Then I sat and thought about how little we've gotten to celebrate together through the years. I mentioned this year will be the third in a row that we'll get to celebrate my birthday today (barring any inevitable changes or delays with the military and traveling). We started dating nearly 7 years ago, shouldn't that number be bigger?
None of ours are, though. We joke that two years seems to be our limit for most things.
When we were dating, we were able to visit each other over holiday breaks. I flew to Naples, Italy in 2006 to spend Christmas with Jeff, and he flew back from Naples in 2007 to spend Christmas with his family and me. In 2008 he was deployed to Japan.
In 2009, we celebrated our first Christmas living together in our own home. We were married in 2008, but didn't spend the holiday together so this one was much more memorable. We also had two little furballs of lovin' making our house a home too.
In 2010, Christmas was a little hectic. We had just driven cross country to get home for the holidays after moving out of our house in Lemoore, then traveling to San Diego where Jeff did some training and I frantically finished my degree. We drove home in a crazy caffeine fueled two day drive, then soaked up all the family time we could before we moved overseas.
We don't have any good pictures together from that time, but here's some from Christmas at his mom's.
We had cute little nephews to spoil before we moved. This is Phil, he's 2 and a spitting image of his three uncles.
Jeff brought Nerf guns for the boys and their cousins, and they had a blast running through the house all day long with them. Jeff jokes that they'll always remember him as the uncle who brings them Star Wars stuff and Nerf guns. Phil has an older brother, Jacob, but he was running around too quickly for my mom to get too many clear pictures ;)
Jeff's birthday is days before Christmas, so it's fairly easy to keep track of his birthdays. That one's a two year record as well.
Thanksgiving is a similar holiday. We spent our first Thanksgiving together in 2009. We celebrated a lot of firsts in our place in Lemoore. In 2010 we were together but our Thanksgiving was pretty abnormal. All our household goods were packed up the day before, so we were living with laptops and an air mattress. We went to Jack in the Box for food, then celebrated with some friends and Guitar Hero.
Our anniversary is still hanging at the bottom with a measly record of one year. We got married in 2008, spent our anniversary together in Monterey in 2009, then he was deployed again in 2010. I honestly cannot tell you what we did this year, in 2011. We were together, but I can't remember anything at all. Hm. Our dating anniversary in January doesn't fare any better. 2006, 2007, and 2008 were misses, as he was stationed elsewhere each year. I think he made it home from his deployment before our anniversary in 2009. In 2010, I believe he deployed before our anniversary. We were actually just talked about our dating anniversary this year. It was January 23rd. I think we might have still been living in the hotel over here, but he thinks we had moved into our house. I need to backtrack in my blog or on Facebook and find out.
Spending so much time apart is such a normal part of military life, you won't often hear me complaining about Jeff being gone or missing some important holiday.
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