Army Report | All things Army, from soldiers in country to Army wives

Emo girls and bummed out boys

Just because you choose a certain life doesn’t mean you have to love every piece of said life. My husband and I separately chose the military life back in the nineties. We lived it singly and as a married couple and enjoyed our time immensely. We lived the National Guard (two deployments) life as a couple and as parents and now we are back to active duty as parents.

When it’s just you or just you and your spouse then it’s not so bad. Actually, my husband and I use to joke that with field missions and deployments it’s like you get repeated honeymoons! Woohoo, that’s a bonus. The hard part comes when you have kids; becoming parents changes everything.

None of our kids are old enough to actually remember a deployment with more than extremely vague memories. When my husband went to a school in 2010 the bigs were old enough to know what was going and realize that daddy wasn’t going to be home for a while. Our son is pretty easy going but he was a little more emotional than normal during that time. I was attempting to potty train our daughter at the time, bad idea. There were too many accidents to count and the crying increased.

Currently my husband is on a training mission where he’s been for a couple of weeks and we still have another week left. In all reality a three week mission isn’t bad; it’s rather short in the grand scheme of things. Here at the Swink household it’s FOREVER though! Our son is bummed but not stressing too much, our oldest daughter is exceedingly emotional and cries about everything under the sun, and our baby girl cries and runs to the garage every time the door opens calling for daddy.

The emotions are running high and I can’t wait for my husband to get home! We are trying to look at this in a good light and think of it as getting ready for a deployment when it happens. It doesn’t make it any easier though. We did choose this life for ourselves and for our family but it doesn’t make it easy to watch as my kiddos go through pain and learn how to deal with the changes that come with a military life.

Savings!

Woohoo! I found a new place to save, which is always cause for celebration around here. Not only did I find a way to save money but it’s something that we spend money on every month anyway. Did you know that the first Saturday of the month our local Albertson’s gives a 10% discount to military?

Ok, ok…so I know that we have the commissary to use. It’s cool and the whole “not paying tax” thing but the 6% surcharge they tack on the end isn’t exactly wonderful. Since we don’t live on base and going to the local stores are a bit more convenient then I tend to look for sales and deals wherever I can. I don’t typically shop Albertson’s but just happened to glance at their flyer and saw the discount. Super cool!

They often have some great deals going on at the same time. If you take advantage of the sales that are going on and combine them with the 10% discount you can save a ton of money. The first time I took advantage of this combined savings my total savings came close to $50.00. I’ll take that all day long! I’m a huge fan of saving money. The money saved on groceries can be used to go to other things: lessons for the kids, something fun for the husband and I, any number of things would greatly benefit from a few extra dollars in the envelope.

Go ahead and check your local grocery stores and see if they offer a discount; they may do it every day, weekly, monthly, or possibly just yearly. It never hurts to ask and it could always help!

Grant Library

It’s taken us a few months to actually check out the post Library but we finally made it there a week ago. There are a number of positives about the library but as with anything there are a few negatives as well. Let’s break it down:

Positives:

Free wifi - available even out on the patio so you can use it even when the library is closed
Children’s area – has some great books (obviously) and four dedicated computers for the young ‘uns. Story time - 10:30 a.m. for preschoolers
Reading Club – a group that meets once a month to discuss a selection for adults and a summer reading program for the kiddos.
Computers – I didn’t actually count how many but I know there a quite a few for use.
Study Rooms – They have cubicles you can sit in as well as actual rooms to use if you need a quiet place to study or read.
Free magazines – I’m really fond of this one since I love magazines. They have a stack near the front door so you can take them on your way out.

Negatives:

In all honesty there isn’t much that’s negative about this library. The one big thing that is particularly annoying is the weird balance in genres. I know that much of what is carried are the current popular picks but the overabundance of vampire books is annoying. There is a huge selection of them right in the middle of the library. I’ve read a few vampire books in my time but I’m not obsessed with them; and in all actuality believe many of them aren’t well written but rather are just written to take advantage of the recent popularity. My husband went looking for some good books to take to the field with him and found possibly a handful written by Christian authors. The selection for this genre was almost nonexistent and since that’s what we prefer it makes it a bit harder.

Overall it’s a great library and I can see us spending a ton of time there. We will definitely take advantage of the story times and I would love to get involved in the book club. Perhaps I can spend a night out a month talking to other grown-ups (rather than the 6 and under crowd) about grown-up things! Check out your local library!

Mountain Post Wellness Center

Last week I had a chance to visit the Mountain Post Wellness Center for a class. It’s the first time I’d been there and I was pleasantly surprised to see everything they had to offer. The offerings include a gym, nutrition classes, tobacco cessation class, stress management, and a host of others. The staff is pretty nice and super helpful with getting the soldiers, families, and retirees the assistance they need.

