Military Families
Home from deployment
So, my husband is deployed at the moment, and although he's not due home for at least another five months, I've been brainstorming ideas for when he does come home. I once read one woman's blog about how she would always leave the kids with family and spend the first few days with her DH alone at a bed and breakfast or hotel. She said it helped them both unwind and get back in their own grove before adding the stress of the whole family on top of it all. I'm definitely thinking along these lines for this return since it's supposed to happen around our anniversary. So my question to y'all is, what do you do to celebrate?
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Re: Home from deployment
We just hang out at home, relax, and don't really plan much of anything.
I think he'd kick my ass if I even mentioned the idea of him not seeing the kids for DAYS after getting back from being gone for so long. Going away just the two of us a few weeks after he gets back? Sure. But the *first* few days? Absolutely not. He's watched them grow up on Skype for the last 8 months (and close to a year by the time he actually gets back), I highly doubt he wants to wait any longer than necessary to really get to know them again.
Last deployment my DH's whole extended family (parents, grandparents, aunts & uncles) insisted on meeting him at arrival and it was a disaster! The second he stepped out of the crowd and saw everyone, he was SO overwhelmed (incidentally, I knew this would happen, but he was young and we were newlyweds and he didn't want to hurt his mom's feelings and say no, so...), and then two days later he had to go back to school for a 24 credit semester, so there was no down time at all. This time will be different because we live no where near family and we have both learned to be fiercely protective of his coming & going transition times, so no family is invited to fly in. But we will have two kids by the time he gets back, and he would never go for being away from them right away, so we'll try and have as low key of a coming home as possible and then maybe take a few days away for ourselves when he gets leave a few weeks later. I can understand why that family you mention does that, though, I just know my DH wouldn't go for it because he is the more clingy/overprotective parent and he misses being a dad too much when he's away.
(Also, like the poster below, my husband's unit will have 7-10 days of reintegration, so we couldn't go away right away even if we wanted to.)
My husband's current unit requires 7 days of reintegration to be started the day after he is boots on ground. If he comes in at 2pm on a Friday, he'll have to be at work at 7am on Saturday to begin his reintegration so for us, the B&B wouldn't work/be worth it. Also, he hasn't seen DS since he was 2 and barely talking - now that he's 3 and a totally different kid, my DH cannot wait to see him, play with him and spend time with him so he'd be disappointed not seeing him right away.
My H just wanted to be in his own bed as soon as possible. He always has between 5 and 7 days of demobilization work before he gets his DD214 so even though he's stateside and about 30 minutes from home he's not home...he's still living in a barracks.
We also invite our family to the homecoming/release ceremony so they can say their "hellos" to him there and not bother us for a few days after he's at home. We like to keep the welcome home as he's getting off the plane for just the two of us and when our daughter is born and if he deploys again it would just be the three of us.
Totally agree!
This exactly. Your kids miss him too!