Home for the Holidays

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Walmart for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.
Just last year, my family was one of the thousands of military families separated during the holiday season. Since it was towards the very end of the deployment, Christmas was especially emotionally tolling. I know better than to get my hopes up when it comes to the Army, but since Christmas fell on the 364th day of deployment, I really, really, really thought there was a chance that Hubster would be home in time to celebrate. After all, word on the street is that they pay you loads of money if deployment lasts over 365 days. Not entirely true.
Celebrating Christmas without my husband around wasn't easy, but it was totally doable. I was lucky to have a great group of close friends whose husbands were also in Afghanistan. Although part of our Christmas Eve and Christmas day was spent sulking, we were determined to make it a fun experience for the kids. For Christmas Eve, I made my typical fancy dinner and invited some of our military family over. We drove around to look at Christmas lights, watched Christmas movies, and drank hot chocolate.
Since I knew that Hubster would be home soon, the girls were only allowed to open one gift on Christmas. They were young enough to not even notice the difference. I have to admit that I cried when I saw Santa fly over Georgia on the tracking app.

Finally, New Years Day came and my love was home! Luckily for the girls, Santa was on the same airplane as Hubster and dropped off all of the presents under the tree while we were picking up Daddy. We went to the welcome home ceremony with our matching Christmas dresses on so that we could start celebrating as soon as we got home. Once we made it home, it felt just like Christmas should. We opened gifts, ate lots of food, and lounged around in pajamas.

Thankfully, this year, we'll all be together as a family. Sadly, there are still many many military families still apart. For Giving Tuesday, Walmart has partnered with Operation Homefront and Fisher House to salute military families nationwide. Walmart’s “Holiday Salute to Military Families” hopes to ease the burden of separation with grants totaling $2 million towards toys, meals, and lodging assistance for military families in need. The donation will also go towards helping hundreds of active duty service members return home to be reunited with their loved ones for the holidays.
If you'd like to help support our heroes and their families, you can do so here: Join in our Holiday Salute to Military Families. You may also spread the word by sharing and tagging a service member that you're grateful for.
Have you had to spend the holidays separated from your spouse or loved ones? What did you do to make it a positive experience?