Okay, I would like to go all “professional blogger” here and write you an article full of tips on touring Italy. I cannot in good conscience do that. What do I know? I have toured all of one week, and I would rather tell you the stories, just the funny parts and the best photos, of course.

We landed in Naples, Italy, at the Naval Support Activity Naples in the early afternoon, I think. It is a teeny-tiny airport. Only military members and their immediate families can fly out of there. For more information on flying military flights, see my article here.

We slept on the airplane ride over. Including a long stop in Ireland, our flight from America to Italy took about twenty hours.

Our plan was to head straight to Rome on the train, but somehow we did not end up doing that. Instead, we hiked all over the navy base. We visited the hotel even though we were not staying there yet. I cannot remember why we did that. I guess we were gathering information. This was a last minute trip, and we did not exactly know what we were doing.

Then we went to the bank on post and exchanged our dollars for euros.

The dollar is weaker than the euro currently, by the way. Oh, also, aside from tourist areas, things like food were actually cheaper in Italy than in America.

I found a public restroom and switched my pants out for shorts since it was a million degrees outside, and walking was our chief mode of transportation.

Poor Alan mostly packed pants for this trip, and Italy was in a historic heat wave.

After miles of walking, we finally made it back off the Navy base, past the Naples International airport, and to the Alibus station.

Alan still felt excited. I was hot, sweaty, nervous, and tired. On the airplane ride over, I read a book about touring Italy. The book said to watch out for pick-pockets in touristy areas of Rome and Naples, so I was hyper vigilant. That is not my usual state, and feeling that uptight is exhausting to me.

I dislike being hot, not knowing where I am going, and I did not feel very adventurous. What was wrong with me? This is Italy for crying out loud.

Then the Alibus arrived.

The line crushed in. There were too many people for everyone in line to make it onto the bus, even with people crammed into the aisles, holding on to the rails. Plus, I was absolutely certain the whole family behind me was trying to pick-pocket my book bag. They kept moving closer behind me.

Guess what. I was the last person who made it onto the bus, which meant I had to stand in the very front, right beside the Alibus driver.

Y’all. This suddenly turned into my favorite part of day one. I have always loved a nice, zoomy ride in the front. It was like sitting in front of the windshield on my dad’s ski boat.

Do you know what Naples drivers are known for? Chaos. They drive fast and aggressively and have a ton of traffic. Also, there were hills.

It was so exciting! We were zooming through the hills of Napoli (Italian for Naples), and I had the best seat in the house. I felt like I saw half of the city on that ride. Somehow it even felt like the wind was blowing through my hair. It was magical.

Then we arrived at the train station for another first: our first ride on the speed train.

These trains go about one hundred and forty miles per hour! Isn’t that wild? I was so nervous about riding it, but it went quite well. You would never know that train is going that fast. The seats were nice, and it was air-conditioned. I was very happy to have some time to sit and relax and look out the window at the Italian countryside.

Alan was often sporting two backpacks when we were on the move because mine was too heavy for me.

We got to Rome and called a cab because our hotel was outside of the city. There was no public transportation from our hotel area, unfortunately.

There is a tip for you. Stay inside Rome, and save money and time on cab rides.

We were too excited to be in Rome to just chill at the hotel, though. Once we settled our suitcases and showered, we set back out on another cab ride.

In Rome, you can call a cab using. your Uber app. That worked perfectly. The prices were always reasonable that way.

The Colosseum was the closest site to our hotel, so that is where we headed.

We were dismayed to learn that we had accidentally purchased the wrong tickets for the Colosseum. Our tickets were not for the Colosseum at all. They were for all the stuff around the Colosseum, so at least we figured we could see that.

Nope. We got there after closing time. Oops.

We saw all that we could see from the outside looking in over there, which was still interesting. Then we decided to find food.

Dinner is eight o’clock in Italy. That is far later than we typically eat, but we went with it. That day, we found my favorite of the restaurants that we ate at in Rome. They even had a gluten free bread, so I was able to eat bread and oil. That was thrilling for me. And of course, the food was delicious and the service was excellent.

Actually, maybe this restaurant was my favorite part. I was just nervous about interacting with people, not knowing the language.

After dinner, we walked around a little more. We found the ruins of gladiator training quarters across the modern day street from the Colosseum.

When I went to Israel, I was thrilled to see the ruins. In Rome, I found the ruins to be more haunting. This was not a place where Jesus walked around healing people. No, the Colosseum was a place where they released poor people, gladiators, Christians, and prisoners into a stadium to fight and often die. And they did this all to roaring crowds. People watched others die for sport here.

The building itself is marvelous, but the reminder of how barbaric people can be is sobering.

Rome was as hot as the sun itself that day, and the next day, and the next day. You would think an Alabama girl would be better at coping with it, but I struggled mentally. Physically, I was fine. Mentally, I was whiny. Who takes a vacation to Italy and whines? Me. That would be me. I am not proud of it, and I tried to keep the whining internal.

