******This post is part of the Real Army Wives series which runs every Monday on storiesofourboys.com. The series follows our journey through the 1st year of the Iraq war, 2003-2004. **********

June 24, 2003

Dear Alan,

……Operation Iraq is getting more news time now. The big issue is the mounting amount of coalition troop deaths since the official end of the war. Just this week there were at least 6 British troops killed, and American lives are constantly lost.

Two more were reported yesterday, and each time I hear of it–it’s just awful. I mean not only could that be us (God willing it won’t be), but I feel so awful for those families. I’ve thought about how I would feel and what I would do– Oh!! So terrible! I feel so bad for those families.

I had my teacher certification test today! What a day!

Well, I slept later than I planned, first of all. By ten I was on my way to Waco, about to stop in Belton to pick up Siobhan, who was going to ride with me. Well, then I realized I’d forgotten my test ticket, which you have to have!

But we had planned to go early, so I was okay. Siobhan went on without me, and I circled back home for my ticket and still made it to Waco at 1:00 — 30 minutes before the test.

So I’m looking at my ticket–and I realize–my test is in AUSTIN! (It was given in both cities, but you have to take it at the site you are registered for.

Aughhhh!!! So I go in to ask the administrators what to do. Well, I was so early they weren’t there yet, so I hopped back in the Blazer and drove 90 mph to Austin, and I made it in an hour–very good time.

I was so afraid they wouldn’t let me take it, being so late. But they did. They were even nice about it.

But, Alan, that test was HARD! I just hope I passed. You have to get 80% right to pass!

Well, I was planning to go to Stephanie’s BBQ afterwards, but she cancelled it. But Cloe, Elsie, and Sarah all dropped by unplanned. That was a lot of fun. Sarah and Cloe stayed until 10pm.

Oh! And while I was in Austin the guys next door cut my  our grass! Yay!

Well, that’s about all the news. North Korea situation isn’t looking good.

I love you, Alan. You’re my lobster.

I LOVE YOU!!

April

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Kayla, Heather, Cloe, Elsie, & me, watching movies at Cloe’s house. Cloe was on the phone, which is perfect because it always seemed like Cloe managed to talk to her husband way more than the rest of us did.

Around the first of May, I’d started teacher certification school.

Anyone with a bachelor’s degree could enroll, take the “highly qualified” teacher exam, and apply for a probationary teacher certification. My degree was in psychology, but if I completed the course, passed the exam, and taught for one complete year in a Texas school, I could have a teaching certificate.

In the meantime, I was an intern.

Teacher training helped me to pass the time with something other than board games and t.v. watching, so I suppose that was good. It gave me a goal to work towards, even if it was a goal I wasn’t particularly excited about.

The first month of teaching classes were in a large class of about 50 adult students. I was probably the youngest one there, having only just graduated that year, and having graduated a semester early at that.

We did learn all sorts of teaching strategies I would have never dreamed up otherwise, but we never learned how to teach a child to read. It was immensely helpful, but it certainly didn’t compare to a 4-year-teaching degree.

The second month of teaching school was broken into grade levels. I was signed up to be a 4th-8th grade teacher, so we were all put together. That brought the class size down to around 20. For that class, we focused mostly on math skills so that we could all pass this intermediate teaching exam.

It was a good thing, too. The teaching exam was no joke, especially on math.

I won’t make you wait, as I had to wait. I’ll go ahead and tell you that I did pass the test, and then my job hunt was on.

Never did it occur to me at the time that the whole botched test location was perhaps a sign that I should pursue a career I actually wanted, rather than one that just seemed easy to obtain.

Isn’t it funny how sometimes all the signs are right in front of us, but we don’t see them?

Was I praying about this decision? I don’t remember, honestly.

Looking back at this letter to Alan, it looks like the Lord telling my guardian angel to attempt to spare me this giant face-scrape on the sidewalk I was headed for.

“Hide her ticket. Take her to the wrong city. Gracious, don’t let her die while she’s driving so ridiculously fast trying to get somewhere she doesn’t even belong…”

Sometimes you just have to fall flat on your face to see more clearly, to snap out of your stupor.

July and August were a series of huge mistakes for me, mistakes that affected more than just myself, ones I regretted for years afterward. But, oh, how I grew!

I’ve heard it said, and you know it’s true: More people would learn from their mistakes, if they weren’t so busy denying them.