During the class I took, one of the physicians spoke of a new system that will soon be in place that will allow better communication between the patient and their health care team as well as more comprehensive care for patients. The Fort Carson website states that, "We provide treatment for health promotion and prevention as well as education, and we partner with patients' primary care managers to ensure clear health goals are advanced between office visits. The providers include nurse practitioners, physician assistants, a nurse and health technicians.” That’s a pretty wide range of people working together to ensure the best possible health for military families.

There are a few more classes or services I would like to take advantage of at the wellness center. The weight management program will be beneficial as I try to get back in shape after three kids. This program includes everything from healthy cooking to fitness counseling as well as a gait analysis to ensure that my running shoes are the best ones for me.

Another service I am interested in is the Migun relaxation bed that has heated stones and massage heads…that sounds absolutely lovely! I think that may be a perfect way to help ease some of the stress that our lives bring on. If you live near Fort Carson it may be well worth your effort to check out the Wellness Center; I’m not sure of the offerings on other bases but it very well could pay off to do a little research. Go get well!

Watching the door

He made it through!

If you remember last week I reported that Swink1 was headed out to the Team Member Stakes. He made it home and in one piece but not without some issues. Apparently this particular exercise was rather difficult and a few soldiers were injured though not severely. He said that this past Tuesday was probably one of the hardest days he has had in his 13 years in the Army. That is saying a lot for a guy who was once a medic with an infantry unit and has been to Iraq twice.

On the home front it was life as usual. We go about our daily lives of school (here at home), cleaning, cooking, and a trip out and about if the weather is decent enough. It gets pretty hard keeping three kids entertained and their energy expelled when it’s too cold to take them out. Spring and summer need to HURRY UP! I need to be outside much more than I currently am and so do the kids.

The hardest part of him being gone is how it affects the kids. As I shared last time our older two deal rather well with daddy being gone since they have had more experience with it. Our baby had a hard time since she would rather daddy be the one to put her to bed at night and she can usually be found attached to him when he is home. I think the part that saddens me the most is the door. Every time someone opened the garage door she would run (on her little 18 month old legs) to the door calling, “Dada…dada,” and when he wasn’t there the sadness on her little face tore at my heart.

The positive thing about him traveling though is that we cherish the times together so much more. I love the fact that when he is home my husband is really home. He talks to the kids, reads to them, plays with them, and just all around loves on them. They enjoy being with their daddy and will seek him out just to be with him. They are incredibly blessed to have such a great dad and I am incredibly blessed to have such a great husband.

Upcoming excitement

Things have been quite chill here this past week. My husband made it through the CLS class in nice fashion and that was that. No classes this week and not much excitement going on here just the same ol’ same ol’. Next week will see things get quite a bit more interesting though and slightly busy.

The unit will be doing Team Member Stakes this coming week. What exactly is that? Apparently it is three looooooooong days of stress and lack of sleep. Tuesday morning they will start out with a PT test then move straight into a ruck march to a land navigation course. Doesn’t that sound like fun? Oh yeah! Ok…did anyone else catch the sarcasm in that last little bit? That’s just Tuesday.

I have absolutely no clue what will be going on the other two days but suffice it to say that it shall be a time to test the skills of the techs. These stakes will set a ranking system within the company that will determine what the individual soldiers need to work on and allow more appropriate training to occur. It sounds like a perfect chance to mess with a bunch of soldiers and make their lives crazy for a few days!

The best part about this week? It’s going to be cold…very cold. Tuesday night the low is expected to be around 16 and won’t get that much better the following night. I don’t envy these guys (and the few girls) that will be spending their time out there freezing their butts off and doing lots of good training.

Here on the home front it’ll be interesting without daddy around. Our littlest one is uber attached to her daddy and doesn’t like him being gone. Our older two aren’t really fond of it but are more used to it than the baby. I guess this is good practice for train up time and ultimately deployment since, as we all know; with the Army comes deployment. All will be well here and in the field. The Army life marches on!

Ironic much?

Sometimes I find the Army highly ironic. This week has brought an absolutely lovely chance for laughter around here. My husband joined the Army back in ’97 as a Combat Medic; many years of active duty, more years in the National Guard, two deployments, and a decision to rejoin active duty later he is now an EOD tech. Major change huh? Actually, as I tell him it’s not that much different; before he was saving one life at a time…now he has the opportunity to save multiple lives at a time.

While a medic, he became certified as a Combat Life Saver Instructor & taught many, many people the helpful skills of a CLS. Now the interesting part: this week he (along with the rest of his company) is taking a class. Wanna know what class? Ding, ding, ding…you guessed it: Combat Life Saver. So, does this strike anyone else as humorous? The man is certified to teach the class, is a former medic (he just has to recertify as an EMT to get maintain his medic status) but he will be sitting through the class as though he has never seen an IV before in his life. I find this ironic & slightly funny. He has a great attitude about it. No big deal to him at all, just another day.

