Sure, they look calm now, but that's only because the fiendish simulator instructor hasn't yet begun to fight.

A few years back, I was ensnared at a squadron get-together by one of the latter sort, one of Sampson’s instructors. He saw fit to turn a “Gotcha!” tactic — which no doubt works wonders on his students — on an unsuspecting Navy wife.

So, who won that exchange of words? Check out my latest on SpouseBUZZ to see how it played out: Will I Ever be an Expert on Military Life?

The view from my hotel in Fort Walton Beach. To paraphrase Anthony Bourdain, it did not suck.

I met some truly wonderful people there and finally got to put faces to familiar blog names. There was laughter — a lot of it. Everyone involved in the event was kind, compassionate, and completely freakin’ hilarious in equal measure. If SpouseBUZZ LIVE ever comes to your neck of the woods, GO! Grab a milspouse friend or three and gather to hear — and share — some of the best, truest, most head-noddingly “Uh-huh, I’ve been there!” stories about military life you’ll ever find in one place. The room was full of people married to every branch of the service: active duty, reserve, guard, you name it. There was a woman who had been married to her veteran for nearly fifty years and a woman who had married her serviceman only three weeks (to the day!) prior. Everyone had experiences to relate, and I feel privileged to have been able to take part.

Look, a real domain name!

I decided it was finally time to invest in a domain name for my blog that would be a little less cumbersome than the default “tothenth.wordpress.com” upon which I have relied until now. If you would like to update your links to reflect the new address, please do so, but extant links should redirect to the new address seamlessly.

http://www.ToTheNth.net

Say it with me: “To the Nth dot net.” Rather mellifluous, to my (admittedly biased) ear. It’s shorter, simpler to type, and way quicker to jot down on a napkin when you just have to take a moment during a coffee date to tell one of your milspouse friends about this great blog you read.

• Chanukah
• Sampson’s birthday
• Our fifth wedding anniversary
• The beginning of 2012

That’s a lot of holidays and personal milestones squeezed into a tiny span of calendar space. When you factor in the travel (by car, battling horrendous traffic, with two vocally displeased and/or carsick felines in the back seat, I might add) to see relatives on both sides of the family during Sampson’s ten days of block leave, it makes for a late December/early January period that isn’t big on restfulness.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that my body decided to enforce some downtime by way of a sneezy, eye-watery cold over the weekend. Sampson and I hardly ever make big plans for New Year’s Eve, as we’d just as soon avoid the Tipsy Timmies and Soused Sallies who think the holiday gives them +1 in drunk driving skills, so we had already planned to ring in 2012 in the comfort of our own home. Plus, we make far superior cocktails for a far more reasonable price than we could find at any swanky joint.

Alas, the rate at which I was going through tissues and my general malaise left me unfit for cocktails on the 31st. Passing out on the couch in front of the Twilight Zone marathon and having Sampson wake me up just in time to see the ball drop wasn’t exactly the romantic evening in I’d envisioned, but I can’t complain. My husband and I stepped into this new year together, safe and whole. If things had turned out just a hair’s-breadth differently on one day in 2011, we might not have been able to say that.

In the very fact that Sampson and I could celebrate the arrival of a new year, I believe there is an implied obligation for us to be mindful of our blessings. Not easy. I will almost certainly lose sight of the important stuff at times (especially in the face of military frustrations; the Navy has a way of making trivialities explode into seeming significance). All I can do is strive to let myself hear the quiet, joyful truths of the good things in my life, whatever 2012 may bring.

When Sampson and I moved to Kingsville, Texas just days after we said our vows under the chuppah and danced the Hora with family and friends, we joked that we were doubling the town’s Jewish population. That was an exaggeration, of course, but not by much: even larger South Texas cities are not exactly known as Jewish cultural centers, and Kingsville was shockingly small to someone who had lived in the comparatively diverse Washington, DC region her entire life.