I was so happy to return to our hotel that night. Normally, I have trouble sleeping in new places. We had zero trouble sleeping. We were so wiped out from all the traveling in the heat.

Besides, I knew we had the next day to further explore this magnificent city.

“Rome – the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.”

-George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann Evans, an English poet

The post Italy Day One: The Alibus was My Favorite Part. appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Today I am going to tell you exactly how to fly military space available, with the most updated information.

We have been a military family for over twenty years, but we had always shied away from this method of transportation. For starters, we thought it was only for overseas travel. It turns out that is not true.

If you are like us, you may be nervous to try flying space available. “Being flexible” can be scary.

As it turns out, flying military space available was a fairly easy process.

We finally tried it out this year, to fly to Italy and back, and we are here to share with you all that we learned.

If you are active duty military or a retired service member, you are eligible for this service. Dependents can also fly with them, but non-dependent family members and friends may not use this service.

For a complete description of who can fly military space a, see this official page.

I asked Alan to help me make a video with all the basic facts and the exact process he went through to do this.

If you’d rather just read the facts, we got ya covered there too. Scroll on down for all the websites and beginner information.

This is the website you need for EVERYTHING Space-A related:

amc.af.mil

Here are the steps for how to find and enroll in your flight!

#1. Sign out on leave, and have your leave form ready. You will be using it for everything.

You cannot even register for space available flights until you are on leave.

#2. Visit this site: amc.af.mil

Everything you need both in the country and OCONUS is found on this website.

#3. Time to do some preliminary research on what flights are coming up.

I mean really you will probably do this step long before you sign out on leave.

On the amc.af.mil website, follow the links on the “catch a ride” section. That will take you here. On this page they have a list of all the different terminals with military flights.

Then you can click on the individual terminals, and it will take you to their webpages. From there, look for their 30 day or 72 hour projections, whichever you would like to see.

That will give you a list of who is currently flying out to where. It will also tell you how many seats they expect to have available and time for roll call.

#4. You will see the phrase roll call mentioned. What is this roll call?

You need to check in with the desk by roll call to submit for a seat. Roll call is when they call out the names of those on standby who are receiving a seat. For our flights, we already had our tickets before roll call.

#5. Register to fly Space-Available with all the terminals you might use here on this easy form for all of those terminals at this webpage.

That is the most important step!

Please note, you have to be officially on leave before you are allowed to register for travel. Priority is given to those who have been on leave the longest.

#6. Print out your email confirmations that you get from that sign up form.

These will have the date on them that you signed up and it serves as a receipt, so print it out.

#7. Check on the flights you are interested in as your departure date draws near.

Last minute changes do happen sometimes. Changes are sometimes posted online.

#8. The day before your flight, call the terminal for an update on that flight.

You can ask any questions you have. For example, you can ask what kind of airplane it is and what time the flight is actually scheduled to leave.

On the day you fly:

Arrive an hour before roll call with your printed email confirmation and your leave form, passport, and military ID in hand.

Expect to be waiting at the airport all day long. You will probably get checked in fairly quickly. But then it takes a few hours before the airplane actually boards. Make sure you have plenty to read and snack on.

The airports we flew in and out of did not have any restaurants and very little snacks available.

If you are flying with children, make sure you have some way to entertain them. You often even have time (once you have checked in and have your tickets) to leave the airport for food or a walk and come back.

Alan and I did a lot of walking around while waiting. We also sat and scrolled on our phones, but small children will not put up with that. Make sure you have a deck of UNO cards and something that plays movies handy.

I was so impressed that each of our overseas flights fed us three times!! They had many beverage options too!

In closing, we hope you get a chance to try out flying military space available!

Saving a few thousand dollars was extremely satisfying to us!! It made the slightly longer waiting times and the risk of being bumped worth it. Thankfully, we had no mishaps on our first two trips. We highly recommend it to all military and retired families!!

Feel free to ask any questions you have below, and we will do our best to answer.

More Travel Articles:

Why Capernaum Was Our Favorite City to Visit in Israel

Jerusalem in Pictures: Golgotha, Where Jesus was Crucified

Our Sweltering Seven Days in Italy in a Nutshell

The post How to Fly Military Space Available (& How it Went for Us in 2023) appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Why the nutshell? I don’t know. Basically, this is a little overview of my trip, and then you can bet I will type out a whole series about each individual place. It was a sweltering week in Italy. Most places were not air conditioned. And I am going to tell you all about it.

Days one and seven were traveling days, so this is very quickly going to look more like five days in Italy, I think.

As I mentioned on Facebook, we did fly military space available. Our tickets to Italy, believe it or not, were only $22 a piece. Crazy, huh? Our tickets home were $40/piece.

I promise I am going to write out a little guide on how to fly military space available. My husband even made a video with me about military flights while we were beginning our trip. I need to finish it off, and then I will post it here for everyone who is interested.

