has been embracing the pause and now it’s our turn, as a family, to embrace it together. Our family unit gets to come back to life right along with the state, slowly and steadily. I do still think we might see some sleep regression in both kids and perhaps some potty-training regression with Joel, but I think that it will be nice for schedules to be mostly empty and no pressure of making it to this or canceling that. And for as brutally slow as Andre’s quarantine time has felt, it will prove to be a blessing in disguise since he will be all acclimated to the time change and rested up from his travels back to the U.S. He has told me he is ready to jump back in with both feet which is great because I need a two-week nap!

I am over the moon excited that this is my last blog post for this deployment! My next update will be all about our family being reunited. I have so many plans for the BIG DAY and I promise to share if any of them actually happen….because…..typically, with the military, nothing ever goes as planned. But believe me when I say I have backup plans for the backup plans. Thank you for riding out this deployment with us, for loving us, for praying for us, and for rooting for us. IT’S ALMOST HOMECOMING DAY!!!

There we were just a handful of weeks away from this deployment being over – momentum strong and hopes high, the finish line just coming into sight. And then things starting to feel a little concerning with all of the COVID-19 information coming out. But I just keep telling myself, “Once Andre is home, we can tackle it all together.” Then the order was released that there would be no troop movement for 60 days, it was like a punch to the gut. A friend reached out shortly after the order became public knowledge, and all I could say was, “I have no idea how to parent this. I have no idea how to tell the kids and how to stay strong.” To be honest, I’m still trying to figure out the staying strong part. Military or not, I think all parents are trying to navigate how to parent during this pandemic, and there is definitely some small comfort in knowing that we are all doing our best to figure it out together.

As for telling the kids, Andre and I went back and forth about when was the best time. Should we wait for more information? Should we wait until our own emotions leveled off a little? We decided to tell them a few days ago. Joel doesn’t really understand except that he misses Daddy. Raina understood and she wasn’t happy about it, but all-in-all she handled the news pretty well. I offered to take down our deployment wall countdowns, but she wouldn’t let me. Then, a couple of days later she remembered that she hadn’t X-ed off days in a while and wanted to do that. She was so excited when she saw how close we were getting to homecoming month: May. I had to remind her that Daddy wouldn’t be coming home that month. She asked me to show her which month he would be coming home. Amazingly, I held my composure, and I reminded her that we really don’t know when at this point. She put the pen back and started sobbing, and I could no longer hold back my tears. I held her, and we both cried and talked for a bit. I tried to explain that he is “safer” from the germs staying where he is, and her next questions was, “Wouldn’t he be safe here with us?” Pretty good follow up question for a 5-year-old. I talked to her about the importance of everyone staying put to help make the germs go away – the germs can’t live if they don’t have bodies to live in. That day, I decided our deployment wall was coming down, and I started brainstorming about what we could do to “count up” to homecoming. I came up with “The Thompson Gardens.” I’m not great at drawing, but I sketched some dirt for a fruit and vegetable garden and some grass for a flower garden. Each day, until Andre returns, the kids are taking turns choosing a flower, fruit, vegetable or bug to add. I have no idea how many things I cut out, but there are a lot and with any luck Andre will return before we run out of cut-outs. If not, then I’ll figure out a new “count up” theme. The kids seem to be enjoying it, and it’s fun to see which one they choose each day. I think we will run out of bugs first – Joel’s doing.

While we are all navigating this hard and unprecedented time, I know it’s easy to be overcome with fear. I’ve been trying to keep updated with what’s going on and the numbers in each location of the world and the US, but following the news can also lead to a dark downward spiral. I’ve been having an even harder time than usual with sleeping and getting quality sleep. If you’re feeling the same way, I encourage you to back away from the media, be it the news or social media. Especially before going to bed. Fear can be a wicked beast. A very surreal situation happened recently where a woman followed my vehicle because I have New York license plates. When I parked my car and started taking my children out of the car, she yelled at me. She was irate that we were here in Iowa when there are so many cases of COVID-19 in New York. She exclaimed that we were spreading the virus, and that she doesn’t want it in her neighborhood. Raina was very frightened as she associates the virus with people dying, and now she was understanding from this woman that we have it. I explained to the woman that we are a military family and haven’t been to New York in over a year. The woman would not hear me out, and I was done allowing her to frighten my children anymore, so I walked away and she drove off. We haven’t had any further run-ins since, but now it is something that I do think about every time I go to the grocery store or am in my vehicle. I know deep down that fear drove that woman to do that.

