Christmas is still nearly four weeks away. Plenty of time to bake, shop and make plans.

But, if you are mailing cards and gifts, your deadline is now. If those gifts are going overseas, your deadline was last week.

While the U.S. Postal Service can still guarantee delivery by Christmas Eve for domestic items, overseas shipments, especially those going to forward deployed troops, need to be sent asap.

Here are your deadlines:

Shipping to any APO/FPO/DPO/AE zip codes: You will pay domestic prices but the delivery time is longer. And, once the item leaves the post office’s hands and is given to the military for delivery, there is no guarantee when it will arrive

Standard post:  Nov. 7

Space available (the least expensive option):  Nov 25

Parcel airlift mail: Dec. 3

Priority mail: Dec. 10

First class mail (Christmas cards with stamps and small packages):  Dec. 10

Priority mail express military service: Dec. 17

International: Sending gifts to friends you made overseas? You have a little more time though the shipping rates are larger

First class international service (small items): Dec. 1

Priority mail international service (cards): Dec. 1

Priority mail express international service (3 – 5 days): Dec. 8

Global express guaranteed service (1 – 3 days): Dec. 21

Domestic:

Standard post service (2 – 8 days): Dec 15

First class mail (1 – 3 days for smaller items and cards): Dec. 19

Priority mail service (1 – 3 days for larger items): Dec. 21

Priority mail express service (overnight): Dec. 23

Happy Shipping!!

I am trying to learn German. I really am. On year six of living in this country, you would think this would be easy by now.

The Germans are fond of compound words. And using two layers of language – the “formal” vs. the “informal.” There are also different dialects that have many different words for the same thing. Add to this the fact that Germans are fond of correcting you when you speak incorrectly, and the language only becomes more intimidating.

There are several jokes about the German language that circulate frequently online. An old standby is the fact that the phrase “Gute fahrt” means “drive safely.” Another talks about the fact that a very simple word in English, “pen,” translates to the complicated “Kugelschreiber” in German (by the way, that’s not a typo - all nouns are capitalized in the German language).

These jokes aren’t really funny. Why? Because there is little humor in the German language. My son once asked me why Germans always sound so mad when they talk.

I’ve taken several different classes, used Rosetta Stone and apps like Duolingo. I’ve watched German TV and taken my kids to German classes and special programs. I try to speak the language every chance I get.

Yet usually I find myself unable to utter even the simplest phrase.

Just the other day I was volunteering at a giant rummage sale in our local city and a man came up and asked me where he could find some men’s belts. I replied promptly in my best German. Except my answer was “Excuse me, no ladies belts here.”

This is a language where numbers are pronounced partially backward, strung together with “and.” In German, the number 92 would be pronounced “zwei und neunzig,” which translates to “two and ninety.”  Start getting up into the hundreds and thousands and I am completely lost.

The funny thing is, it isn’t necessary to speak the language.

An American who lives here can certainly get by without knowing the language, at least in larger cities and especially with the crutch of the military bases and U.S. facilities. Many Germans, when they hear an American accent, will just start speaking English. Lucky for them, they start learning English at a young age as a school requirement. They often know at least one other foreign language, too.

But speaking the language of your host country, or at least trying to, is the right thing to do. It’s polite and respectful, and it shows you are at least making an effort.

So I will go on with my simple “danke schoen” (thank you) and “tschuss” (goodbye), and hope I at least get some acknowledgement that I tried.

Eh, never mind. Ich gebe auf. Or in other words, I quit. After all, I really need to know is how to order schnitzel and beer, right?

Ask most anyone what would be the best thing about having his or her own business and you are likely to hear: Being my own boss.

But, when that business is a franchise and you have to follow someone else’s rules on almost everything, are you really the boss?

“If you get into a good franchise, the franchisors will listen to you and take suggestions,” said co-owner of three Philly Pretzel Factory stores in Lebanon and Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. “But you also have to remember that franchises can have hundreds (or more) combined years of experience gained through trial and error and they know what works and what doesn’t.”

Franchisors have a brand to protect and they do so for your and their success.

“When you see the golden arches, you know what it is and can almost taste the food,” said Breault. “If someone goes rogue and changes the shape or color of the arches, you would have no idea that is the business you know, so it’s very important to stick to the plan.”

