I could get used to this.

Six years ago, I spent my first Thanksgiving as a newlywed baking with a girlfriend in the first tiny apartment that my husband and I rented. 

Pretty sure we didn't make a turkey, so I'm not sure what she's carving!

Then I spent my first Christmas as a newlywed back in Ohio with my parents, with only a brief phone call from my husband who was floating somewhere in the middle of the Caribbean.  I enjoyed an email on New Year's eve, but I made big plans to celebrate our first Valentine's day together when he finally returned.  It's been hit or miss, in the six years since that first Christmas, if he's home for any particular holiday or family celebration.  I knew, or at least I thought I understood, what I was getting myself into when I married a man in the Coast Guard.  I've shared holidays with friends, taken in stray non-rates for holidays, moved 600 miles on Christmas Eve, but thankfully I've never been alone.  It's been an adventure for sure!

This past summer, Ryan transferred to a land-based billet where he doesn't stand duty.  This is a first for us, a first for him, and quite a treat, after 10 years of boats and standing watch, sometimes every other day/night.  He's been home for birthdays and holidays, and barring some sort of national disaster, he should be home for all the holidays for the next thee years.  It's likely he'll be present when our third child is born, and even have some time off to help me recover and adjust to life with three boys.  While this is considered standard in the civilian world, it's a total luxury for active duty. 

So for our Thanksgiving, we decided to relax and celebrate, just the four of us.  The boys and I baked pies in the morning, and then they watched football with Ryan while I made a roasted chicken, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, and mashed potatoes.  I even made gravy from scratch, with no lumps.  I'm a veritable Suzy-homemaker.  

 I meant to take a picture BEFORE we started serving....

Pete decorated the pie- that's a gingerbread man and hearts on Daddy's cherry pie.

Please note: there aren't even cracks in my beautiful pumpkin pie.

I could get used to this, and what's even worse, I will get used to this, only to be left behind in three years when Ryan goes back to sea.  It is the Coast Guard, it is a sea-going service, and what's even worse (or maybe better) it's what Ryan loves to do.  He enjoy his time on the boat, out in the middle of the ocean.  While some Coasties try for a station or other land jobs, Ryan would spend all his tours on a boat if he could.  So I'll just enjoy my three year break, full-well knowing that I'll be left behind in three years to begin celebrating all our holidays a week, or a month or a few months late again. 

A little note from my friend Kristy

The true financial costs of military service

by Kristy McGinnis on Thursday, August 18, 2011 at 7:25pm

So many articles, blog entries and editorials have focused on the physical, emotional, and mental toll a 20+ yr military career can take - and why the current 20 yr pay out retirement system is a necessary result of that toll. I'd like to focus on another aspect, in this military-civilian comparison game. The financial toll this career takes on a family.


While my civilian counterparts have been busy working hard and establishing their careers- enjoying the long term savings and job security that comes with tenure in any field, I find myself (once again) pounding hoof to the pavement. I apply to jobs I went to school for (actually 3 schools, in 3 states and 6 yrs, to get that associates degree.) Paralegal, legal assistant, legal secretary, even clerk positions. When I can get my foot in the door for an interview, I find myself grasping to explain the inevitable employment gaps all military spouses experiment. Why no, I don't have any local legal contacts. I didn't go that that great local college with the job partnership opportunity this firm participates in. I don't meet all of this states special certification requirements (yet.)


I look to retail jobs ("Yes, it's true my application reflects a varied job background but there's a reason for that..."), entry level office jobs ("What brings me to Hawaii? Well... err.... my husbands job...."), usually at some point I find myself looking to food and beverage positions (jobs I'm frankly getting a little too old and too arthritic to do for long!)


While my friends from "back home" have established careers, and socked away nice little nest eggs in their own 401K type plans, I have found work when and where I could- and have simply waited with faith that one day my husband's military pension along with the modest TSP we pay into would support us in our old age. My friends and their spouses will both enjoy retirement plans eventually, that they certainly earned- in our family though, I will have to be content to simply share my husbands.


The financial hits don't stop there. You see, as my civilian counterparts were working so hard at establishing their careers (and their own retirement plans) they are also enjoying another perk of stability and long-term residency. They are home owners. They started with a patient starter home and every 7 or 8 yrs they steadily upgraded, earning equity and increased credit worthiness with each upgrade. My family on the other hand, transfers every 2 to 4 years on average, and those transfers are never local. We have no owned home, no equity to enjoy. Many military families find themselves home owners eventually- only to get orders out and find they actually lose money on trying to unload said home in time to transfer out on their required military orders. We know we will not have 30 years of home ownership, to set us up in an already well financed house when we are ready to retire. Here is the thing- most of us don't resent that, we accept it as part of this life style. It's a financial price to pay, but one that is mitigated- at year 20, when finally said service member is eligible for retirement. Don't have a home 3/4 paid off by then? Not the end of the world- that retirement check will help pay for that house, as you take on a second (hopefully less punishing to the body) career.


