I'm going to merge two posts into one. Because life with two young children doesn't always allow for multiples blog posts! I am knocking out three today and that is... amazing! The boys are behaving well so I'm playing catch up.
On August 21, 2014 Matt was promoted to 1LT. It has been a very busy 18 months of 2LT. He has worked hard to excel at everything he does and learn as much as he can about his job in Field Artillery. He has come to the conclusion that he will most likely be sticking with this MOS for his career entirety, as opposed to requesting to switch to the few other options he was interested in. When he first commissioned Field Artillery was his top choice and as he learns more about his job he enjoys it more and more. He has had to pick up a lot of extra responsibilities and has worked hard at exceeding expectations with every assignment given to him. He has stepped into leadership with ease and has proven himself trustworthy to his CO's and subordinates.
As he moves into his new position of Fire Support Officer (FSO) he deployed to begin working with the unit he'll work with. He looks forward to this new position and learning even more about his MOS. He is very thankful for the opportunity to deploy.
New rank.
Traditional punch.
Handshake.
My new favorite family picture.
Preparing for Deployment
We found out in July that Matt would be deploying in late August. We had to hurry to make sure everything was in order. He received all his deployment gear and we had to prepare it and pack it up. We inventoried all the gear given to him and washed all his new multi cam uniforms. He had to have some name tapes made up. Unfortunately, his helmet was stolen out of his office after we got the cover and name tape for it. So we had to get a new one and have all the sewing done over. We had to make sure all our legal paperwork was up to date. We made sure I had all the powers of attorney I needed to be able to talk to anyone on behalf of Matt. The Army discourages soldiers to give power of bank accounts and finances to spouses, but as all our bank accounts are joint that isn't an issue either way. We also updated Matt's will to include the boys and set up care for them if both of us should die. The Army has pretty straight forward forms for all of this so it wasn't too difficult to fill out and make sure all our bases were covered. We updated my ID card since Matt had been promoted. This is required each time he's promoted, but my old ID card was for an enlisted rank as I got it when he left for Basic Training. I haven't needed his Officer's rank on my ID yet, but just in case I did need it for something we wanted it up to date. We had to discuss how we wanted our family to handle this deployment.
Everything got accomplished and was a fairly smooth process. Matt is finishing out the current deployment so he isn't going to be gone for long. That certainly helped keep our emotions in check. This is almost like a teaser deployment to help us prepare for when a full length deployment comes our way. Thankfully, the boys are still young enough that they aren't miserable without Matt every day. But Jackson is old enough that when we watch recorded videos of Matt reading stories (the ones we recorded before he left for Basic Training in 2012) he gets super excited and says "Da Ee! Yay!".
We made sure to spend a lot of time together as a family and made the most of all the opportunities we had.
Helping Daddy get all his gear ready.
Shooting practice for home defense. Hopefully it won't be necessary. Those five head shots (two are almost on top of each other) are me shooting back to back only five rounds. I'd say the boys and I are fairly safe if I should need to shoot an intruder.
It is always important to spend time together as a family, but an impending deployment will really make you appreciate all the time you have.
So far, this deployment has been different than I expected. We haven't been able to Skype but we have spent Facebook messages almost every day. I update Matt with what the boys and I did and cute things Jackson says. I post picture and videos to his Facebook wall. He tells me about his new position, his new leadership, and Afghanistan. So far he says all the Afghanis he's met are very nice and seem to enjoy jobs that Americans would find menial and degrading. They are very thankful for the opportunity to work. So much we could learn from other people groups. I haven't been as worried as I expected. I mainly am lonely at night when the boys go to bed. I call my mom almost every day for a daily dose of adult interaction. We try to have play dates and go to Bible study and church too. So that helps our weeks go by. The first week he was gone seemed to just drag on as we got used to a new schedule of me and the boys all day, every day. Now I think we have a pretty good rhythm. The boys occupy my time and mind so I'm not just mopey about Matt being gone. I imagine I would be much more lonely if it were just me and Matt were gone.
It is never fun to be away from loved ones.
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