I’m not going to deny my mistakes here. Instead, I want to share them so perhaps you can learn from them too, but you’ll have to come back next Monday for my next big mistake. It actually had nothing to do with teaching.

Click here to read last week’s post and catch up on what you may have missed.

Go here to read the next post in this series.

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The post Letters to War June 24, 2003: The Teaching Test Troubles appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Back then I loved unpacking all the boxes.

Moving into a new house always makes me euphorically happy.
What could thrill a feminine soul more than a fresh new house full of possibilities?

I vividly remember each “not it” home we looked at when we arrived in Texas in January, 2003. But then we found “it.” We found THE ONE.

It was a duplex, only 1-year-old, out-of-the-way from town but close enough to one of the Fort Hood gates. The entire neighborhood was all new and brick and beautiful. We had the classic scraggly baby tree in the front yard and tiny backyard with a privacy fence.

Our front yard was smaller than most folks’ living room, but it didn’t matter. It was ours, together at last, and we loved it.

A three-bedroom duplex at 22-years-old might as well have been a mansion, we were so delighted with every bit of it.

Our first home together

When you choose a home, you are picking much more than a floor plan and a fence type.

You are selecting, usually completely blindly, the main characters for the next chapter of your life. If you live in a duplex, chances are your neighbors will be mighty close at hand, so you’d better hope there’s a good one or two in there.

I guess that’s what made life on John David Drive so incredibly happy. Living there was one of those experiences I look back on in a haze of rose-colored glasses. Those people were my battle buddies, and most of them could do no wrong.

Yes, we even named our fourth son after that street because even in the midst of the hardship of sending Alan overseas to the War on Terrorism, at the very beginning of the thing, there were fun times.

We were so young. In many ways, we grew up in that house.

I moved in as a newlywed girl, fresh out of college. I remember standing at my sink and marveling that I was truly a married woman with my very own house, in my very own kitchen, and I giggled in wonder that it was all real.

Our first kitchen

Meeting the Neighbors

Right off the bat, our new main characters began to materialize.

It didn’t take more than a night in our new home to realize that our duplex-mates had some serious problems.

Some duplexes may be built better than others, but this one had a terribly thin shared wall, and the main rooms that sound came through were the master bedroom, master bath, and the kitchen.

I think the kitchen and the master bedroom were the two primary places that our neighbors did their yelling matches. It was quickly apparent that their marriage was not going to survive the upcoming deployment.

The disruptive neighbors were Dylan and Shelby and their 3 children. The oldest child was around 13, and he was actually Shelby’s son from a previous relationship. The other children were Hannah, age 8, and Houston, age 5. Hannah and Houston were two of the most beautiful, sweetest, and quietest children I ever met.

Dylan was a staff sergeant in the 4th Infantry Division, so he would be leaving when Alan left too.

We never got to know Shelby well. Shelby was a terribly sad case. She was the angriest, most foul-mouthed woman I’ve ever heard. It was disturbing to listen to their fights because you knew that the children were having to listen to them too, and it just always seemed like Shelby was tearing her own life apart with her own two hands.

But across the street from me, I noticed something much different and unbelievably coincidental.

I noticed that the across-the-street neighbor’s car had Alabama plates. Remember, we were in Texas. Most everyone had Texas plates. But not only did she have Alabama tags, she had Dale County plates!!! You see, in Alabama, the first 2 numbers of the license plates tell which county the car is registered in.

This wasn’t just an Alabama girl, this was a South Alabama girl!! Like me!! I’d lived there my whole life. How could this be? I was clearly going to HAVE to meet this person.

When I am thrown into a new place, with new people, I become very reserved and quiet and shy. The very idea of knocking on her door was scary, but I had to do it. We had too much in common to not meet.

I’d already noticed, through my neighborly front window observations, that her husband was also in the 4th Infantry Division. So he would be going too.  I also observed that he was of similar rank to my husband.

There was no way around my curiosity and need to meet people before my husband left. I MUST march across the street and knock on her door. This was not the time to play it cool.

Elsie

What I met there was a bubbly, adorable young blonde named Elsie, a nursing student who loved cats. I’m saying that in the past tense, but I can assure you that Elsie still loves cats.

I think we were instant friends. The day I met Elsie, Alan hadn’t even officially signed in to his unit yet. When you move, it’s wise to put your house in order before you go reporting for work, if at all possible.