The frenetic pace of Sampson’s advanced flight training coupled with the staggering, wonderful novelty of finally being married after a half-decade of long-distance romance made our newlywed year speed by, and soon December was upon us. As the all-consuming demands of the Navy would have it, that month ushered in one of the most intense phases of flight training: carrier qualification. Through countless hours of practice touch-and-goes at an outlying field, Sampson and his fellow the Student Naval Aviators had sought to burn into their brains and muscle memories the exacting pattern required to make a successful landing aboard an aircraft carrier. Now, they were about to face the real thing for the first time, and the dates happened to coincide with our first Chanukah as a married couple.

Chanukah is actually one of the lesser holidays on the Jewish calendar — a commemoration of a minor military victory and the small miracle of an oil lamp lasting days longer than it should have. It is not a “Jewish Christmas” in theme or relative significance. Still, it is a warm, homey sort of festival, and a time when families gather to light candles, sing old songs, and bring laughter and joy to the longest winter nights.

Sampson and I had long looked forward to building our own family traditions around these eight evenings, with favorite latke recipes and silly dreidels and beautiful chanukiyot (menorahs) to enjoy year after year. The needs of the Navy allowed us the very beginning of our first Chanukah together before Sampson and his class headed to Florida and thence to the USS Boat, where they would put their long hours of training to the test. We did not know how many days it would take to complete CQ, but it seemed fairly certain that I would be spending the remainder of the festival alone.

Those were anxious days for me. My husband was strapping himself into a single-engine jet aircraft all by himself, flying out over the water, and attempting to land on a moving postage stamp in the middle of the ocean by snagging a wire stretched across the deck with a hook on the back of his aircraft. Oh yeah, and every single one of those traps (arrested landings) was being scrutinized and graded. Not everyone qualifies their first time at the Boat. Some people never figure it out, which can end a pilot’s career before it truly begins.

Each day I attempted to distract myself from my preoccupation, and each night I did the best I could to celebrate Chanukah all by myself. Our flight school friends were all putting up Christmas trees, and our nearest Jewish acquaintances were forty-five miles away in Corpus Christi. I missed my husband, and I wasn’t feeling very social without him, anyway. As the number of candles I lit each night increased, so did my nervous anticipation of the phone call that would tell me how CQ had turned out.

When the call finally came, I made Sampson repeat what he said twice to make sure I was hearing correctly. “I’m a qual! I passed!” I was ecstatic. My husband was officially a tailhooker! I was so relieved and excited for him that I almost didn’t catch it when he added, “…and I’ll be home in time for the last night of Chanukah.” When that last bit sank in, I literally jumped up and down for joy.

The memory of what followed is as much a part of our Chanukah tradition as the scent of beeswax or the glint of foil-covered chocolate coins. The next day, Sampson arrived home to find a “Congratulations, Tailhooker!” sign on our door and an immensely proud wife waiting to greet him behind it. We grinned at each other as we lit two chanukiyot to their full capacity, in celebration not just of a victory long ago, but of the small miracle of being unexpectedly together for the culmination of our holiday — minor or not.

Like the Valentine’s Day MilSpouse Blog Swap earlier this year, today’s swap is the brainchild of Wife on the Roller Coaster. Click on the logo above to find a showcase of unique perspectives on the winter holiday season written by military spouses from a variety of backgrounds.

I have the pleasure of playing hostess to the charming Nicole of Flip Flops and Combat Boots. Her passion for good food and good wine makes her a woman after my own heart; should you find yourself in her neck of the woods, you wouldn’t go wrong to seek her advice on local vino and cuisine.

The holiday spirit that Nicole and her handsome Marine husband seek to share with her stepson Kaleb, as you will read in her post, has the power to return that spark of childhood magic even to grown-up hearts.

“I Believe” by Nicole of Flip Flops and Combat Boots

I still believe. Yes, I am twenty-six and still believe in Santa. Of course, I know Santa is not real but there is nothing wrong with still believing in the magic of Christmas.

