Fort Lewis, Washington.
For more information on joining this email loop go to Onelist and do a list search search for Fort Lewis.
(Don't forget to hit "Back" on your web browser when you're done looking. :)
Our Family Home Page OR Check out our Family Album!
We are a homeschooling family, and my boys keep me pretty busy, so I don't have much time for hobbies, but I do dabble a little in crafts and photography, and I collect piggy banks. (I buy most of them at Ebay!)
Jeff is an 11 Bravo, currently with HHC 5-20, Support. We've only been at Lewis since August of 1998, and before that Jeff was on a remote tour at Seoul, Korea with the United Nations Command Honor Guard. We're VERY happy to have him home with us. We were at Fort Lewis before he went to Korea, and we're very pleased to be back!
The Kirby Family Homepage
I have been an active volunteer since we first joined the Army, working with organizations such as ACS, Red Cross, Armed Services YMCA, Religious Education Programs, Cub Scouts, Youth Services, PTA and Booster Clubs, Enlisted Spouses Clubs, and post theatrical performances. I am a musician by trade, and a SAHM by choice :).
To learn more about my family, please visit my web page at
My Military Spouses Page
I started this email loop because I wanted to meet people at Fort Lewis, and I never dreamed I would meet so many wonderful people! You hear all these stories of how different people are when you meet them online and then meet them in person. It is so true when it comes to this group. I never imagined I'd find the support and friendship I have found on this loop.
At first we are friends here online, and the only thing we "see" about the others are the words they write.......their thoughts, hopes, fears, dreams, pain, joy, sadness, triumphs, tragedies, life stories...all the things that make up who they are, sans appearances. Online friends love you for who you are, but now we are all so much more. We are Real Life Friends!!!!
I may no longer be at Fort Lewis, but I have taken a piece of each of you with me.
I will never be lonely!
I'll post photos of our gatherings as I get them:
Check out the loopies!!!
When she was a girl her dreams were bold, as bold as her fine, free gaze;
And every gift of grace and mind was hers in her younger days.
When she was a girl, a golden girl, with a soul as fine as fire,
She could outshine the brightest jewel that a rich man's love might buy her.
Yes hers could have been the glittering path through a careless, carefree life,
but she fell in love with a soldier, so she became a soldier's wife.
Away from the home of her childhood she marched at her husband's side,
For she chose a wide and winding road when she became a bride.
And sometimes the road was a hard one, so different from what she had planned;
And sometimes she wept for the home she had left as she lay in a foreign land;
And sometimes her steps would grow weary as she followed the drum and the fife;
But she set about making the world her home because she was a soldier's wife.
She learned to build a hearth for them whenever her man was sent;
And she knelt to plant a garden every time he pitched their tent.
Yes, she always planted a garden though she never saw it grow.
For she knew before the flowers came that she would have to go.
But she left each garden gladly though it cut her like a knife,
For she hoped it might bring some comfort to another soldier's wife.
To the hardships in her married life she brought one simple truth,
A promise that once was spoken in the ancient words of Ruth:
"Wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you lodge, I will lodge;
Thy people shall be my people and thy God shall be my God."
She shared his joys and sorrows as they made their way through life,
For she was proud to love a soldier and to be a soldier's wife.
She bore the weight of worrying what fate might hold in store;
And the wordless fear of waiting when her soldier went to war;
And the nights that she spent fearing that her waiting was in vain;
And the pain of wanting someone she might never hold again.
But she bore his children gladly through uncertainty and strife,
And they never heard her crying for she was a soldier's wife.
She raised a soldier's family with the faith her love had taught her;
And she gave the pride she had inside to her son and to her daughter;
And she taught the to love freedom and to know what it was worth,
As they helped her plant her gardens in the corners of the earth.
And she never wished for better than the road they marched through life,
Because she was as much soldier as she was a soldier's wife.
~Caroline Franklin Berry~