First, I want to say that this trip was to celebrate our wedding anniversary, and it was a beautiful vacation.

Alan especially loved touring Italy. We saw so many historical sites and a couple of volcanoes, so this was right up Alan’s alley.

The version of Italy we saw was dictated by our military arrival and departure destinations. That is why we stuck to Rome, Naples, and Sicily.

We both enjoy historical sites, so I am a little embarrassed to admit that while we were in the southern area with all the beautiful water and island destinations in a heat wave, we did not visit the beach.

It is okay though. We did visit the Mediterranean Sea when we were in Israel. Plus, we knew we would have some beach days when we got back to the U.S.

I think the phrase I said the most during our trip was, “planes, trains, and automobiles.”

Did you ever see that movie? It felt like we spent a bulk amount of this trip on planes, trains, and automobiles. Oh yeah, and also buses. Don’t worry though. Nothing caught fire, and no one had to sell shower curtain rings.

Please note the photo above. At the beginning of Day one of flying to Italy, we looked tidy and well groomed. Then we waited all day for our plane to leave. Then it took us around eleven hours of flying, plus many time zones to pass through.

So by the next photo, it was technically day two, though we had not been to a hotel yet or changed clothes or showered. We were riding this 140mph speed train to Rome that I was nervous about. That is why I looked like THIS on the train:

Embarrassing. I do hope I combed my hair before I got off the train, but I doubt that I did. Thankfully, we did ride straight to our hotel and freshen up. Oh, and you would never know that train was going so fast. I could not tell. It was not bad at all.

A lot of this vacation revolved around planes, trains, buses, and automobiles though.

The day we planned to ride the train from Rome to Napoli, our cab driver informed us that there was a national train worker strike. (So glad he told us!!) The strike was scheduled to last all day long, so all buses were booked up. (In Italy, they schedule their strikes.) However, since it was about 40 degrees Celsius/104 degrees Fahrenheit, the government stepped in and ended the strike in the late afternoon.

Our solution was simply to stay an extra day in Rome to wait out the strike. That ended up being my favorite day in Italy.

Then on the day that we planned to fly from Napoli to Catania (way down in Sicily), there was an airline worker strike!

You cannot make this stuff up, so we got the LAST two train tickets that day from Napoli to Catania.

By the way, it was an eight hour train ride. Also, our seats were not together.

The cool thing about the train ride though is that the TRAIN takes the ferry between the mainland boot and the island of Sicily. During the ferry ride, we had to switch trains. Then we were able to get out and look out over the water on the ferry!

That was a one of a kind experience for sure.

Overall, we did this whole week-long anniversary trip to Italy for only $2,138. Can you believe that? And we did not slum it. We stayed in what I would consider nice hotels (often Navy lodges) and paid for many cab rides and restaurant meals.

So what did we actually DO in Italy?

Well, besides studying train schedules and surviving the insane heat wave, we mostly saw Rome and Pompeii and rode trains.

We ended up spending three days in Rome. In Rome, we saw the sites we had heard about the most:

-the Colosseum

-The Titus Arch

-some other archway

-a basilica designed by Michelangelo

– the Vatican Museum

-the Sistine Chapel

-Italian restaurants

-the Trevi fountain

-the Spanish steps

-graffiti in all of the non-historic areas

-all sorts of beautiful buildings that I could not name

-bus stations

-train stations

-the best dressed population I have ever seen…Italian women do NOT dress as we do when out touring the city.

I look forward to writing a whole post on the Rome days and another post about our Pompeii day.

It was so hot in Pompeii that when I think about Pompeii, all I can think about is, “Man, that place was so hot. I almost passed out that day.”

Fortunately, I’m not prone to fainting. If you are, do not visit Pompeii in a heat wave. Pack water, and wear a big hat.

Overall, our Italy trip was a little stressful (for me) and exhausting (surely for both of us) and oh-so-crowded everywhere. I kept reminding myself to be grateful though.

I knew this was a luxury and a very kind thing that Alan was doing for us, and I did think it was cool to visit so many famous places.

Crowding into train after train, standing room only, and wondering why nowhere was air-conditioned is not how I envision a relaxing vacation. There was very little relaxing involved in this trip.

When I am crowded into a D.C. train I do not feel this stressed even though it is the same. In a foreign country where I did not know the language, I just felt far out of my comfort zone.

But mostly, the problem was the heat.

At some point in Rome day three, I sat down on my hotel bed and said, “I am not going anywhere else today. I do not even want dinner. All I want to do is lie here, sleep, and let the swelling in my ankles go back down.” And that is exactly what I did.

Y’all, I was never good at extreme heat! Two different years back in high school I called my band director trying to quit because I could not take the endless days of one hundred degree sun in band camp. Somehow he always managed to talk me out of quitting. The sun and I are not friends.

Alan, on the other hand, absolutely loved touring Italy and enjoyed the freedom of not being with a tour group.