Kindness does so much more than fear ever will. Speaking of which, if you know a military spouse with a deployed Soldier, please check on them. Often! I am super lucky that we are stationed in my hometown, and my parents are close by. There are so many folks that are not so lucky, and a number of those people have small children. I know many states are implementing new social distancing rules that only allow so many people to be in a store at a certain time and some stores are not allowing more than two people per cart. I’ve even seen restrictions as strict as anyone 16 and under is not allowed in certain stores. Yes, there are grocery delivery services, but from what I have been hearing there is quite a long waitlist for delivery, like a week-long wait at least. If you’re heading out and you want to help, it would be an amazing gesture to ask military spouses of deployed Soldiers or even single parents if there is anything you could get for them. That would be a huge burden off of their shoulders.

Spouses of deployed Soldiers, I highly recommend figuring out some sort of a plan in case you or someone in your household becomes sick. Being a solo parent right now, my biggest concern is what happens to my kids if I get sick or what happens if one kid gets sick and I must be at the hospital with just the one? My parents and I discussed a plan the other day, and that felt like a weight off my shoulders knowing there is something to rely on just in case. Again, I do not take for granted that we are stationed near my parents and that makes my ability to have a plan significantly easier, but I do encourage you to reach out to your circle, your village, your community, your church and figure out a plan because you will be able to breathe a little easier once you have one.

I want to conclude with Hope – this storm will pass. My hope is that when it does, we hug our people a little tighter, we spend more quality time with them, and we remember not to take them for granted. We help others where and when we can, and always spread kindness as often as possible. Even in the midst of a pandemic.

I’ve had so much on my mind lately and so many things I could’ve written about, but I’ve been waiting. Waiting for news. Waiting for answers. Just waiting. And not patiently. It hasn’t even been a calm waiting, it’s been full of worry. Which is a big waste of time and effort. So now I write.

Where are we? Well, Joel has officially been accepted into the Exceptional Family Member Program (EFMP), so that is a huge relief. Now we are waiting for location approval so that all of us can stay in Iowa, at least until Joel completes his Peanut Oral Immunotherapy (OIT) program – so for the next 1.5 to 2 years. A couple of weeks ago, Joel took a bite of a Monster Cookie (which contains peanut butter) and went into anaphylaxis which resulted in another ER visit. It was an accidental exposure, but our scariest incident yet. What happens if we don’t get location approval for all of us to stay here? Then, GeoBach it is. From the research I have done so far, I believe the military will have to write Andre’s next set of orders as “unaccompanied” to Kentucky which is where he is currently ordered to go unless EFMP cancels those out with a location approval for all of us to stay put here. I’m going to be really honest… I CAN’T DO IT! People tell me I’m strong, and I really do appreciate the encouragement. But when I think about spending this last year apart, and then having three short months together to be a family, and then having Andre leave again, especially while Joel goes through peanut OIT, I am completely overwhelmed and can hardly breathe. I will do it if that’s what it comes to, because it’s that important. But I really don’t want to face this as a family apart. So to say I have been filled with worry is a huge understatement.

I intended for this blog post to be more uplifting, so now that the scary, worry stuff has been addressed… on to the good news!

Eight months. 8!!! How has it possibly been 8 months since deployment started? Also, how is it not done yet? In all seriousness, homecoming is approaching very quickly and there are such good vibes in the air. We have had some amazing early Spring weather and that has certainly helped chase away the deployment blues. Our “welcome home” sign arrived for Andre, and I’m in the process of having custom shirts made for the kids for reunion day. We have zero details yet on an exact date, but the plan is to surprise the kids if at all possible. I also have a few other things up my sleeves, but since Andre reads my blog, I’m going to keep the rest of the details a surprise. 😊

Auntie Lisa, one of Andre’s sisters, came to visit last week and we had so much fun with her. My parents were out of town, so the extra set of hands helped a ton, and she also brought the Jamaican calm with her. We have desperately missed the Jamaican calm while Andre has been away. If you know a Jamaican, you know what I’m talking about. If you don’t… go find yourself a Jamaican, especially if you’re a Type A person. You’re welcome in advance for that pro-tip. 😉

