People always leave......

Hannah and Abby Easter Sunday 2010

Today my daughter learns a lesson about military life that she is still too young to understand.  Her "best" friends are moving away today.  At 14 months old you might think it is silly for me to say she has a best friend, but she really does.  If you were to see her reaction towards Connor and Abby you would see that even at a very young age she has bonded with them.  They have been a part of her life for a little more then a year now. Connor is 2 days shy of a year older then Hannah, and Abby is just 2 weeks younger.  She knows them by sight and gets excited every time she see's them.  She reacts to them in a way that she doesn't react to any other kids her age.  She knows them when sadly she doesn't even know her own cousins.

Abby, Connor, and Hannah 4th of July 2010

She won't remember them.  She may not even notice their sudden absence in her life, but one day she will be old enough to understand.  One day she will be forced to leave her friends behind as we move on to a new duty station and she will miss them. She will understand.


Hannah will not have the kind of childhood that I had.  I grew up surrounded with the best family in the world.  Loving grandparents, fun aunts and uncles, and lots and lots of cousins.  We were all close.  I looked up to my older cousins wanting to be more like them and my cousins my age were like best friends.  We used to ride rooter scooters around my grandparents basements, have mini slumber parties, play pool, and much much more. I always looked forward to them visiting and spending endless summer days with them.

Abby and Hannah! Beautiful Butterflies Halloween 2010

I have learned that in the Military we have "substitute" families.  For example, my own Nephew who will be 3 this year barely recognizes me, but Connor see's my car coming down the road and startes yelling Auntie.  We have been blessed to make some really great friends here that love Hannah and are glad to be her Aunties and Uncles, but it makes me sad that in reality she has 2 Aunts, one of which she has never met, and a Uncle that she barely knows.  In turn I have a Nephew that doesn't really know me and a brand new niece that I have yet to meet.

Cute girls! Abby and Hannah!

I am happy that we will be going back to Fort Lewis where Hannah will get a chance to spend at least part of her childhood with her Great Grandma Sharon, her Grandma and Grandpa Anderson, My brother, sister in law, and her 2 cousins, and the many many other friends and family we have there, but I also know that the time for us to leave them will once again come and this time Hannah will be old enough to understand.  She will be old enough to miss them.  It will make leaving them harder then it was the first time I left almost 3 years ago.

Hannah and Connor.  Valentines 2010