He was downright exuberant. “Oooo let’s take a picture here. Let’s take a picture of this,” he said so many times. I was always a little shocked. It was so incredibly hot that I had a hard time caring about what I was seeing or taking photos. Plus, I wished I had my tennis shoes and an ice water, all the time.

There is a good lesson to take from this. Wear tennis shoes. My flip-flops were comfortable, but they strained my legs because it had been a year since I had worn them. My feet are used to tennis shoes.

I will tell you all the details in my next few posts!

For my next vacation, I told Alan I am willing to fly military flights. However, I would like to pick a quiet place on the coast and not change hotels at all.

The post Our Sweltering 7 Days in Italy in a Nutshell appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

You might be thinking, “I didn’t even know the US Army has a museum.”

Just a few years ago, there was not one, but now I am happy to report that the US Army does in fact have its very own museum. It is very close to Washington D.C., on an Army base named Fort Belvoir. And it is a fun one too.

Also, I will tell you, Fort Benning has a similar one that is called the National Infantry Museum, but it does not encompass the entirety of the United States Army branch. In fact, many of the branches within the Army have their own museum.

The one in D.C. is unique because it is for the whole Army. Its official name is the National Museum of the United States Army.

This museum takes you through the history of the U.S. Army and shows a little of what the Army is doing today as well. It tells the story of the brave men and women who have fought for our freedom through displays, real artifacts, and a lot of interactive fun stuff too.

Actually, there is way more here than you would expect, so I am going to tell ya all about what to expect when you visit.

When to go:

This museum is open every single day of the year, except for Christmas day. You can’t beat that.

Their hours are 9am-5pm.

We went on September, 11th, a Monday, and it was not crowded at all. In fact, it was ghost town in there, and I was just hoping they won’t go out of business because it was an excellent museum, especially if you are traveling with wiggly kids like we were.

Tickets:

Tickets are for specific times, but they are free. You can reserve them online. It was not crowded though, so you could probably get tickets at the door just fine.

Go here to reserve your time slot and date.

They do have a donation box near the door.

Is the U.S. Army Museum kid friendly?

Yes, very. There is a whole wing of hands on activities for kids, and even the normal museum exhibits have some hands-on activities, like this Army puzzle.

There are a lot of neat things to look at too. I should write a post about taking kids to museums though, because it is different than browsing on your own. We have dragged our kids (usually against their will) to museums all across America, and we have had mostly positive experiences.

However, we also do our best to keep low expectations and move quickly. This is always a little harder on the parent who is more interested in that particular museum. In the art museums in D.C., I was the one too engrossed in the paintings to realize our children were not popular with the security guards. Ha! My husband was mortified and ready to run, and I was like, “What? They’re being so good, and this place is amazing.”

At the Army Museum, Navy Museum, basically any war-related museum, Alan is the one reading everything, and I am the one asking to go to the cafe with the kids after a while.

It’s a balance. It does save the day for the quicker parent to escort the kids through a quick browse of the museum. Then when their attention span is getting stretched past their capabilities and melt downs are beginning to happen, the quick parent needs to escort the kids to a snack, play, or gift shop area.

In full disclosure, I get annoyed with adults who go through museums too slowly too. I feel like all you need to do is see the highlights, read a few plaques, get the general idea, take some fun photos, and leave. All of that takes me a couple of hours tops.

D.C. art museums aside, I am always the one with the kids on the bench at the end, waiting for the rest of the family to join us. What can possibly take them that long? I’ll never understand.

In fact, I have some good photos of me and the boys waiting on the benches for Alan or relatives, but they will not let me post them on the internet, which is fair.

We found something for everyone at this museum, even our loudest whiner. Our little whiner enjoyed the virtual reality and the cafe and the Army puzzle.

Our Army officer enjoyed everything and was probably wishing he had come without us (ha!).

Military Kid Experience

Nowhere else will you get this, and I thought it was just fantastic. They had a military kid experience quiz on a large touchscreen t.v. at the front of the interactive wing of the museum.

All four of our kids enjoyed answering the questions. It was so extremely relatable to our nomadic lifestyle. At the end of each question in the quiz, it would give what percentage of participants had chosen each answer.

The Experimental Learning Center

The interactive area is to the right of the front doors when you first walk into the museum. It is called the Experimental Learning Center, and it is unlike anything I have ever seen in a museum. This was high tech learning and lots of it. I learned science concepts in there I knew nothing about.

They have all these training modules you can participate in, and you can select the easier or the harder versions. We worked on engineering, vision wavelengths, virus studies, and all sorts of scientific concepts. I learned a lot about night vision and infrared light at one of the modules. This was all impressive.

If you have older kids, or people who enjoy this type of thing in your group, you could easily spend an hour just in this area. We did. We are definitely hands-on-learning people.

If you have younger children, you will need to let them set your pace. It can be hard sometimes to let the younger ones set the pace for your tour, but the fact is that if you don’t, you will end up with an over-tired, frustrated, crying toddler on the floor, while you are questioning all of your life choices..