The hot story in our house as of recent is that Mommy is a “bat catcher.” That’s right. I can’t even make things up anymore that could possibly happen while Andre is deployed. We had a bat in our house. The same day that Joel went to the ER, we came home to a critter taking up residence in the bathroom off our master bedroom. I have never internally screamed so much in my entire life. The kids were in bed when I discovered it, although I was suspicious there was something amuck. Earlier, I found droppings which, at the time, I thought were from a mouse. Since we do some homeschooling, after I caught the bat and before releasing it, I decided to show it to the kids. They weren’t asleep yet and they love a good reason to get out of bed. Once contained, it was pretty cool to look at the bat up close, and educational mom thought for sure the kids would think the same thing. Yeah, turns out that wasn’t the smartest idea. They would’ve been better off not even knowing about it. Oh, but the memories we made! Memories that are still on the forefront of their minds as they ask me about 3-4 times per day if another bat is going to be in our house. At least I tried. So while I hope I never have to catch a bat in my house again, I do feel very accomplished with my new “title.”

I’m not going to wait to write anymore. I’m getting back on the writing bus, and I’m going to keep on keeping on. “Get busy living or get busy dying.” I love that line from the movie The Shawshank Redemption. More to come soon and, as always, thank you for your continued support and prayers!!

It’s so snowy here, and I feel like the snow just won’t stop. I shouldn’t complain because the snow in Iowa is NOTHING compared to the snow we would get in upstate New York, but I don’t have slopes to ski on here. So I’m going to travel back in time and write about a warm sunny day right at the very beginning of this deployment.

Summer. (insert big, happy sigh because Summer is amazing)

We were still getting our bearings as Andre had only left about 6 weeks prior. I was out in the backyard watering our garden with the hose. The kids were quite challenging that day. I had yelled at them a lot more then I would care to admit, and there they were in the backyard fighting over I can’t even remember what and I was just done. DONE! I did what any respectable parent grasping for sanity would do in that moment, and I sprayed them with the hose. They both stopped and looked at me. There I was feeling like such a failure of a mom because the day had taken everything out of me, and now I had just sprayed my kids with the hose because I was so over them fighting. But what happened next is something I have held on to throughout this deployment. Their screaming at each other turned into shrieks of “Do it again mommy! Do it again!!” It truly was so much fun. They fell in the freshly mowed, soaking wet grass so many times, and by the end of it they were sopping wet with a coat of grass covering their bodies. My mom and I had to strip them down in the garage and take them straight to the bathtub. Raina still talks about it, “Remember when you sprayed us with the hose, Mommy? I can’t wait to do that again!” It really is the little things that make the big memories that help pull us out of funks… in my case, the deployment funk. They remind us as parents that when we think we are failing we aren’t. And if you can’t spray them with a hose, just chase them around the house or tackle each other on the floor or use rolled up socks as fake snowballs and have random indoor snowball fights.

It’s 7 months down now (that feels crazy to write!), and love is in the air. We are missing Andre, and we are keeping very busy. We have several things planned for February. Papa (my dad) recently took Raina to the Daddy-Daughter Dance at our church; I’m thinking about getting a hotel room for Valentine’s Day weekend so the kids can go swimming and we can get out of the house; and Joel turns 3!!

Looking ahead, so many things are still very much up in the air about GeoBaching or moving. We are still of the mindset that we will GeoBach, however the position that Andre was supposed to be taking over in September, which was located in North Chicago, has been cut. So now we are back in the same boat of having no idea where he/we will be going, but as we had originally said, Joel’s health and treatments come first, and we won’t jeopardize his place on the waitlist for his Peanut Oral Immunotherapy. I have spent many late nights researching this treatment and if anything comes from it all, perhaps one day I can help someone else going through the same issue. We are also in the process of completing paper work for the Exceptional Family Member Program (EFMP) which could possibly open some doors of opportunity for staying together as a family AND getting Joel the treatment he needs. We just recently learned that asthma and food allergies fall under EFMP. More to come on that topic as I/we learn more. 

I’ve also spent a good chunk of time lately getting the kids signed up for Summer camps… maybe that’s why I’m dreaming about warm weather days. I don’t know about you, but I have some wicked Spring fever. Planning prep for our garden is already well under way! Oh, the little things. They get me through.

Erma Bombeck says it best, “Worry is like a rocking chair: It gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere.” If you have spent any time near a television, newspaper, radio, or on social media, you are well aware of the current unrest going on in the Middle East. As the wife of a deployed soldier, reading the “Breaking News” reports is like a punch to the throat these days. It’s hard to breath sometimes. Worry fills me up, and if I’m not careful it can consume me.

