Hubby emailed this to me and I absolutely had to share it with all of you! For all us Navy spouses out there with our SO’s on deployment, this is just a little reminder of what our hubbies and wives will be doing this Christmas:
Twas the night before Christmas, the ship was out steaming, Sailors
stood watch while others were dreaming.
They lived in a crowd with racks tight and small, In a 80-man berthing,
cramped one and all.
I had come down the stack with presents to give, And to see inside just
who might perhaps live.
I looked all about, a strange sight did I see, No tinsel, no presents,
not even a tree.
No stockings were hung, shined boots close at hand, On the bulkhead hung
pictures of a far distant land.
They had medals and badges and awards of all kind, And a sober thought
came into my mind.
For this place was different, so dark and so dreary, I had found the
house of a Sailor, at once I saw clearly.
A Sailor lay sleeping, silent and alone, Curled up in a rack and
dreaming of home.
The face was so gentle, the room squared away, This was the United
States Sailor today.
This was the hero I saw on TV,
Defending our country so we could be free.
I realized the families that I would visit this night, Owed their lives
to these Sailors lay willing to fight.
Soon round the world, the children would play, And grownups would
celebrate on Christmas Day.
They all enjoyed freedom each day of the year, Because of the Sailor,
like the one lying here.
I couldn’t help wonder how many lay alone, On a cold Christmas Eve on a
sea, far from home.
The very thought brought a tear to my eye, I dropped to my knees and
started to cry.
“Santa, don’t cry, this life is my choice.”
“Defending the seas all days of the year, So others may live and be free
with no fear.”
I thought for a moment, what a difficult road, To live a life guided by
honor and code.
After all it’s Christmas Eve and the ship’s underway!
But freedom isn’t free and it’s sailors who pay.
The Sailor say’s to our country “be free and sleep tight, No harm will
come, not on my watch and not on this night.
The Sailor rolled over and drifted to sleep, I couldn’t control it, I
continued to weep.
I kept watch for hours, so silent, so still, I watched as the Sailor
shivered from the night’s cold chill.
I didn’t want to leave on that cold dark night, This guardian of honor
so willing to fight.
The Sailor rolled over and with a voice strong and sure, Commanded,
“Carry on Santa, It’s Christmas, and All is Secure!”
And to my wonderful hubby aboard the USS Nimitz…I LOVE YOU. I MISS YOU. And I hope you have a Merry Christmas! I’m so proud of you!
It was one year ago today that I married my best friend, my confidante, my constant companion, the love of my life, the one who makes my heart skip a beat. At 2 o’clock in the afternoon at a beautiful vineyard in Temecula, California, I became my husband’s wife! Today, we celebrate our first anniversary….
…And today, we celebrate it apart.
Not by choice.
By Navy.
It’s been a crazy year of marriage for us…but in a good way of course! We’ve thoroughly enjoyed being newlyweds (for the time that we’ve actually been together). We had our first Christmas as husband and wife. Even our first Valentine’s Day together ever! We adopted our crazy puppy who chews up everything we own. We’ve had our huge fights and we’ve had our frequent bickering. We bought our first real couch and “big” screen tv. And hubby even helped me start my own business! Wow, it’s been a whirlwind of a year! And I have LOVED being his wife through every second of it (yes, even during our fights)!
So now I’m sitting at the dining room table in my parents’ home in the Philippines with my mom and dad, aunt and uncle, and a Dairy Queen ice cream cake “celebrating” my one year wedding anniversary sans hubby. No romantic dinner. No candlelight and flowers. No cuddling on the couch to our favorite movie. No kisses. And…let’s face it people…no anniversary sex. What? I’m allowed to say that. I am married after all!
Well, at least I have my family and ice cream cake, right? Yeeeeaaaahhhh….I love my family and all, but they’re not exactly the ones I’d like to be spending my anniversary with. Think about it. Would you prefer spending your very first wedding anniversary with your family instead of your spouse? Not too many people spend their one year anniversary apart. It’s definitely not how I was planning on this to happen.