Like most other bosses, franchise owners pick their teams and manage them based on the individuals and the situation. Sure, you may have to follow a training plan created by the franchisor but as the boss, it is you who motivates, directs, and supervises those individuals on a daily basis.

“As the owner, you are the one who will ultimately determine if your franchise will be successful,’ said Breault. “You choose your location, implement your marketing plan and directly impact your customer service, which is huge in this business.”

“You have to put everything into your business, time, money and energy,” said Breault. “Just like in the military, this is no nine to five. You may work 80-hour weeks, late nights and holidays. And your family is the number one support you need to make it work.”

The boss is the one who makes the biggest investment, and it’s the boss who gets the biggest return on it, financially and otherwise.

My husband has spent many a Thanksgiving underwater.

Being a submariner, duty doesn’t stop for holidays.  So he’s deployed for so many turkey days – eating government issued stuffing and cranberry sauce with his fellow shipmates – that I often lose count.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday; I love food, and I love my family.

I have a series of rather sad photos, commemorating our Thanksgivings, most of which he is missing in.

And, sure, it’s sad.

He hates missing us over the family-themed holiday.  He hates missing my scanning of Black Friday and Cyber Monday ads.  He doesn’t like missing the day after Turkey Day, where we decorate the Christmas tree and hang lights outside our house.

But, if we really probed, we would find there is something else he missed even more than all that.

When we got married almost a decade ago, and my husband spent his first Thanksgiving with my family, he ate, for the very first time, my mother’s corn pudding.

It’s one of those easy hacks on a box of Jiffy cornbread mix.  You add several forms of high-fat dairy products, mix it together, and bake it.

And it tastes like anything heavily laden with butter and cream; it’s delicious.

Since my marriage, every Thanksgiving in which my husband has been home, we have had to triple the corn pudding recipe.

The man loves it.  Adores it.  Easily eats a whole pan himself, and he almost weeps when the leftovers are gone.

So, during every deployment since that illustrious meeting between my husband and corn pudding, he has gotten misty-eyed knowing he’s missing it.

He misses us and the holiday and a million other things.  But truth be told, I think he misses the corn pudding more.

So two years ago, when he was gearing up to miss yet another Corn Pudding, er, Turkey Day, I packed him a little surprise in his sea bag.

I sent him several boxes of Jiffy corn pudding mix and the recipe for his favorite Thanksgiving side dish.

And on that underwater holiday, he snuck onto the submarine kitchen, borrowed some dairy products, and made the crew an additional side dish for Thanksgiving dinner; he made corn pudding.

Back home, even though we had no contact on that holiday, I smiled.

I knew he was eating what I was eating.  And I knew he was loving it.

It made that Thanksgiving special for us both.

And now, when he deploys over the holidays, he never leaves home without a recipe and a few boxes of Jiffy cornbread mix.

It’s our Thanksgiving Day tradition.  And as much as I would rather have him here, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

During our past 26 years as a military family, we have learned that after all the ‘firsts’ - the first Thanksgiving of our marriage, the first one with one child, the first one with two children, the first return from deployment, the best Thanksgiving ever is always the one right in front of us.

For the past 12 years, we have lived a life of ‘split ops’ and are always looking forward to being together in the same house again. In 2003, when we PCS’d to Georgia, we had already decided that this would be our retirement location. My husband would have 17 years active duty by the time he would likely PCS again, and after going to that duty station without us, he would retire and return home to us in Georgia for good.

We agreed to having this ‘split ops’ for three years, to enable our children to establish roots in our community, their new schools and sports and to allow me to continue building a successful career without moving anymore. The thing is, it didn’t quite happen that way.

Since that first stint as split ops, he has lived in eight different places without us, including Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, I recently calculated that we have lived apart for about nine of the past 12 years.

The good news is that our plan, although difficult at times, has worked like a charm. Our son finished in the top 10 percent of his high school class; graduated from The College of William & Mary with stellar academics and in the football record books many times over; was drafted into the NFL and is now living the first year of his dream career.

Our daughter, who is seven years younger than my son, is doing very well in high school academics; was an All-Star (competitive) cheerleader for eight years by the time she got to middle school; has played school volleyball for five seasons and is in her fourth year of club volleyball.

