The Long Road to Cake: Brotherly and Sisterly Love

It has been about 8 years since I lived in the same city as any of my family for longer than a semester. The first 3 1/2 years I was in college just 3 hours away from most of family, so not bad. Little did I know that in January 2008 when I moved to Texas for what was supposed to be just a 10 week internship, I would never move back closer to family. For now at least. I love being a Navy wife, but one tough part is being far from family and for us, knowing the possibility of moving closer in the foreseen future is slim, is hard. Let's be honest though, distance from family and certain situations is nice sometimes though. And I fully believe that having some distance from your family when you are first married is a blessing in disguise. You are truly given the opportunity to rely on your spouse and have time for each other. Just my feelings on it.

Anyways, back to what I was originally going to write. Living so far from family for so long has made me feel something that when I was younger I am pretty sure I said I would never feel. I miss my brothers. I have 2 brothers, Andy is the older one, he is married to Hillary and our little niece Lily who is just a few weeks younger than our Madelynn. And Nick is younger and getting ready to marry Kristen. We had the typical sibling relationship when growing up. We fought and bickered, but still played and did stuff together. I never thought I would miss them when we all lived together. But now that I see them on rare occasion, I do miss them. I miss being at family dinners and making fun of each other, messing around, telling stories. I look forward to seeing them while we are there for the wedding. I am excited to hang out and have the 3 girls all play together.

Like I mentioned, I also have a sister-in-law Hillary and about to sister-in-law Kristen. They are both wonderful! Andy and Hillary have been married about 9 years now, and she has been such a great addition to our family. She somehow puts up with Andy, and is still happy and loving all the time. Kristen and Nick started dating in high school and then through college. Kristen is wonderful and fun, and I can't imagine anyone else being added to our family. I still remember Nick using pizza rolls (I think), the spell out Girlfriend when he was asking her out. It was as cute as it sounds. I am blessed to consider them my sisters now.

When I married Steven I also gained a brother-in-law Geoff, who was a wonderful and caring man who I miss so much. Geoff was KIA in Afghanistan in January 2010. He was funny and protective of me. When Steven was deployed I ended up with some high school kids who would call me obsessively and either say random stuff or leave random messages. It was ridiculous. I told Geoff about it one day, he asked for the number. I never heard from the kids again. Just thinking about that conversation makes me laugh. He liked for people to think he was all tough, but when you got down to it, he was a softy.

I miss my family, but we are lucky to have made Navy family. It's the people that we spend holidays and special events with, because money and days off don't grow from trees. Unfortunately for us, even they move away, it's the curse of military life. We miss those who have moved away, but make new friends and adopted family. And we hope that the others move back (Corbin, Butts, and Adduce families, feel free to move back anytime).