But I knew this type of thing would happen. It’s to be expected when you marry into the military. Still, it really sucks. It’s so hard to be away from the one I love during these special moments of our marriage. And I never really realized just how much I actually really do miss him until I found myself spending our anniversary eating dinner at California Pizza Kitchen (yes, they have one in the Philippines) with everyone EXCEPT my husband.
Oh well. What can I do? Hubby is on deployment for a little more than three more months and I can’t change anything about that. I guess we’ll just have to wait and celebrate our first year of marriage a little later on. So I’ll do my best to be thankful for family and ice cream cake. I’ll just have to remind hubby to make up for the romantic dinner, flowers, cuddling, kisses, and…*ahem*…sex when he gets back 
Three-ish more months!
Three-ish more months….
Tags: 1st anniversary, ice cream cake, Philippines, wedding anniversary
My mom was telling me how I never write to this blog anymore. And I know she’s right. I’ve been focusing so much on My Business that I really have neglected to take the time to really share my heart more often as I continue to endure hubby’s deployment and a life with him overseas. So I’m going to make a commitment to write to this blog at least once a week. I may not have much to say, but I feel like I should say something anyways.
Well, I can finally say that we are halfway through this WestPac. Thank God! To be honest, though, these past four months have somewhat flown by. Like I said, I have really been pouring myself into getting Scraps of Life off the ground, and that has kept me preoccupied enough to make the days seem to just swoosh by. But now that we’re at the halfway point, I feel like time is really starting to slow down. It’s that halfway point. He hasn’t just left, and he isn’t just about to come home. It’s just…the middle…and that’s it. Sure, four months have already passed, but there are still four more months to wait. Four more months to kill. Four more months of nights alone. And four more months for something to go wrong. No, I’m not being a pessimist here. It’s just something that you worry about whether you want to or not.
Thankfully there is a wonderful, beautiful, and very handsome light at the end of this four-month tunnel. And I was reminded of that light just this morning at around 3:30. That is when my husband called me via Skype using an internet connection in Dubai and the laptop that I had sent to him a few months ago. I’m used to only communicating with hubby via email and the occasional phone call. So being able to use Skype and actually have a video chat was seriously the most amazing thing ever. This was the first time I had seen my husband at all since the day he left at the end of July. And oh how wonderful it was to see his smiling face and to hear his soothing, loving voice. We weren’t limited by the time left on a phone card or the inability to see each other. We saw each other and spoke to each other. We interacted in a way we have never been able to before during a deployment. And I was so very truly blessed to have that hour and a half of chatting and seeing him on my computer screen. There were moments of frustration as his internet connection continually cut out and we both wondered whether we would be able to say a real goodbye. But it was all worth it just to see his face and to hear his voice and to see that smile that I love so very much. And I look forward to the next time he’s in port so that we can do it all again, until he is finally back home and in my arms.
For now, it’s off to bed for me. I have four days of preparation to bear as I get ready for my three week trip to the Philippines to spend Christmas with my parents. And I’ve got TONS to do in the next four days! Yipes!
Until next time (which will hopefully be next week)…
It’s so funny how it’s the littlest things that will bring back a memory. One of those little things just brought back a memory for me. I was sitting on the couch watching some Disney Channel (as usual) and munching on those yummy Hint of Lime flavored Tostitos chips when it totally made me think of my husband. Yeah, random right? But eating these chips that I haven’t had in a while made me remember one of our many road trips up to Chino Hills to visit my parents. During this particular road trip, hubby wanted to get some munchies for the drive, so we stopped at a store and bought some of those lime chips and a jar of cheese dip. Sadly, hubby didn’t like the lime chips. But it’s definitely a memory that I’m glad to have.