When I was around fourteen I knew Santa wasn’t real, so I told my younger sister. She was upset, and said, “Well, at least I still have the Easter Bunny.” That will always be a family joke… but the more I thought about it, the more I still wanted to believe.

So, I set up a game for Santa. I found a piece of wood and left Santa a note: “If you are real you will carve in this wood.” Apparently, I thought a big jolly man could do that… but not my parents! The next morning I woke up… and the wood was carved. I still knew he wasn’t real but I had something to hold onto.

I don’t believe in ruining the magic for kids. It’s not lying, I don’t feel as if I was lied to and I don’t think we’re lying to Kaleb.

If you take Santa out of Christmas you take away the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny and the Pot of Gold on St. Patrick’s Day. Kids deserve to believe… or else they end up old and cranky before their time. Let them believe… and maybe you will start believing again.

To the Nth here again: I want to thank Nicole for allowing me to share the story of “Santa’s” woodcarving with my readers. Don’t forget to drop by Riding the Roller Coaster and visit all of the MilSpouse Holiday Blog Swap participants — you don’t want to miss any of their wintertime stories!

Want to read about my very first Chanukah as a Navy wife? Take a spin on over to The Life of an Army Wife, where Katie is graciously acting as my host.

Autumn's golds and reds have given way to softer winter hues.

Sometimes I need a reminder that there is beauty even in mornings I would have chosen to spend curled up in my blankets until the sun was far higher in the sky.

Boker tov, world.

Actually, it was a weekend’s worth of events that culminated in a formal gathering. We opted not to attend the gala event, citing the fact that with as many “mandatory fun” military balls as we’re obliged to attend, there was no way we were going to fork over a cool $180 for the dubious privilege of spending an evening awkwardly grasping for topics of conversation once we’ve exchanged our two-minute spiels about what we do for a living.

We did go to the bar night the day before, and it was good to see people we hadn’t clapped eyes on in ages. I very much enjoyed catching up with an old acquaintance who has also taken up knitting in the years since high school. She was wearing a charming cabled cardigan and a really neat felted fair isle hat that she’d made, and we conversed quite cheerfully about yarn and assorted fiber-crafty things.

There were other folks we enjoyed seeing, but there were also awkward encounters where people I had known in high school told me, “It’s nice to meet you.” Um, hi. We’ve met. Apparently I was invisible for the three years our high school tenure overlapped. (Realistically, I’m pretty sure we can chalk this up to the fact that most people don’t expect high school sweethearts to wind up married to each other, so they assumed that they must never have met the spouse before. It was still a trifle deflating.)

The next day was Alumni Day at the actual school building, open to all alumni rather than just the Class of 2001 and spouses. We caught up with a few more people from other classes, but I just wasn’t feeling it. I truly do have good memories of my high school experience, but being back in the building — this place that was once my own — failed to bear me up on giddy clouds of nostalgia, or whatever it is reunions are supposed to do.

It is probably telling that the best conversation we had on Alumni Day was with an alumnus who graduated one year ahead of Sampson and is now an Army officer. After a weekend’s worth of Sampson trying to explain his job to very smart people who are staggeringly ignorant about the military (“You’re a pilot? So you’re in the Air Force, right?” “Did your wife come with you on your deployment?”), it was refreshing to talk with one of “our people.” He may not have been an expert on the Navy, and we’re certainly not well-versed in Army particulars, but we had the foundation for a meaningful conversation. Sadly, it is not hard to see why we in the military community tend toward insularity.

Long story short, there was a reunion, and it was awkward at times. To end on a positive note, though, I must say that I loved that no one assumed we must have children or that the conversation should revolve around wee ones. In the military bubble, we are definitely the odd ones out for not having a couple of kids already, so it was an interesting change to find ourselves in a group where almost everyone has held off on procreating.