I have a career I love and the opportunity to maintain an awesome degree of work-life balance with an organization that allows me to telework four days each week. 

So tonight, as we anticipate my husband’s arrival from Virginia in about 24 hours, and our drive to Tennessee to visit our son later this week, I know this Thanksgiving will be the best one ever, because it is the one that is right in front of us.

And as usual, when at all possible, we find a way to be together for a few days to celebrate all the things we have to be thankful for, especially each other. 

I can’t say for certain when we all actually first noticed it, but I’m pretty sure it was around the time we’d all really gotten into eating our side dishes.

At least, that’s when I noticed it. I remember reaching for the salt, and stopped with my hand mid-air. The salt was forgotten the moment I realized that my best friend’s cousin (we’ll call her BFC) was feeding teeny bits of her Thanksgiving dinner to a tiny, furry face in her cleavage.

I’m just going to let that sink in for a minute.  Don’t feel weird if you have to read that paragraph more than once, either, because it’s a really hard idea to wrap a reasonable mind around. So I did what any normal person would do, and kicked my husband in the shin so that he, too, could stare at BFC’s boobs. I think it’s when he coughed to keep from choking on his roll that everyone really started to notice that BFC was feeding her cleavage.

After thirty years, my best friend and I no longer need to speak to have conversations, which I had considered a blessing until that moment. It turned out that it is also a curse, because the spectacular mix of amazement and disgust on her face was clearly asking me if she was truly looking at a freaking fuzzy-faced rodent eating turkey from her cousin’s tit-trough. And I have to tell you, I don’t think I’ve ever worked as hard as I had to work to keep from laughing so hard that I fell out of my chair.

So anyway, aghast and silent, we all watched as BFC give tiny pinches of food to this fuzzy little face. Somehow we managed to finish eating. In what I can only assume was an attempt to break the silence, my friend’s mother in law prompted this exchange:

                        MIL:  “So what’s in your shirt, dear?”

                        BFC:  “It’s my sugar glider.”

                        MIL:  “Oh. I see. Does it fly?”

It was at that point the conversation stopped, because as it turns out, they glide.

Especially if they’re thrown.

When this one was thrown, it landed on the leg of my pants. And although that wasn’t my favorite thing, its landing zone happened to be about two and a half inches higher than my three year old’s head.

When I stripped it off my slacks and held it up (I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when I held it up, but it probably wasn’t going to be Thanksgiving Day-appropriate), it peed in my hand. It PEED.

In my HAND.

Her boob-rodent had peed over my kid’s head through my HAND.

It wasn’t long after that BFC was invited to enjoy the remainder of her Thanksgiving holiday…well, anywhere other than around us. Oh, and did I mention that this was my husband’s R&R from Afghanistan? No, I didn’t. And do you want to know why? Because we still, to this day, refer to that as the sugar glider Thanksgiving, rather than the R&R Thanksgiving.

And I will never stop being thankful for that.

My most memorable Thanksgiving as a military spouse actually happened the day before Thanksgiving.

The day my husband returned home from his very first 12-month deployment was also his birthday. I had cleaned the house, I had washed the dog and I had primped and coiffed. My then 2-year-old was excited though she wasn’t quite sure why.

I had planned my Thanksgiving menu. My returning soldier is also a huge cook, so I allowed for variations once he returned. I had even hoarded away some special ‘fun cash’ to present to him for his extra grocery shopping pleasure.

Early that morning, we loaded the car and arrived on post early, filled with grand anticipation. The hangar was bursting with excitement. My girlfriends and I took tons of pictures in our redeployment finery and our children were playing and looking adorable with their tiny Red Cross issued American flags and hand-picked red, white and blue outfits. My husband’s parents were on the way too, but had called to let me know they had forgotten an ID and had to turn back.

Just a few moments later, I heard a cry. My daughter had accidentally collided head on with another child and busted her lip. She was bleeding onto her new dress and white bunny. Then, my husband called. It was the first call from his regular phone number that I had received in a year.