So it was Elsie who gave me my first expected timeline for when our husbands would be shipping out. She said they were expecting to go in three weeks.

3 weeks!? 3 weeks. Three. Only three.

You might think that I was reeling, or depressed, or that maybe I was a mess. But I wasn’t a mess.

I was sad that I was losing the husband that I had waited through almost 5 months of marriage to finally be with. Naturally, I was concerned about his well-being and unsure of what I would do next.

The thing is I’m a naturally happy person, so I never wallowed in any self-pity at this point. I liked that no one knew exactly when 4th ID would be leaving because that meant there was wiggle room, so I prayed. I prayed for more days constantly.

“Let me have as much time as possible with him. Lord, I’m afraid we’ll forget each other if we don’t have a little time together first. I’m going to focus on enjoying each day we are given.”

That was truly my attitude. It had to be. When you are in a bad situation that is completely out of your control, what is the point of worrying and being depressed? It would not have helped. By staying upbeat, we could go on enjoying date nights to El Chico together and planning our future in this new place.

putting together the bed frame

At that point, Alan was still with me, so I couldn’t truly be sad yet. Plus, we had our very first house to set up, so while the future looked gloomy, there was enough happiness in the present that the gloominess couldn’t touch us….yet.

Join us next Monday for the next part in this series!!

For last week’s chapter, when we learned about deployment orders, click here 

For Chapter 1 click here.

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The post Beginning to Meet the Real Army Wives of 2003 appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

One last basketball game with friends

The movers came and boxed us up.

Day 1: I promise our children do not normally consume sodas and play video games all day. Remember this was a manly trip…which really just means that I was not there, so don’t blame me. 😉

California: Do you see the train going into the tunnel? Look closely.

hangin’ with friends

There was an Avengers thing-a-majig going on there,.

And Caleb’s turn

Next Stop: North Rim of the Grand Canyon!!

Before the trip they thought the Grand Canyon was worth skipping. Ha! They get it now.

And on the road again…

I love these window landscape shots. The Southwest is uniquely beautiful.

This one made me laugh. Bless their hearts. Buy them some sunglasses!!

Once you finish chuckling over their eye covers, check out the FOUR CORNERS behind them: You can be in Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado all at the same time.

I’m thinking this is probably Colorado. I wasn’t there, and Alan’s outside building a trampoline, so I can’t ask him. Poor Alan. So glad I’m not the one with the big muscles that builds things.

Mesa Verde National Park

As I mentioned before, we learned about these Anasazi cliff-dwellers in school this year, so what a perfectly timed field trip.

When do I get to go see this because I want to too!

This part would have been my favorite!

On the road again, just can’t wait to get back on the road again….

Next Stop: Oklahoma City

It just might’ve been his best birthday ever. And no, we’ve never been Braves fans, but I thought it went along with the whole becoming Southern thing. He approved. He also loved his bat bag and baseball cards.

They went to an OKC Dodgers (minor league baseball) game. Caleb is crazy for baseball this year.

It was a double-header, so Alan even got them a hotel where they could watch the game from their hotel room. Nice!

Well, iHop is a close second. Mmmm

Oh yeah, and Alan also took them to Pops, a soda pop factory/store. (Thanks for all the ideas, Greg!) They brought back a cooler full of sodas too. I might as well go ahead and schedule their dental appointments. No, it hasn’t been a full 6 months, but there was this trip.

On to Arkansas…

By this point, Alan was speeding the trip along, so they just whipped right through Arkansas, and on to Tennessee:

We were all intrigued to see what this giant pyramid was, and it turned out to be a BASS PRO SHOPS!! Haha!

And no trip to Bammer is complete without a visit to Bryant-Denny. (That’s the University of Alabama football stadium, for all you non-southerners or non football fans.)

They had to shield their eyes from the glitter of all those national championship trophies. hehe Roll Tide!

And finally, they arrived and reunited with Mom and little brothers!

We enjoyed being together for a couple of days, all of us as a family in our new house. But our work is not done. Alan, Joshua, and Caleb are over at my parents’ house, helping them move, and Joshua and Caleb are going to stay for the rest of the week. They are super excited because the Wii died in the fire, so Grandaddy has promised to buy an x-box for their house.

Happy Summer, y’all!!

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