I broke down in front of the kids the other evening when I read about the missile strikes and possible future targets. Seeing mom cry is a pretty big deal to them. I try my absolute hardest to expose them to as little of this as I possibly can. But let me tell you, their little hugs and wiping away of my tears was the sweetest, most comforting balm ever. Shortly after the mommy breakdown incident, I was texting with a friend about it. I was beating myself up so much because I didn’t want the kids to worry, but I also just couldn’t hold it in. She reminded me that I am human, and it’s important for my kids to see me as not just mom, but as a human.

The last conversation I had with Andre before the missile strikes was not the greatest. I was frustrated about something breaking, and I was super short on the phone. You can imagine the guilt I felt in the hours between finding out about the strikes and actually getting to talk to Andre again. I’d like to think that for the remainder of this deployment I won’t have short conversations, and I’ll always be grateful for every moment we get to talk. But I’m going to take my friends advice, and remember that I am human and it’s okay.

While I am incredibly worried about the present and future, we have made it yet another month through this deployment. We still have many things to accomplish on our deployment bucket list, and I decided to add a family challenge to the mix as well. We are doing a “52 Acts of Kindness Challenge” for 2020. Each week, we have to decide what our kindness goal is for the week and see how many times we can achieve it. Week 1 is “help someone put on their coat.” It’s cute to watch the kids help each other and to hear reports from Raina about how she has helped her friends at school. We are making it up as we go, ensuring each weekly goal is something everyone can participate in.

A huge thank you to everyone who has reached out and who continues to think about and pray for our family and the soldiers. It’s a helpless feeling to stand by and watch and not know how to help. I think the best things we can all do are to love each other a little more, share more hugs, be present and spread kindness.

It’s been a minute since I’ve been able to sit down and write.  Christmas is knocking on our door and, as you can imagine, it has been so busy. The “missing Daddy” feelings have been pretty intense for both the kids and myself, so I’ve been trying to create as much magic as possible from making homemade applesauce cinnamon Christmas ornaments to painting Christmas trees with packing peanuts.

We started sending out our family Christmas card right after Thanksgiving, and it has been so fun reading messages from family and friends about how much they love the card. We had a great time putting it together. Our family Christmas cards are our most favorite tradition. We save one for each kiddo every year and tuck it away in their boxes of goodies that we have been collecting for them and will gift to them on their 18th birthdays. A local Des Moines news station, KCCI, even featured our card on their Facebook page, and the outpouring of love from complete strangers was overwhelming – there’s no nice quite like “Iowa nice!”

The biggest news of all is that we have made it halfway through this deployment, <WHOOOOAAAAA We’re Halfway There!!! – cue music video> and it feels mostly amazing!!! The first half was pretty rough, so I am hoping and praying for a more calm second half. My post from mid-November was all about our decision to Geobach or not, and at this point we are about 90% sure we’ll go with Geobaching. That puts a bittersweet spin on the happiness of the deployment being halfway over, because how do you tell your kids that shortly after they get their Dad back he has to move away? Well, the answer I have settled with is that you don’t do it alone. You wait until their Dad gets home, and you discuss it as a family.

We still have not been informed and probably won’t know for a couple more months where Andre is going, but some recent health news with our son, Joel, has really made the choice quite clear for our family. Joel was diagnosed with a moderate to severe peanut allergy one year ago. We were very optimistic that we would be able to food challenge him and he would test out of the allergy this December. That was until he had an accidental exposure to peanut butter this past September which sent him into anaphylaxis and straight to the Emergency Room. He is doing fine now, but we found out a couple of weeks ago that his peanut allergy blood level went from 83 last year to 567 this year. SCARY! However, it makes him an excellent candidate for oral immunotherapy, aka OIT. This therapy will help to desensitize him so his response to the allergen (peanuts/peanut butter), if exposed, isn’t as intense. In his case, if it works, it could be lifesaving, and NOW is the time to do it since we can keep him in environments where we can control his exposure. He is on the waitlist for the therapy which is one year out. If we move and switch doctors, he loses his spot on the waitlist and he goes back to the bottom of the list once his is re-established with a new allergist. What I would give for Andre to come home from this deployment and we just pick up with our life here as a family, but at this moment in time that isn’t how the cards are landing. So we just keep hoping for a miracle, and if anything I can start wrapping my head around what our new normal will be. In the meantime, if any of you parents of kids with a peanut allergy have research resources, please send them my way. I just haven’t had the time to tackle all of the research on this, but you better believe once the holidays are past, I will be a wealth of information on the topic.