So while I think this is slightly funny as well as slightly annoying, it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. He brushes up on some skills, goes through a class with his company, and gets some promotion points for good measure. Yay!

Slightly disconnected

" I should probably be a little more proactive in finding out what is going on around base."

At our current post we don’t live on base and while I am actually quite happy about that, it does have a few slight disadvantages. Military housing? Not so much a disadvantage. Some of them are quite nice but talk about cookie cutter… Having no clue what is going on in the military community at large? Yep, this one is quite a disadvantage. I like being plugged in and participating in local events and functions and it’s a little harder to do when you don’t live on base.

At our previous duty station we lived in military housing though not technically on the base (not in the gates) but less than 5 minutes away. We took weekly trips to the library and since there was a pretty neat park and a great beach we were there more often most weeks. It was easy to grab the base newspaper and keep up to date on the local happenings. Here, we live at least 15 to 20 minutes away; I have no clue where the library is and have laid eyes on the base paper possibly three times. Though my husband in there every day for work I typically go once every two weeks or so. I don’t normally shop at the commissary or the PX so trips are usually limited to the recycling center, the doctor, or my son’s Cub Scout meetings.

I should probably be a little more proactive in finding out what is going on around base. We are trying to foster friendships for our children and to do so, it might help if I actually take them to places where they can meet other kids! I think I’ll check out the website tonight and possibly schedule a trip to the base library this week. Disconnectedness is not a fun feeling so I’ll pull myself out of this little funk and get to it! Oh, tidbit…just found out that I can view the local paper online, score!

Check out the Recycling!

There’s not too much going on around here these days. Our house has been filled with family the past week and the base (when we venture over that way) seems to be somewhat of a ghost town. Ok, so it’s not really that bad but you know what I mean. There are fewer people driving the roads, fewer people hanging out at the PX and fewer people grabbing groceries at the commissary. It seems like a slower pace without so much crowding going on…kinda nice!

Ft. Carson has an awesome recycling center so we try to take advantage of that and from our trips over there this week it seems like a lot of other people are taking advantage of it too. I have Rubbermaid tubs set up in the garage for all of our recyclable materials to go into and when they get full (or more accurately, overflowing) we take them in. The past few weeks’ worth of recycling combined with the ridiculous amount of cardboard from presents meant a trip over there to send it on its way. During my first trip of the week we weren’t able to drop any plastic off since the bins were completely full so that necessitated a return trip today to get rid of the rest of it.

Although I don’t have the exact numbers (I’m still looking for those), during a conversation with an employee at the center I discovered that the recycling program nets the base a substantial sum of money. We’re talking millions…and that’s a pretty darn good number if you ask me! Again, I don’t have exact numbers but it seems the program is working to reduce the amount of products that end up in landfills as well as make money for the base. I also learned that if certain pieces of wrong material get mixed up in the bins then the entire bin must go to the landfill. If an electronic component is found in the plastics container, then the entire container is considered contaminated and must be disposed of rather than recycled.

If you have a recycling program near you, I encourage you to take advantage of it. Also, please be mindful that you place the correct items in the bins. Happy recycling and Happy New Year!

Half Days…woohoo!!

Ahhh…Christmas exodus, where thousands of soldiers take leave to go spend the holidays with their family. The ones who choose not to take leave at this time usually have a couple of pretty easy weeks of half days filled with a whole bunch of nothing. My dear husband on the other hand isn’t quite so lucky.

Since we had no plans to go anywhere he didn’t take leave. Since his unit must have a response team in case of bomb threats guess who got put on the team? Yep, you guessed it…he did. What does this mean? Not a lot, actually. It just means that instead of getting off work early everyday he gets to sit around and wait for a call. There haven’t been any calls as of yet so that just leaves a ton of sitting around to be done. Sitting around and finding things to do to keep busy. Thus far he has been tasked with building some signs for his unit and he has decided to also use the time to put together his “I love me” book as well as build some shelving units for his platoon. All in all it seems as though he is keeping busy at work.

Here at home we are going about the normal, “hurry up and get ready for visitors” Christmas baking and cleaning. Tree is decorated (has been for a while), presents are wrapped, crafts are ongoing, wreaths have been made and hung (super cool from lima beans), cookies have been baked and decorated and the house is being scrubbed. We are trying to watch some of the classic Christmas movies and have gone out to look at lights.

Thankfully, even though he is on duty this week he will still get the awesome back to back 4 day weekends! We are looking forward to hanging out and spending lots of time exploring and visiting with family and friends. I am loving that this Christmas there are no deployments to contend with and we are enjoying our time together.

Lovely lazy days of the Christmas exodus.

Pages