7 years

Kyle and I have officially been married 7 years as of May 21. As I reflect on these last seven years, I realize we have done so much and have an endless list of praises.

Upon getting married I moved with Kyle to Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Within five months of our marriage he left on a year long deployment to Iraq. I went back to Washington State, lived with my parents and completed my student teaching, then kept myself busy coaching tennis and substitute teaching. I moved back to Kentucky in September awaiting Kyle’s return.

Kyle returned and we were at Fort Campbell until February at which point we packed up and were moved across the world to Schweinfurt, Germany. We were in Germany for about four years. Kyle was deployed for 15 months to Afghanistan, and I was blessed with a job teaching Kindergarten at the American School on base. I kept plenty busy with teaching, but also took a little time to travel with friends. Upon Kyle returning from Afghanistan we had our little Gunnar. Together we travelled and saw a lot of great places across Europe. One of my most memorable trips would be our 95k hike across a stretch of the Austrian Alps. It was challenging, yet really gave us some quality time together away from the world. Kyle was deployed again to Afghanistan for what was suppose to be a year. I was busy packing up our apartment as Gunnar and I were planning on moving stateside setting things up for our transition out of the military. God had other things in mind for us. Kyle ended up badly breaking his ankle a month into his deployment and was sent home. Gunnar and my plans got put on hold. Kyle came home Dec. 23, 2009 from Afghanistan…he was the best broken Christmas present ever. I told him that first night that he was home I suspected I was pregnant again (despite our use of birth control). I then began caring for Kyle, our 8 month old Gunnar, and in the meantime tried to take care of my pregnant self. We also moved into a larger apartment off post. It was an interesting move, I was about 7-8 months pregnant, Kyle had a cast on his leg (not to mention his dislocated shoulder), we had a year old kiddo, and we were doing a self-move, talk about good times. Kyle went through a long recovery process and the day after Ryker was born in August we got the news that they were sending us stateside to complete Kyle’s medical evaluation board process.

This meant after Ryker’s birth things went into high speed. We quickly got his US citizenship paperwork, passport, and other documents in line, they packed up our house, put our car on a boat, and our family of four on an airplane and sent us to Fort Lewis, WA. We were in Fort Lewis for a year. There we saw the ins and outs of the military health system. Some days were better than others. We were told we would be there for about 6 months. After a frustrating year and 2 months, Kyle was finally medically retired from the military. We then took about a month to travel and visit our families over the holidays then finally moved into a ‘beautiful’ mobile home up in Priest Lake, ID, courtesy of Kyle’s dad.

We have now been here since January. We have been waiting for Kyle’s VA paperwork to come through. The VA considers Kyle 100% disabled and with that comes a lot of great benefits. We finally got the paperwork about 2 weeks ago (3 months later than expected) which means we are officially on the hunt for a house. The trailer has served us well as a transitioning location, but we are ready to move on. Kyle’s rafting season will end at the end of June, we will have a baby towards the end of July, and then we will hopefully we moving shortly thereafter. We are continually praying that God will show us just exactly where He wants this family of FIVE to go. Kyle is really feeling called to continue his work in outdoor youth ministry .

So here we are 7 years later….I think we have made the most of our 7 years, and honestly I can’t imagine going through all of this with anyone but Kyle. We really seem to balance each other, and I believe God really knew what He was doing when he placed us in each others lives. 

For our anniversary we dropped the boys off with Mike and Laura where they spent the night. I then went and spent the night with Kyle in his home away from home…a tent in the back yard of the warehouse of his work. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting, and we got a peaceful, restful night sleep (the only thing that would have made it better was if I had a toilet). The next day we went and stuffed ourselves silly with breakfast at Frank’s diner then we hit up Manito park in Spokane. It was beautiful and we took tons of funny pictures of each other. It was great to be with Kyle, to relax, and just take time to laugh together. After the park we went and changed our cell phone contract from AT&T to Verizon, then picked up the boys so Kyle could spend some time with them too…I didn’t think it was fair I hogged one of his rare days off. It truly was a perfect day with each other.