Monday, December 1, 2008

Dual Military

Often we get questions about what are life is like as a military family. I figured i would take a second to try and answer that question.
If I had to discribe military life in one word it would be BUSY! There is always something going on.
Sam has a more typical schedule. He works Monday-Friday from 7:30 - 5:00. He works in accounting and travel. Once a month he has to stand duty. Which means he acts as a guard on base. It is for a full 24 hours! Sometimes he has to go on TAD which means that he leaves for a month or so to a random country where the military is working. Last time it was 40 days in Korea!
There are balls and festivals and unit parties. And as if that were not enough there are also random formations and safety stand downs. That is when the military gets all the marines together after work hours to lecture them on safety or how to be better marines or how much they suck as marines.
Here's a picture of Sam getting promoted.
Believe it or not my schedule is even busier than Sam's at times. I work random hours because i am a nurse. Right now I am on the night shift. I work 7pm-7am about four days a week. I also have what the military likes to call collatoral duties. That means that they make military members do jobs that in the civilian world world would take another person. I put in about an extra 5-10 hours a week for this.
Here's a picture of my cool Japanese name tag.
I also have all that extra stuff that Sam has too. I have uniform inspecions, formation, balls. Here is a picture of me and some of my coworkers in our "dress uniform" (the fancy one) at the medical ball.
With all that work insanity Sam and I really work hard to make sure we spend time with just us and just the kids.
Here's us and my niece at this fun park called Okinawa World (and yes that is a real snake). To sum it up. . . Over all, yes life is busy, but it is still lots of fun.

3 comments:

SouthAsiaRocks said...

Cool!! That was a great post! Looks like you definitely aren't bored :) haha! That last picture was fun! :)

Leah Langley said...

Thanks for sharing! Your girls are so beautiful. So if Sam gets out in July, when do you get out?

DaceeB said...

I am not sure when I am getting out. I really like my job right now and strangely wouldn't be terribly upset if i had to deploy. Its all part of the mitary's brainwashing process.
Right now my boss is trying to have the military send me to grad school so i can become a nurse practitoner.I'll keep you posted.