Veteran's Day/military life

I miss being a military family. Rick was active duty air force when we got married, and he was stationed in England. I was only there nine months and Ashley (step daughter) was living with Rick at that time. Then we went to Grand Forks AFB, ND, and Ashley went back to her mother as previously arranged. Tyler and Jessica were born in ND. From there we went to Okinawa. Jessica was around 2 mo old and Tyler was about 15 mo old. We only stayed there 9 mo. because Tyler needed some therapy they didn't provide at his age. Doing it over, we would have stayed there and worked with him at home until he was 3 and could get therapy in the school.

We were sent to SD in August/Sept 1992. It was a good base, but cold. We were pretty much in the shadow of Mt. Rushmore. While there, we adopted Adam. We got orders for England, and Rick went Dec 1995. We had to wait to finalize Adam's adoption before we could get him a passport, and the passport office went on strike before it was processed! So the three kids and I went to England February 1996.

We added Jeff to our family while we were in England, and we lived in four houses on three four different bases although Rick was stationed at Mildenhall. We stayed there until July 1999 when we went to Moody AFB in GA. We adopted Jasmine there, and Rick retired from that base. He didn't want to retire, but his rank was being retired at 20 years at that time. Right after that the US got into it in the middle east again, and enlisted were allowed to stay in longer, but he was already out.

And I miss it. I'm so ready to move again and see something new. I'd love to go back to England or to Italy or back to Okinawa or to Hawaii or even to Alaska because it would be different. Oh well. Those days are past.
So now we go to the parade as civilian's.

We are a bit conspicuous. In fact, the TV guys recognized us from our few minutes of fame last January.

Of course since we sat outside of McDonalds, those with free coupons from the monopoly game went in and got food.

The parade was supposed to start at 9:00 but it really started at about 9:40.

The big morning parade was downtown. There is a second smaller parade in our town this afternoon and some of the kids are going to ride down with Rick. There are free hot dogs and music in the park afterwards. Some of us are staying here to work on projects.

Jessica made this pillow for Tyler from old jeans. He was being funny.

Jessica is selling hats for money for her mission trip. These are infant ones and they are really tiny. They are $4 +$1 shipping.

These toddler hats are also $4 + $1 shipping.

These are child/preteen ones and are $5 + $1

She will make adult ones to order for $6 + $1