I'll Be Home for the Holidays?

Oh, winter holidays. You have always been my most favourite time of the year with your cold bundle-up weather, catchy holiday tunes, piping hot drinks and colourful decorations... The happiness and cheer is always so contagious, like an airborne drug. I never understood how someone could be depressed during these times. But oh man... This year stress actually gave the holiday cheer a run for it's money.


I never could understand those wives who would say "We're not going home for Christmas." in my online groups and forums. Who wouldn't want to go home for the holidays? ANY excuse to go home seemed good to me. But, of course, we were a Navy Family, at the time, who had the good luck to be stationed in our own hometown. I was already home for the holidays, not stationed out thousands of miles from home like the rest of the wives and their families, having to watch their budgets and try to plan around others' schedules.


This would have been our first Christmas away from home- however, with a deployment scheduled for the next year, Habibi felt that it would be best if we made the drive back to New Orleans to spend what would be his last Christmas before deployment with our families. I was excited, he was excited, the kiddo was excited- yay, we're going home!


But as much as I loved being home and seeing everyone, when I look back on it now that we're back in EP, I just keep thinking about how stressful it was. It was stressful getting out there- driving the whole 1,150 miles again (oh, the toll it took on our wallet with gas prices...), it was a bit stressful being there and having to work around everyone's schedules and share time (we couldn't even manage to see everyone, which was upsetting), it was stressful driving back home with a heavy, loaded down vehicle (and gas prices again) and now it's just stressful being back home and having to rearrange our bills because we went over our budget. Stress, stress, stress!


Now I just keep thinking about how we could have just saved hundreds of dollars, stayed here and celebrated our own intimate Christimas, just our little family, alone together in our very first home away from home for the very first time.


Maybe that seems selfish, but I'm a pretty logical person- and moving away from home in mid-October, going back home in December and then going home again for Pre-Deployment leave sometime this coming summer just seems a little excessive... Doesn't it? I mean, if we were millionaires then sure. But on the paycheck of a lower enlisted soldier with a family?


I think now I understand the wives who used to post about staying home for the holidays.


I haven't quite decided what the kiddo and I will do next winter when Habibi is deployed. Maybe we'll stay back here, maybe we'll take the shorter trip over to San Diego to visit my father (since it was technically supposed to be his Christmas with us this time) and just save money to be able to make a future trip back to New Orleans when Habibi returns home instead. Or maybe we will just give in and go back next Christmas anyway, since we'll be alone. There are so many factors to be considered and multiple choices.


I'm curious, now, to know what other's policies are on going home for the holidays.