*Sigh* It seems like it’s been ages since my hubby left on his deployment. I was excited to be two months into our time apart, thinking about how there were only 4 months until he came home. That was before I found out that the Nimitz will be out at sea an additional two months. Meaning I’m right back at 6 months until hubby comes home. 6 more months until this house is littered with his dirty laundry. Until I get to hear him snoring while he naps on the couch. Until I can see his smiling face and hear him ask me sweetly to make him a sanmich for lunch.
It’s not only those little things that remind me of hubby. It’s also those little things that I miss about him the most. It’s a strange thing really, these deployments. I hate them because they keep me away from the man I love. But at the same time, they make us both cherish those little things that are usually lost in the back of our minds. They teach us to hold onto even the littlest of memories we have together, and to cherish our time together even more. We learn to appreciate everything about each other, even those little quirks, because it’s usually those little quirks that we end up missing most when we’re apart. For some, deployments are a time of drifting apart. But for hubby and me, deployments are when our love grows the most, as we learn to love not just with our hugs and kisses, but with every word that is exchanged in email or on the phone, with every care package put together with love in mind, and with every prayer that is lifted up for the other, trusting that only God can take care of the other while we are separated.
Today I’ll continue to cherish my lime chip memory and embark on six more months of missing my hubby. To my fellow Nimitz wives out there…we can do it!
Tags: deployment, USS Nimitz, WestPac 2009
So I am now into the second week of hubby’s deployment in the Western Pacific. Two weeks, and I haven’t gone crazy yet! (Though going to SIL’s wedding brought me close to the edge…haha). I think the only thing that will get me through the next six months of life without hubby is the fact that I pretty much have something going on every month. This month was SIL’s wedding, and an upcoming shower for a special lady in my life. September is…well…nothing really, but the season premiers of all my fave tv shows will be occurring during this month so that will def have me occupied 
October, brudder and his wifey will be having their first child! Yay! November, mommy and daddy will be flying back from the Philippines to see their new grandbaby so it will be Thanksgiving with the whole fam. December will be my turn to fly to the Philippines to spend Christmas with the parents. January is yet to be determined, though I’m sure I’ll come up with something to do. And then February is the return of my long lost hubby. Throw in a trip to Disneyland each month, and the occasional meander to Sea World (yay for passes!), and I think I’ve given myself a fair amount of distraction for while hubby’s gone.
To top it off, I have great girlfriends to hang out with on a regular basis. And that, my friends, has to be the greatest distraction of all. Nothing makes the time go by faster than spending those long days without hubby with friends having fun doing whatever we feel like. Just today, I went out with college friend to go purse shopping. Thankfully, I was unsuccessful in finding a purse to purchase since I don’t really have the money to spend on a purse at the moment. But while we wandered around the mall, talking about life as newlyweds, we came up with the fantastic idea of doing weekly cook nights. So now, every Tuesday, college friend and I will be getting together and trying out new recipes together so that we can learn to cook for our hubbies! Yay! And, I have navy wife friend that I hang out with often, as well. She’s the wife of another sailor that’s on the same ship and in the same division as my hubby. So we are both husbandless for the next six months. And so for the next six months we will be hanging out and having fun while our hubbies are away. The great thing about navy wife friend is that she absolutely and completely knows what I’m going through because her hubby is with my hubby! So we talk about the latest news we’ve gotten from our hubbies and we share any information we may have. It’s awesome. And heck, she’s just a sweet girl anyways so I would hang out with her even if her hubby wasn’t my hubby’s friend!
But even with all these distractions to keep my mind off of my absent husband, the emptiness and loneliness still hits me every time I come home to an empty house…and an empty inbox! Argh! If only hubby emailed me more often! But then I have to remind myself that hubby is working his arse off everyday for who knows how many hours a day, so sometimes emailing isn’t an option. But still, it’d be nice, ya know?
Oh deployments. The bane of navy life. Thank goodness for friends, family, and Disneyland
Tags: deployment, USS Nimitz, WestPac 2009