Rolling With The Military Punches

If you are a military spouse/fiance/girlfriend, you know their schedule is anything but 8-5, M-F. Sometimes Parker gets home at 11 AM, and sometimes he gets home at 11 PM. I started out hating this concept but have grown to understand it and realize it's my job to be supportive. One thing I think all military spouses dread is our husbands being scheduled for duty. Duty of any kind usually means an 8-12 hour shift at odd hours standing watch, taking calls, or something of the sort.

Parker and I were so excited for this weekend. We haven't spent a day just completely the two of us with no studying or work in a few weeks, and Saturday was finally going to break that trend. We found out Friday night he was scheduled for something called duty driver (if someone flies out of one city but lands in another close by, the duty driver picks them up and takes them back to their car in the city they flew out of). Parker contacted everyone on the flight schedule and found out only one person needed to be picked up around noon. Awesome! We could just drop him off really quickly and then enjoy a fun day downtown. We drop him off, arrive downtown to a cute little restaurant I was so excited to try, and then Parker gets the call. There were planes flying back from a detachment all afternoon, and he would need to cycle through picking them up and dropping them off for the rest of the day.

Just like that, our fun little date day downtown was over. It would have been so easy to be upset. We were both annoyed, that's for sure, but there was absolutely nothing we could do. He asked if I wanted to just ride with him while he was driving everyone around. At least we would still get to spend the day together, so I did. This was my view for the next 7 hours (at least he's pretty to look at!):

Right when Parker received that call, plans had to change. Our lunch date at the Bamboo Gardens turned into McDonald's in the car, and our plans to grill burgers and veggies for dinner turned into Taco Bell take-out. You know what though, we spent the entire day together and had time to talk about everything from future trips to kids' names to completely random topics that shouldn't even qualify as conversation. All we wanted was a day to just spend time together. Although this wasn't exactly what we had in mind, God gave us just that: a day to spend together. I felt blessed and ashamed at the same time for wanting more. This was perfect.

We finally got home around 8 PM, but we really did have a fun little Saturday! Never have we driven so much just to end up right back where we started, but with all this military moving, Parker and I have become pros with long car trips.

Did we really just spend over 8 hours in the car?!?

We definitely had to roll with the military punches on Saturday, but we got to spend the entire day together! If that isn't a perfect Saturday, I don't know what is. :)