Meanwhile, I had such a good time trying everything out in the Experimental Learning Center, I either forgot to take photos or they were not allowed. So don’t skip the learning center!

Extras at this Museum:

Two activities here are extra, paid add-ons. They had a flight simulator and a virtual reality Army experience next to the main exhibits of the museum. I did the flight simulator with two of our boys, and Alan did the virtual reality with the other two.

I think they were $10 extra a piece, per person. That adds up quick, so that is why three of us did one of them and the other three of us did the other.

I did enjoy the flight simulator though. It reminded me of a Universal Studios simulator I got to go on back in high school, and I thought it was fun.

The Exhibits

The exhibits are authentic and fun to look at. I thoroughly enjoyed the tour through all of America’s wars and seeing the uniform of each different generation.

We actually ran out of time to see it all. If you do not want that to happen to you, schedule your ticket earlier in the day. My husband is in the Army, and he and one of my sons took f-o-r-e-v-e-r going through this. My teenage sons, my nine-year-old, and I ended up hanging out at the cafe eating chips and drinking sodas for a while. The nine-year-old ran out of patience to finish the whole museum, and we were all hungry.

In conclusion, touring this museum is a great way to spend an afternoon with your family.

When you go places and engage in the world together as a family you cannot help but have fun. And yes, it felt like delicious bonding time with our sons.

We watched movies, tried out all the interactive stuff, did puzzles, laughed together, and complained to each other. What more could you want in a day trip? I got some delightful family shots of us at the end. They don’t let me share those.

So we went in with some unwilling participants for sure. Some of our group wanted to stay home and play x-box. But we went anyway, and we had a great time.

I highly recommend this museum to anyone. You will learn so much and have fun doing it. Plus, it instills a nice sense of patriotism that you don’t get many places.

I firmly believe we learn more from these immersive experiences than we do from school history books.

And for the full story of when we took all the kids and some of their friends to a D.C. art museum, go here.

For more fun things to do in D.C., see this article.

The post See the U.S. Army Museum in 20 Patriotic Pictures appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I did promise that once the podcast that I participated in was live, I would let you all know. It went live last week, and I announced that on Facebook. It occurred to me I still needed to post about it here on my blog.

So here’s the link that will take you straight there:

Choosing Your Reflection

This podcast is all about wedding gowns and what goes into the decision of what you will wear for the big day. Before coming across this podcast channel, I had never given much thought as to WHY wedding dresses are so special or why I chose what I chose specifically. Yes, I love a beautiful wedding gown, but I had never thought about all the psychology behind that.

“Choosing Your Reflection” turned out to be a fun topic that crossed right over into my present day life.

The title of my episode was, quite fittingly, “White Gown, Blue Suit.” I think going into the show, you probably assume that I wore the white gown, and Alan wore the blue suit. But y’all, that is not the case. It’s more than that.

You see, on my wedding day, I wore both a white gown and a blue suit, and we decided the blue suit was more fitting to the life that I was preparing for as a military spouse. You can go here to hear the whole story.

Now here we are 19 years later.

….and ever so much older and wiser…also more wrinkly and several sizes larger on my part…Alan is amazingly enough still the same size.

But I feel like the blue suit ties back in to my current moment in time, and I find myself wishing I had a new one to wear. The thing is that at twenty years of Army service, you must make a decision. Either you will exit the Army in the form of retirement, or you stay in. We knew this was coming. I have felt the weight of it for the past year.

If you have followed this blog, you probably noticed my home sickness and longing to return to our homeland of Alabama. Maybe we could get a house with some land, some little wooden rocking chairs, and truly settle down. There is nothing settled down about moving every one to three years, as we have done for the past nineteen years. Really, that is our whole adult life.

But perhaps the year of corona gave me the restful quiet that I needed in order to face the future.

It really wasn’t all that restful, but with everything cancelled, we did get to be at home A LOT.

Alan’s career is going very well. Why would he jump ship just now? And this year has shown us like no other that virtual school is actually a thing that can be done for a high schooler, rather than making them go to multiple high schools.

No, I cannot home school small children. The stress of that is still agony to me. Square pegs do not fit in round holes, and I am very much a square peg when it comes to the round hole of home schooling children. The negative stress of it is still the reason I take heart pills everyday.

However, teenagers are easier for me. They know how to sit down, be quiet, and mostly do their work unassisted. I can manage that.

Also, this is the second summer in a row that we have not had to move, and what a relief that has been!

So anyway, I talked in the podcast about donning the blue suit for the serious work ahead. Well, this is me today, all over again. The world is gradually returning to normal. We have at least a year before we have to move again. Currently, there are no plans to retire from the Army.

So here am I. I’m putting on my new blue suit. Literally, I am totally going to order one. And I’m rolling up my proverbial sleeves and taking on the years ahead. We can do this; we are suited up and ready to go.

