Question about this years holidays - DH gets deployed the 17th!

[Disney8704]

Well its official! DH is about to go on his 2nd deployment on the 17th. Last year he went to Iraq for 4 months, this time hes going somewhere else, but to a safe country, once again for 4 months. This will be our 1st time away from each other for the holidays. So heres my question. For those military spouses, did you put off the holidays until your spouse returned home or did you just celebrated the holidays like every other year? Christmas Im leaning towards to just waiting until he gets home, cuz he will be home in the middle of Jan 2008, but do you think I should put it off for good, or still have my family come over to have them open their presents on christmas day, and then when my hubby comes home, have everyone come back over for both me and my hubby to open our presents. I would probably open my presents from my family and would just open the presents that my DH got me when he gets back home. Also for Thanksgiving, I was considering not have a thanksgiving this year. But do you think I should have one? I know its good to be surrounded by family on the holidays, but this deployment has been such a downer, having to put off our disney trip, them forcing him to go because they couldnt send anyone else, the fact he just went on a deployment last year, that I know that I would probably just wanna be left alone. I honestly dont know what to do about the holidays this year. We dont have any kids, so Im not worried about that. Any advice would be awesome!

 

[casndan]

My DH was gone last Thanksgiving and last Christmas, and because of these great new 15 month deployments for the Army, he will STILL be gone this Thanksgiving and Christmas, what me and my friend have decided (her hubby left the same day as mine) we're going to completely delay Christmas this year, the boys should be home about the 2nd week of January so we plan on celebrating then, they have a 2yo DD who hasn't gotten to spend a Christmas with her Dad yet, and both of us thought it would be a great idea to just pretend Christmas hadn't happened yet, we plan on starting the day they get home at like the 20th of December, so we can still have Christmas Eve and everything too...I know it's silly but its just too hard to think about spending the Holidays two years in a row alone. We even plan on calling a cut your own tree farm and seeing if we can get a couple trees so they're not dead when the boys get home. We're all really excited about it, we're even going to wait until after Christmas to do all our shopping so we can hit all the big sales

 

[drivencrazy]

In all the years and all the deployments that my hubby has had, this will be the first year he will miss Christmas. Not only will he be missing Christmas, but he will miss 3 out of 4 of our childrens birthdays... the worst is he will be missing our daughters 13th birthday ... she is not so happy about that.

I have to say, I am very thankful that he doesn't do 12-15 month deployments like some. Actually the longest ones were 4 months... so I am very thankful for that.

But since he will be missing Christmas I think we will still go do the family things that we usually do, but we will have "Christmas" when he gets home! Hopefully I will be able to get some good sales! We will hopefully have some kind of big party when he gets home as well...

not really sure what we will do for birthdays yet... I'm thinking that my soon to be 13 year old will have a sleep over, she is already talking about that and my soon to be 5 year old might have to have some friends over for a small party... but my soon to be 3 year old doesn't really have anyone to envite over. Not sure what we will do. Last year we had a HUGE family/friends party at the skate ring for everyones birthdays and it was a blast, but with it being so much past their birthdays (one in Nov (he'll be here for that one) 2 in Dec and one in Jan) I don't think that would be right.

I do think that Christmas is going to be the hardest on all of us... Looking forward to having Christmas in late Jan. or Feb!

 

[jmskinner]

I love the idea of having Christmas later. Especially the tree. Since it is just January, it isn't too late. DH has always deployed in the Summer for his 12 month tours, so we would have had to wait six months. We just mailed each others presents and this last deployment we got to talk on the phone while opening them.

 

[mrsbornkuntry]

We have always celebrated the holidays when they came, my kids would feel like something was wrong if we didn't so we will this year as well. As much as we miss having Dh here for them, once they're over, they're over. It just wouldn't feel the same to me anymore unless it was only a couple of days. There will be more holidays and special days to spend together when he gets home, I just don't think we should go back and try to relive what he wasn't here for, time didn't stop.

That's just our opinion on it, of course, it's what works for our family.