something to be proud of ...

So this post is a little different, it's a little bit more about me, my life & about being proud of my world so to speak. Recently someone asked me what i'm proud of & it was a no brainer ... my husband. I am proud of the job he does, i am proud to say he serves his country, i'm proud of him every time he puts on his uniform. Seeing him & all the guys at our wedding in their blues was special, knowing he made a choice to give up how ever many years of his life & be at the beck & call (literally) of uncle sam makes me proud.

But i forgot to talk about another group of people i'm proud of ... the military wife's & families who sacrifice so much & often get forgotten in return. They're the people behind the scenes, the men, women & children who would have been described as "keeping the home fires burning" back in World War 2.

This is my life, a choice i made & i would never take it back, for all the time apart the time together makes everything worth it. I'm not asking for sympathy & none of these men & women would either just a little understanding of the life we lead & why we do the things we do.

Me & my husband are stationed overseas, i would love to say our life is "exotic" but it's far from it. Where we live there are approximately 140,000 US personal & their families, our base is like small town American. Yes i do get to experience living overseas & see things i wouldn't normally, i do have health care provided to me. I can't book a vacation until 2 weeks before we go because my husband may not be able to take leave, any plans that get made can  & often do get cancelled at the last minute because something came up, there is no such thing as a 9-5 job in my world. & this is just the simple stuff. Sometimes i swear we have to fill in forms just to fill in a form & i know my husband's social better than my own phone number. Oh & many of you have heard the joys i have for the post office but basically take one average sized post office & 20,000 people & imagine that on your average day you spend 15 minutes in line ... now image the hours & i do mean literally hours i spend in that place shipping presents & picking them. Oh & for the record we're still waiting on Christmas presents to arrive! Anyways this is just the day to day stuff that we deal with, the small things that frustrate us. 

So back to those women & families ... they give up literally everything for those they love. They move across country & overseas at the drop of a hat, & can have more homes in a year than you will have in a life time. Finding work can be hard due to the moving, deployments, children & knowing that somewhere in the midst of it all you want to spend time with the one you love so imagine how hard it is to have an actual career. Everyday they make sacrifices for the one they love, & many of them turn to their passions as a means of making a living. I've mentioned the Homefront Team on Etsy before & many of the members use the skills they have to work from home & are able to pack up their business along with their household goods to open shop 2 continents over. For me though ... the hardest thing is the goodbyes. Saying goodbye seems like  a daily thing as the people you surround yourself with leave for destinations new, deployments, tdy's, & of course heading to their new base. These are the women (in my case) i tell everything to, who understand the small things & stand by you through it all. They've been there, they get it & they continue to stand by the ones they love. 

I am so incredible proud to be a member of this group & i hope you can walk away from this with a little more understanding of who i am & the life i lead.