There are incalculable financial losses over a career- setting up a new home every 2-4 yrs is not cheap even with moving allowances. New curtains, new appliances if need be, replacing broken items from the less than careful household goods movers. There are the pricey but necessary special tutors for the child who left one school district to find the new one had very different expectations. The tens of thousands of dollars spent over a career just to get home once every few years to visit Grandma. "The life" isn't always cheap- but on most days it is worth it. Always, with the knowledge in the back of your mind the financial hits will be reimbursed someday- "someday" being at around year 20.


The proposed 401K nonsense isn't just an insult because of the physical and mental stresses service members face- but because it fails to compensate those members and their families for the financial hits a "military career" exacts.


-Kristy McGinnis


So I have a little to add:  I did everything "in order" in my life.  I went to college and grad school, started a demanding but lucrative career, met and married a great guy, passed my CPA exam and then had children.  I started a nest egg for my retirement.  So I didn't face as many of the challenges that Kristy and other wives face as they struggle to finish a degree and start a career while moving every 18-36 months. 

However, compared to my other friends who moved near home after college, I have certainly had additional challenges and costs.  I left two jobs just before an important and lucrative promotion.  I paid daycare, full-time, when my friends had Grandma or a sister to help watch the kids for much less than full-time daycare.  I hired an extra nanny to pick up my baby and give me an extra few hours at work when it became impossible to have both dropoff and pick-up responsibilities with a husband out to sea and 50+ hours a week in the office.  I signed up for these extra expenses when marrying a man in military service, so I don't begrudge the Coast Guard, but we did our math to accept them based on the current contract he signed.

My husband has been offered jobs two and three times his current salary to leave the Coast Guard.  We discuss the offers,and each time, turn them down because the stability of his current paycheck, and the PROMISE of a comfortable retirement make up for our current sacrifices.  He has ten years in, just ten more years to go before we can settle into our forever home, begin building equity, send the boys to high school all four years in one school, and allow me to re-join my career as a CPA, without explaining to my clients that I'll probably have to  move again in two years.

The pension makes many of our sacrifices worth the costs of our current lifestyle.  I don't disagree with changes for future recruits, but he idea of changing the contract that Ryan and thousands of others signed 10 years ago is ridiculous.  Anything but a grandfather clause for current members is a sick joke.  Talk of transition plans with a payout for current members into their "new 401K" plan cannot possibly come up with an appropriate amount to compensate what I've lost financilly in my career due to our choice for Ryan to stay in the Coast Guard.  He's served 10 years at sea with 10 more to go and based on the current retirement plan, and though we'll never be rich, we planned a simple, modest retirement.  If they change the plan, he'll get out and we'll begin the process of mitigating the damage done to our long-term plans.  But we'll be 10 years behind.

Prepare to cry.

First, watch this video, then continue.

That was just one of many tributes on Youtube to DC3 Nathan Bruckental, and as you know now, he was killed in action in 2004, leaving behind a wife and daughter and countless other loving family members and friends.  It happened just a few months after I met my (now) husband, and was a bit of a wake-up call to me that the Coast Guard isn't just the guys in Cleveland who make the PSA each spring about wearing your life jacket during boating season.  Though I am thankful Ryan isn't overseas today, there are plenty of people who are, and some of them won't be coming back alive. 

To our veterans from the current and past wars and during peacetime, thank you for you service.

To the families who stay behind, hoping, worrying, and praying, our thoughts are with you.  I'm pretty sure we (the families) all feel a little like that could be us next, that could be the knock at our door.

To the mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, children who've lost a Soldier, Sailor, Marine, Airman or Coastie, we can never thank you enough for your sacrifice. 

I know I'm hormonal, but I'll be crying tomorrow at the parade, and if it's anything like the parade in my hometown, it likely ends at the cemetery where a bugle will play taps and I'll cry again.  We'll be thinking of you Bruckental family, Nate is gone but not forgotten.

Pete's first love reunited!

Pete's first date was pretty sweet, for a three month old.  He even scored an older chick!  TPK was about eight months old when Pete took her to the 7/11 and a Kenny Chesney concert, and of course, as responsible mothers, we chaperoned.  Sadly, he lost any chance he had of getting lucky when he fell asleep for most of the concert.  And the breasts he spent the most time with that night were mine. 

She must have forgiven him for falling asleep during the concert, because TPK invited Pete over for some tummy-time a few weeks later.  She even used the flirty "gently brush his hair back from his eyes" technique.  He responded with raspberry lips.  He was totally into her. 

In true Coast Guard fashion, TPK sadly moved away after their summer fling, and we only ever saw her status updates on facebook.  Pete moved to Boston later that year too, and made plenty of male friends, but never found another girlfriend like TPK.  Three years later, we got a message that Pete's girlfriend was being transferred to Massachusetts!  The Coast Guard is famous (our infamous) for being so small that you continually run into the same people over and over during the course of a 20+ year career.  In this case, Pete's first love returns and is living just over an hour South of us.

I picked up the K family from the airport and we enjoyed dinner grilled in the backyard by my fabulous husband.  TPK and TPK2 (her little brother) made fast friends with OMC, Pete and Chester too.  All the kids got along famously, playing on the slides.  Pete even scored a kiss from his old flame!  JBC and I are already planning lots of trips to Cape Cod for summer playdates.  Forgive the pictures, I couldn't get them to stand still long enough to take a good picture.