It will look different than the first nineteen years. The kids are older. My eye crinkles and laugh lines are deeper. That vision of a house of dreams in Alabama is now residing there in my brain. That desire to see the whole country and live in new and exciting places, well, it is pretty much gone. My heart yearns for familiar paths these days.

But that’s okay. We are all in. Come what may, God will take care of us.

The post A Little Blue Suit for the Serious Work Ahead appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Some of us are dealing with a ton of uncertainty about education this year. I know we are. Will this virtual deal work for us? Should I give in to my son’s pleas to become a home schooler???

We are all going to have to try one method for school at first, and see if it works.

Within a week or two, we will know if it is a total disaster or not. I wouldn’t judge it off of the first day alone. The first of anything is usually the worst. Think of it as the first pancake. You gotta learn from the first one, and adjust the mixture and temperature accordingly.

If you are all hating life after two weeks in, something has to change: either the school or the methods. And that is okay. Email teachers. See if you can do assignments separately and turn them in without sitting through a boring lecture. If that doesn’t work, switch to a home school method if you need to. There are a billion options out there.

Our kids have done so many different things over the years. When we moved five times in four years, my oldest son went to three different schools for middle school, one for each of the three grades that most people consider middle: 6th, 7th, and 8th. It was terrible that he had to go through that. If I could have done it differently, I would have, but all of those three schools taught him something valuable.

We have also worked out alternate plans with teachers over the years.

This did not require switching schools, just doing things a little differently than the rest of the class. There is nothing wrong with that, especially if you aren’t putting a lot of extra work on the teacher.

For one of my other sons, I had to ask for a different math class. He was placed in the most advanced math, and at a new school, adjusting to the horrors that we call common core. That was too much. Many teachers will work with you to help your kids succeed. You can always ask and try.

We have also switched home school curriculums mid-year.

As a military spouse, one thing I have a ton of experience with is CHANGE.

We were with some friends a few weeks ago, and they said something about it being hard to get out of their “comfort zone.” My husband, Alan, and I just looked at each other. Surely he was thinking the same thing I was. “Oh yeah, people have those. We have not had a real comfort zone outside of our own house in ages. We live outside our comfort zone.”

It feels like we are always flying by the seat of our pants. You get really good at reading a room when you walk into it. Who are the people here who I can talk to? Where do we fit here?

When it comes to our boys’ schooling, the changes feel heightened.

All of the boys have been to both public and private schools. (I wrote all about the pros and cons of each here.) Two of the four boys have also had at least one solid year of home schooling.

Have I pulled my kids out of school to switch to home schooling in the middle of the year before?

Oh, yes, I have.

Let me tell you the story of 2011.

It was a BIG year for us. January-March of 2011, Alan was away in Huntsville taking an Army course.

I withdrew the boys from their Virginia preschool, and I moved into Alan’s parents’ house because I was due to give birth to Daniel on March 31st. Giving birth alone in Washington, D.C. was not happening to me.

We left our D.C. townhouse in tact with all our stuff and moved to Alabama for just those three months of Alan’s school. I gave birth to Daniel a week early. It was our very first emergency c-section. After my two week recovery, we all packed up the minivan and headed back to D.C.

Alan signed right into his new job. On day one, his colonel said, “Nice to meet ya! So what’s your dwell time?”

Now what you may not know is that is the worst question you can be asked upon sign in. That question actually means they are about to ship you overseas for a combat-type tour. In this case, it was Afghanistan.

Alan’s “dwell time” was all of TWO years at the time, so this was a devastating blow. Most regular Army units in those days did not trifle with short tours. If you were deployed, you were gone for a year. In fact, Alan’s most recent deployment at the time (2008-09) was a fifteen month one.

So there I was, in my townhouse, with our weeks-old baby, three-year-old, and five-year-old, receiving this news. All I could think was, “Noooooooo!!! No! NO! No. NO!”

Thankfully, he did not ship off right away.

He adjusted to his new job. We were also preparing to send our oldest off to kindergarten, and there were no acceptable neighborhood schools nearby. That is when we moved to the suburbs of North Virginia.

Things got much better during that time. Daniel was a delightful little baby. The boys loved Virginia. Plus, my neighbors and friends that I met through Alan’s coworkers, church, and the boys’ school were true God-sends. They are all still a part of my life to this day, though now it is mostly via Facebook.

We had trials too, of course. That summer, Caleb began to have seizures, and we had no idea why.

But you cannot stop the hands of time.

In October, Alan hugged us all and left for Afghanistan.

It suddenly felt like me against the world.

Does that sound melodramatic? It is true though. Three little rambunctious boys by yourself is a HUGE job.

Every morning to coax myself out of bed I would chant these Bible verses to myself:

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

Matthew 11:28-29

We had help that was unexpected, humbling, and life-changing.

My life changed completely when a saint and mentor from our church came to me and offered to let her teenage daughter and two other teenage girls that she taught come and help me. They would each take turns arriving on Sunday night, after church, and staying until I dropped them off Wednesday night. These girls served as built in older siblings and babysitters. I could go to the grocery store alone again!

