perspective

Dan's a veteran. We lived on a military base for four years. As Captain Fulkerson he was an emergency room physician. You can see him pictured above in his emergency gear. Yeah, as a civilian it was wayyy reassuring that all of the active duty folks were issued gas masks...I kind of wondered where mine and the kids' were, just in case...

You can imagine how *easy* it was to treat patients dressed that way.

Anyway, those years were a fantastic education for me about what it really means to sacrifice. Of course ours were small sacrifices in the grand scheme of things - I in no way mean to say that our experience even begins to approach that of the men and women who lose their lives or their health during their time of service. These are definately lower-case sacrifices I'm referring to.

Being in the military (or being married to someone who is) means being told where to live. It means you don't know for sure when you're moving until you have orders, and those orders can most certainly be changed. Multiple times. (Oh how our families celebrated when orders were cut sending Dan to a base near Las Vegas, Nevada...only to be changed to a remote base in northern Japan a few weeks later.)

It means your children will change schools every few grades.

It means being told you have to wait for your belongings to arrive --- on the government's watch. ( We all heard stories of entire crates worth of household goods disappearing, never to be seen again.)

It means limited choices - in clothing, toiletries, shoes, movies, books, you get the gist. (We were active duty just before it became possible to order anything and everything online!)

It means being assigned to your doctors and dentists and often waiting a looong time for appointments. It means specialists are only available a few times a year (so you'd better pray that your child's facial injury happens when the plastic surgeon happens to be in town).

It means holidays alone and learning to make new traditions.

It means that your friends will come and go at a dizzying rate.

It means knowing that your friends may never see their spouse alive again, and trying to figure out how to be encouraging to them as they sweat out those deployment months.

It means that lots of households morph into single-parent families for six months to a year at a time-- over and over again-- during their years of service.

It means the US government is in charge of every element of your life. If you can recall going to the BMV or the post office then you can appreciate having similar experiences with all of your family's healthcare and housing needs.

Stop and ponder that for a moment...

Yeah.

Dan has been a civilian for several years now. I am so proud that he served our country. If he hadn't I would never have had the same appreciation for our great nation. We have many friends whose families are still living an active duty military life and we are so thankful for all that they do. Their sacrifices, great and small, keep us free.

Thank you, Veterans! Dad, Grandpa Krou, Engen, and especially our Dan....we love you and are so proud of all of you!