My New Year Resolution!

I would be willing to bet many of you saw this title and were surprised for 2 reasons - first, you were probably shocked to see I am actually blogging!  And secondly, you probably think I am very confused to be blogging about a new year in July!   In many ways, it is a new year for the Cole family.  Yesterday morning my soldier, my husband, the "Brats" Daddy, got on an airplane to fly to "a-land-far-far-away" to serve his country.  He's only been gone 24 hours, but yea, we miss him a whole bunch already! 

I am trying not to think a year, but think of this as 52 weekends.  Weekends are the worst part - during the week, everyone is working, in school, and life is pretty much business as usual.  But the weekends are tough, because that is family time, and we are painfully aware that our family is not together. The other thing that's hard is holidays, so I'm thinking of this as 52 weekends and one of each holiday.  All we have to do is get through one of each holiday - one Christmas, one of everybody's birthday... etc.  But, even if you look at it as one of each holiday and 52 weekends, or a year, it's still a long time!

So, I am trying to be more intentional about blogging in this "New Year".  I am hoping maybe Daddy can see our blog in his far away land.  But, I am also doing this to keep busy, to keep a record of our year apart. 

I had someone tell me just the other day she could never be an Army wife.  She said we are made a tough stuff, and she just couldn't do it. I thought about that for a while after she left, and I realized how many people really don't understand military life.  If you think we are made out of something different than the rest of the world, that's not true.  We just happen to love a soldier - that's the only difference.  We cry when we are sad, our children misbehave, and we will all walk around with a little piece of our hearts missing until we are together again. 

This was the last picture taken of our family as a "whole".   Only 52 more weekends and a bunch of "ones" until we are together again.