I felt so loved and provided for, both by these wonderful people and by God.

Have you ever had people help you on such a deep and sacrificial level? It was amazing. God has taken such good care of us through fellow Christians over the years. My mind just blanks over people who cannot trust God. I have so many reasons to trust him.

My parents wanted me to come home so they could help us too.

By the way, this is all still 2011. It was a long, eventful year. My parents were after me to just move home for the rest of the deployment. We were lucky. This deployment was only six months, rather than our usual year-long tours. We had three months left.

Basically, it was like, “Why are you putting yourself through all this when you could just move in with your family down South, and work half as hard? The oldest child is in kindergarten. That requires zero paperwork to home school a kindergartener. Besides, health care is better down there.”

In D.C., I was having to wait months just for Caleb to get his EEG done. But in my hometown, that could be done in a matter of weeks. Caleb could get doctor appointments quicker, and we could figure out how to help him.

So in December, my parents arrived. They helped us pack our suitcases. I finished 2011 packing my suitcases to leave an empty Virginia house to go live with my own parents. We just took our clothes with us to Alabama and left all the furnishings in Virginia, waiting for us to return. What a crazy year!

That year Joshua went from preschool to home school preschool to public kindergarten and back to home school.

Before we left Virginia, I asked Joshua’s teacher to just tell me the basic topics and tasks he needed to learn to keep up with his peers so I could slide him right back in there in April. I was so focused on those topics, I can still remember what they were to this day. Also, I am happy to report that he did a great job and was not the least bit behind when he returned that April to finish kindergarten with his original class.

I wanted to be able to fully focus on teaching Joshua, so I did put Caleb in a preschool program near my parents’ house for those months.

The move was a good decision. I faced choices with Caleb’s treatment, and it was nice to be at home with my parents through all of that. Plus, health care down there actually did run so much more smoothly than in D.C. Big cities are such a pain when there aren’t enough services or doctors to provide for the entire population.

Sometimes we have years that take pages to explain….like my 2011…or everyone’s 2020…

You do what you have to do to make it work for your particular family with your exact set of circumstances. That will look different for all of us, and that is A-okay.

We may have to change direction mid-stream. That is okay too. The future is always changing and never predictable. We all do the best that we can with the information we have. What more can we do?

Trust God. Breathe a little easier. The more stressed we act, the more stressed our kids will be.

If you are doing virtual school, hybrid school, or just starting home school, join us in our Facebook support group.

For now, our family is going the virtual school route.

I already have one son begging to switch to home school, and we have not even started yet. We will see what happens.

My only advice is to not be afraid to make changes. You can always switch methods. It is your right. Your district might not let you switch from virtual to in-person, but you can always switch to home school or to public school. And you can always check and see if there are ways a teacher can help your child learn more effectively. There is no need to be married to a school that is not working.

Here’s to making this work, one way or another!

The post Hey! It’s okay to tweak your school plan midyear. appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I know some of you are so tired of me writing about moving you could puke. Sorry, guys. It is such a big deal. The impact of moving cannot be stated generously enough. All these back-to-back moves have brought so much stress that I feel like if I could simply harness the stress, it could be a mighty power source. We could light up New York City with the stress of all the military wives, I am quite sure of it.

But I am not here to whine about moving today. Instead I want to talk about “settling in”, mainly because, for me, it is truly beginning to happen.

This morning I asked our boys if they felt settled in here yet, and 2/4 of them said, “No.” They do not feel settled. One boy said, “Yes,” and the other one said, “Yes and also no.” That made perfect sense to me. It has been seven months. I think it takes 1-2 years to truly settle in. Judging by the boys’ responses, they agree that it takes a while.

Settling in is not just unpacking boxes and organizing shelves. It is also knowing where you put everything, and yes, as a mom, by the time I leave a place, I do basically know where everything is. We still don’t have a clue at this house. When you are truly settled, life in general comes more naturally. Simple things are less of a struggle. Kids knock on your door. Your phone is full of local phone numbers. The drive-through people at Burger King recognize your face. Haha! Well, that last one probably should not be true, but it already is true for me.

It is hard to sustain relationships when moving every two years, as our family has been doing ever since 2002. I found this very discouraging report:

We know that children who move frequently are more likely to perform poorly in school and have more behavioral problems,” said the study’s lead author, Shigehiro Oishi, PhD, of the University of Virginia. “However, the long-term effects of moving on well-being in adulthood have been overlooked by researchers.”

American Psychological Association

Changing Schools Again and Again

Every single time our kids change schools, the new school underestimates our children because they do not do well on tests those first few weeks. They do not know how to accommodate the adjustment phase. When we first move, our children perform less efficiently than usual because they are using their brain space to remember how to work their school computer, remember their student ID #, remember what city we live in, what bus they ride, where to get off the bus, and all sorts of new information that students who have gone to the same school for years do not have to concentrate on at all.