Andre is busy as ever and has recently improved his internet connection which has made videocalls SO MUCH BETTER!!! Minimal frozen screen time with a blurry daddy or the words “poor connection” on a black screen. Via Facetime, Andre and I celebrated 8 years of us being a couple with a glass of wine for me and an alcohol-free Heineken for him (alcohol is not allowed where he is deployed). There was lots of reminiscing about the past 8 years, but mostly we can’t believe how fast they have gone by and how much has happened between then and now. We do nothing slow, the tried and true way of military life it seems.

From my family to yours, we wish you a very Merry Christmas and an exciting 2020. I know so many who are looking very forward to this New Year, and we are in that same boat. While it will come with more challenges, it will also bring a very sweet mid-year reunion – and if it all works out, there will be some amazing military homecoming pictures from our talented photographer, Liz.

When people learn that Andre is from Jamaica, I’m often asked, “How does a gal from Iowa meet a guy from Jamaica?” And my response is, “At a Mixed Martial Arts dojo in upstate New York!” Pretty likely, right?!?!  Believe it or not, that’s exactly how we met. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the night I met Andre he had just returned from a 13-month tour in Saudi Arabia with the U.S. Army. I was on the mat sparring at the end of my class, and when he walked in the door he caught my eye (even with my limited peripheral vision due to my sparring head gear). The next thing I knew, I took a hit to the face by my sparring partner, Marisa (the one from SFT 2019)! I was spellbound and wasn’t paying attention to what should have been the most important thing at that particular moment: punches flying toward my face. In true form, Marisa chewed me out for not being attentive, and when I tried to explain, she wasn’t having it as we only had a couple of minutes left of class. At that time, I was ranked high enough in belts at my dojo to student teach, and I was on the schedule that evening to teach the next class. In between ripping off my sparring gear and preparing to teach, I mentioned to the administrative person, Mary, that I saw a very attractive man walk in while I was sparring in class. Mary told me that his name was Andre and that I would be his one-on-one instructor for the evening. GASP!!!! I was like an awkward junior high school girl all over again. He was so kind and patient and handsome, and he had an AMAZING accent. At the end of class, he thanked me for helping him and said he would see me next time…and then he disappeared… for an entire week!!!

Turns out, he went on vacation. It felt like an eternity, so when he FINALLY showed up at the dojo again I wasted no time flirting with him. Although one would think I had no clue about how to actually flirt, because everything I was throwing out there seemed to be instantly shut down. After a few weeks of this, I talked to Fons, a fellow student I took class with, about Andre because those two were always chatting it up. Fons said he would talk to him. Around this time, I was having people over to my house for a small gathering before watching some local Mixed Martial Arts fights, and guess who came? Andre! It wasn’t until a number of months later that I learned I did indeed have a good flirt game, he just thought I was 16 years old and had zero interest in going to jail. HA!! I was 29 at the time. I still tease him that he was just trying to see how hard I would work at it, but he stands by his word that he thought I was super young.

After that, we spent countless nights hanging out, talking and getting to know each other. I learned that he loves to play chess, and when he found out that I didn’t know how to play he was quick to TRY to teach me. It was a disaster! I am the world’s worst chess player. I’m not sure I have it in me to concentrate at that level, let alone to remember all the pieces’ names and functions. But I’m also very competitive, so I really wanted to win. I never won. I know we finished the first game (and I lost), and I’m pretty sure we didn’t finish the second game. But one of Andre’s dreams is to own a really nice chess board with the hope that one day – far in the future – I’ll actually learn the game and play it well.

We met in May 2011 but didn’t consider ourselves as “together” until December of that year. Our friends at the dojo couldn’t believe how long it took us to make it official. And given how fast-paced everything has happened since, it’s almost crazy to think that it took us that many months to call ourselves a couple. I would do it the same way 100 times over. Once we became official, we went from 0 to 60 in 3.5 seconds. We were engaged at the end of 2012, married in July of 2013, I moved to Indiana to be with Andre one month later, he was then sent away for one year October 2014, Raina was born 2 weeks after he left, we moved to Georgia in 2015, Joel was born early 2017, we moved to Iowa a few months after that and now Andre is gone for another year…. And it doesn’t look like things are slowing down anytime soon although the having more babies ship has long sailed! It will though, eventually. Perhaps when military retirement comes, we’ll have more room to breathe. Until then, we just enjoy the ride, take the hits as they come, and celebrate equally the small and the large victories. Andre is my person and I’m his. I think we have known that since the beginning. I think deep down inside we wanted to take our time in the beginning, because time is such a precious, precious thing.