Knee Deep in the Hooah!

On this Christmas Eve, my heart keeps turning to the families, the heroes of America. As I am preparing to hug my family, I am so aware – as always – that for many families in the US, Christmas will see an empty place at their table.

Dena Yllescas is the wife of Captain Rob Yllescas. Make no mistake about it, Dena IS every bit as much a hero as her beloved husband. Little Julia and Eva are every day as much heroes as their precious daddy. I have written about this family before, and if you don’t know their story – and you really SHOULD – you can find Dena’s beautiful writing on her home page here.

I am on Dena’s mailing list, so every time she writes a new entry, I am notified. Every entry rips my heart out, but there is one that Dena wrote recently that slammed me hard. I asked Dena for her permission to post it here, so that more Americans would get a sense of what Christmas is like for the families left behind. Read on:

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Merry Christmas from Heaven

Last week I went on a much needed “mini vacation” to Texas without the girls. I made a quick trip to Killeen to check on my house (which was in pretty good shape except for some cobwebs and nasty toilets!) then it was off to Dallas for the rest of the weekend. I was able to do some golfing and shopping. I got back last night to a very cranky little girl ( I think she had too much fun with her grandpas and grandmas!) and another girl who wanted to start decorating for Christmas NOW. I have always loved Christmas and tend to have a weakness for Christmas decorations. So, as you can imagine, I was a little overwhelmed with my 6 TUBS of Christmas decorations and 3 Christmas trees!!!! Of course no decorating can be done while Eva’s awake because that would just be pointless! So, I told Julia that today I would decorate as much as I could while she was at school and Eva was at daycare and have the Christmas tree ready for her to decorate when Eva goes to bed. This year is definitely going to be interesting with Eva. I have no idea what she’s going to do with all these decorations. I’m just hoping not too many get broken!! Anyways, as I was going through our decorations, I came across things that I knew were in the boxes but really didn’t want to see them: our christmas stockings with Rob’s name on his, ornaments from our first Christmas together, and a Christmas picture frame with a picture of Rob, Julia and me in it. I had completely forgotten about that. It’s sad to know that the last time these decorations were put up, Rob was with us (I obviously didn’t put any decorations out last year). I do have to chuckle about the last Christmas we had together, I had finally convinced Rob to put up Christmas lights on the house (which mind you I had bought 3 years before and were still in the box). So, he’s up on the ladder when all of a sudden the ladder gives way and he crashed onto concrete! It scared me to death. But, besides a sore knee and bruised pride, he was fine. I just assumed that was the last of our Christmas light decorations so I started tearing the clips off the roof. Rob came out and said “What are you doing?! Heck no. I about killed myself putting those stupid things on and I’m going to finish the job.” So, up the ladder he went again. Determined that man was!!! And the lights looked great. …

I have the rest of Dena’s  post up at my place – plus a video that seems appropriate to me.  Go read it all here.