Basically, in a new place, the kids are too busy figuring out the social atmosphere to remember the equation for area of a rectangle. New kids are wondering whether that boy with the freckles is a friend possibility and which kid it is that you have to steer clear of because they make fun of pretty much everybody. Plus, every single school has completely different procedures and expectations.

As an adult, I see a change with my social media.

I sort of cling to the old friends even though I have moved because they are still real to me. Everyone I know is in the past for a while, and then the cycle repeats itself. People from two duty stations ago are never forgotten, nor do I want to forget them. Sometimes they are all I have, but I do notice that most friends and acquaintances stop “liking” my Facebook posts once I have been gone a year. I am out of sight, out of mind. They figure they will never see me again anyway, or maybe I am annoying with how frequently I post. See, the funny thing about that is that if I had settled in and had real life friends I would probably go searching for friends online less too, and then I wouldn’t come off as so needy maybe.

Then there is the crazy side of me that (and I am ashamed to admit this is true) thinks things like, “Maybe they all had a lunch together and decided they don’t like me anymore after I moved away.”

With military wife friends, it is different.

With military wife friends, we don’t have to act less needy and pathetic because we already know that actually we ARE all in need, and we are happy to jump in and be like, “Me too!!!” Complain about the way the Army sent you only two moving men, or how they will not give you orders, and you are living in limbo. We get it!!! This stuff is hard. We will always support each other on social media no matter how many times we move. All of us know that our online friends are our ONLY friends for far too much of the time. We need each other!

Yes, moving repeatedly can be a serious problem, but I do have good news too. You know we always look for hope.

We have now been in this newest house for seven months. This past weekend we had our Sunday school class over for dinner on Saturday and had a large turnout. Hurray! We played games, ate, and talked. If everyone had as much fun as I did, then it was a success. I felt so uplifted.

Then on Sunday, our two youngest sons were baptized, right here at our new church by our new pastor.

I cried tears of the purest joy. My heart war near to bursting. THIS is what makes it all worth it.

Daniel led the way on the baptism thing. Daniel told Alan as they were leaving a church function a couple of weeks ago that he wanted to talk to the pastor about getting baptized. JD chimed in, “Me too!” The pastor dropped everything he was doing, handed off his baby he was holding to one of his family members, and talked to our boys to make sure they understood salvation and baptism. He agreed the boys are solid in their faith and ready to be baptized.

As soon as we arrived at church, I realized I had left my phone at home which meant I could not take pictures. The horror! But it was not the end of the world. Thankfully, I knew that I had a few different friends there that I could ask to borrow their phone to take the pictures with. I ended up not having to ask anyone, as Alan Hix, our adult Sunday school class teacher (who has a talent for making people feel welcome) freely offered up his phone to me. That was such a relief. You know how important photos are to me.

A Table to Sit at

Two Sundays ago, when I walked into the ladies’ fellowship after church for the cookie contest, I had a table of friends to sit with. I knew about six different ladies out of the thirty or so who were in attendance, and most of us sat at a table together in the back. This is exactly why we always join a Sunday school class at each new church we move to. It is such a helpful way to get connected.

Basically, I am beginning to feel like we belong, and I cannot stress enough to you what a relief that is.

Alan took Daniel to baseball tryouts Saturday too, and they also saw several familiar, friendly faces, a total change from the fall when we literally did not know a soul. They came back from try-outs in a happy mood. Daniel was able to perform much better because he was more comfortable there than he was back in the fall.

Overall, we are all doing better than we were, while some of us are still walking uphill in unsupportive flip-flops, if you know what I mean. So much of it is circumstance and age, in addition to personality, but I will not go into all of that here.

Saturday, my friend Shereen showed up half an hour before the party to help me set up, and I cannot tell you how very not-alone that made me feel.

Commitment!

I am pleased as punch to announce that I have my very first real commitment here. I am now co-teaching the high school girls’ Sunday school class at our church, and I am quite excited about it.

It is not us against the world or us trying to break into Maryland. This is just a regular old family trying to gradually settle in to yet another new town, our 11th time in a new town in eighteen years, to be exact. We are slower at it than we used to be because we are worn down and weary, but we will get there.

In two years, Alan will hit his twenty-year-mark. He is not currently planning to retire. I have no idea what will happen, really. However, I DO know, and am firmly resolved, that we cannot move these children between 11th and 12th grade. I would rather not move them before their 11th grade year either. With that said, we may be in Maryland for a long time, with our oldest boys being so close in age and our oldest about to enter high school. It may be that we stay here until the oldest graduates and then leave with Caleb between 10th and 11th. Who knows?

For now, just know that Maryland is becoming home. At least two or three of us are beginning to feel settled in, and things are looking up. Life isn’t supposed to be easy, right? It is supposed to be full of purpose, and that it is. We have more than our share to be grateful for.

The post “Settling in” 7 Months After Moving appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.