Update: Little Black Dress

I am so grateful to everyone and their ideas for where to get dresses for formal military occasions that are modest, modern, and not a bridesmaid or prom dress.  I thought I would pass along another one that I found, Shabby Apple.  www.shabbyapple.com  Like a lot of the sites you suggested, they don't have a huge selection, but if you are looking for a little black dress that would work for a variety of semi-formal to formal events, she has some good stuff.  She also has maternity dresses and doesn't charge for shipping if you are exchanging a dress because it is the wrong size!  Some of the other retailers that were also suggested and have some great stuff include, MikaRose, Sydneys Closet, and big department stores if you happen to be in the intermountain west.

Resources You May Not Know You Have

There are so many great resources out there for military families, but I want to highlight one, that you might not think of, yet has been involved with helping military families since its inception, the Red Cross.  Most people think of the Red Cross for their work in blood collection, first aid classes, or disaster relief, but if your spouse or loved one is deployed or off on training where it is difficult to contact them, the Red Cross is set up to get a message to that service member if there has been a death or other family emergency.

Beyond that, they can offer confidential counseling, financial aid, and their website has some great checklists and reminders of what to expect as a spouse during deployment and when they come home (which can be almost as rough if you aren't prepared.)

Additionally, the Red Cross is a great organization to get involved with and volunteer.  I had the opportunity before I was married to act as a Red Cross volunteer in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina.  It was an amazing experience that changed my life, but you don't have to go half way around the country to have service opportunities.  Most Red Cross offices rely on their local volunteers to make their offices run, so if you are looking for a way to serve an organization that serves you, look into the Red Cross.

Book Review: Three Cups of Tea

Many of our spouses have spent time in Iraq or Afghanistan, and in the coming years, many of them will probably return.  So much of the news is that comes out of that region of the world is so incredibly horrible, American casualties, civilian casualties, insurgency, civil war that it becomes very difficult to remember the people our spouses and our country are doing this for.

The book Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson is an amazing chronicle of a former mountaineer's work to build schools for the children, and especially the girls of rural Afghanistan and Pakistan.  On his descent after a failed attempt at climbing K2, the second highest mountain in the world, Greg Mortenson became separated from the rest of his party in the Pakistani wilderness.  He stumbles upon a very small poverty stricken village where he is fellowshipped, feed, and nursed back to health.  While there, the village leader shows him their school where the children are huddled underneath a tree, using sticks to write in the dirt.  Their teacher is away teaching at another village, and so they come to work on their lessons anyway.  Mortenson becomes determined to build a school to serve these children and improve the quality of life for the entire village.  Over the next ten years, he has managed not only to build one school, but over fifty-five and a number of other projects including fresh water and vocational centers.  His story is inspiring, but it also gave me a totally new perspective on Islam, and how keeping promises can combat hate.  I know many of our spouses have the same opportunities to show the communities they serve in the Middle East, that we do want to make their lives better, and even though we maybe be infidels, we can show that we are all brothers and sisters.

If you'd like more information about Mortenson's Central Asia Institute, please visit their website.

Moving, Stuff, and Food Storage Ideas

We moved to our current duty station 6 months ago from a tiny 500 square foot apartment with the plan, goal and determination, that our stuff would not expand with a bigger place.  I was looking in our closets the other day, and I was floored.  Where did all this stuff come from?  How did we get so much stuff?  I usually have this reaction right before a move, but I have decided to institute a new plan to help us control our "stuff" before it becomes a moving nightmare.  This is not an idea I came up with but the plan is, birthdays are for getting, half birthdays are for giving.  So we are going to start with my half birthday since it comes up first, I am going to go through my closets, and some of my other stuff, and get rid of it, donate it to Goodwill and not get more.  I figure our 6 month anniversary will be a good time to go through family stuff and try to figure out what family stuff needs to be purged.

Also on a moving note... Crate moves.  I haven't had to do this yet since our only move has been a ditty move, but it is my understanding that a crate move is the way to go.  This is where they bring giant wooden crates, kind of like PODS, on a flat bed truck, the movers fill them up with your stuff and then they ship the crates to your new duty station. If you are moving to or from OCONUS, you will automatically get a crate move, but even if you are moving within CONUS, you can request a crate move.  The reason this is better is that in a regular move, your stuff is put on a truck, taken to a warehouse, put on another truck, taken to another warehouse, sometimes several times before it gets to you.  That is so many more opportunities for things to get broken, lost, damaged.  So it is something to think about when your next orders come.

Finally, food storage.  Food storage  is difficult with moving all the time and weight limits for rank, but this is an idea that I got from my in-laws that can make at least canned goods food storage easier to deal with.  At the holidays when all of the food banks are doing their food drives, you purge all of the canned food you have (except for what you are going to use up in that next month.)  Then in January when grocery stores and the commissary often have case lot sales, you buy what you will need for the coming year.  And then you just repeat the cycle.  I know that a lot of us don't have the room or the money for a year's worth of corn and peaches.  The nice thing about buying cases is they fit really well under beds and they are easy to stack in closets.  One thing you can try to make it easier to handle the cost is to take $5 out of your grocery money every week and save it for this purpose.  If you can save $5 a week for a year, you will have $260 saved up for canned goods.  If you will be moving soon, only buy 6 months or 3 months and save the rest of the money to stock up when you reach your new post.  Another idea would be to use when you should be getting new orders as your purge - buy new stuff, point.  If you know you have orders for two years at a certain duty station and you will (assuming things don't change which they probably will) be moving sometime in April, then choose April to be the time you are finishing up the food you have and donating what is left.

I'd love to hear any ideas or comments you have on these things!

Holiday Traditions

First off, a huge apology for being such a slacker.  I don't even have a good excuse, I have been off work, haven't really been traveling, only sort of had family in town.  But my new year's resolution is to do better about blogging!

So on to holiday traditions.  Without children and only having been married for a couple of years, holidays have been fun, but we haven't really figured out what our holiday traditions are.  This year we had my spouse's sister and her family stay with us over Christmas and it was fun to start figuring out some traditions.  And we finally have a real house to decorate, so that added to the fun.

We figured out a traditional Christmas morning breakfast, and that we like to do the big dinner on Christmas Eve and then do the Christmas story.  Open presents on Christmas morning and then do stockings on Christmas night.

So what traditions do you have?  How have you made them work with different moves and deployments?