I heard his voice tell me he was on the bus ride up from the tarmac and ask if all was well. As I applied pressure to our child’s bleeding lip, and I wondered if his parents would make it in time, I lapsed into Army wife mode and chirped, “Everything’s great, honey! Can’t wait to see you!”

Everything was indeed great. Soon, the large hangar doors opened and sunlight spilled over rows and rows of beautiful soldiers marching in unison. My friends who didn’t have husbands arriving that day were poised to be my paparazzi. My daughter’s lip stopped bleeding and I searched the crowd.

I couldn’t find him! I knew he was there! As the Star Spangled Banner concluded and the speaker made the official dismissal, for a moment I panicked. He WAS here wasn’t he? I scooped up my daughter and rushed through the hoards.

All the heads and freshly shaved necks looked the same in those patrol caps! And then, in that enchanting moment, he found me and I found him. Our heartfelt embrace and his moment of kneeling in front of our daughter, bribing her with German chocolate from his pocket due to a tiny bit of shyness put Hallmark to shame.

He was home! And that was all that mattered.

After a hearty Mexican lunch with his parents who finally arrived, his bestowing upon me a beautiful black diamond and his fantastic grocery shopping spree, I found myself alone in a quiet kitchen. The sun had set on our magical day. Our daughter slept snugly in her toddler bed and I found my soldier, in his white sweater and jeans sound asleep on top of the covers of our neatly made bed.

I gently closed each bedroom door, sent up a silent prayer of thanks and retreated to the kitchen where I went to work. Chopping celery and carrots at 9:30 pm in preparation for Thanksgiving dinner had never been sweeter.

The muppets of Sesame Street have been long-time supporters of military families.

They’ve created several videos to help children deal with deployment, PTSD and battlefield injuries. They’ve toured military bases around the world every year to give kids a free, fun-filled afternoon with all those furry monsters.

Now, the Muppets are here for military families, 24-7, through a new website and set of apps launched this week.

The site, Sesame Street for Military Families, gives parents an additional set of tools to help navigate their children through stresses of deployment, homecoming, relocation, injury and grief.

Under each topic for parents there are tips on how to handle the situation and where to find resources. For kids, there are videos about those topics, hosted by Elmo and friends, as well as coloring sheets and activities, all related to each military family topic.

The coloring sheets in particular are perfect for young military children. There are sheets that help them express their feelings and draw a picture of how they are feeling. There is a sheet of moving box stickers featuring their favorite Muppets so they can label their own toys. There are Veterans’ Day pages and a page that is a “pocket full of hearts” so they can draw pictures for their deployed family member and send them a “pocket full of hearts.”

There is also a music making program that allows children to choose instruments, recordings and voice overs to make their own music.

The website is an extension of Sesame Street’s highly successful, “Talk, Listen, Connect” initiative.

Log in, click on and let the muppets help carry you through the stress and joy that comes with being a military family.

Find the website here: http://www.sesamestreetformilitaryfamilies.org/

If you want to attend a military spouse only hiring fair in December, you may be out of luck.

The popular hiring fairs are held around the country and sponsored by the U.S. Chamber Foundation. The employers who attend are there to hire military spouses because they recognize the assets these men and women can bring to their companies.

In December, there are only three events, nationwide: in San Antonio, Miami and through a virtual hiring fair.

If you’ve never attended a virtual hiring fair, this is a fantastic opportunity to try it. You attend online by logging in and “visiting” the virtual booths posted by each employer. They are online in real time to answer questions too.

Because this is a virtual job fair, it means there will be employers from across the nation. And, as a bonus, you don’t have to bundle up and head out into the cold.

Don’t forget to register and have a digital copy of your resume ready to fire off to a recruiter!

For links to the upcoming virtual job fair and events through the rest of December, please see below:

Dec. 3

Virtual Job Fair

https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/event/virtual-job-fair-9

Dec. 9

San Antonio, Texas

https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/event/joint-base-san-antonio-transition-summit

Dec. 10

Miami, Fla.

https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/event/miami-hiring-fair

They tell you labor gets easier and shorter.

Well, I had a 10-hour labor with my first child, a four-hour labor with my second, and a 48-hour labor with my third.

It was long, painful and shocking. My son was born at home after almost two days of labor.  He came into the world face-up, with both arms by his head, weighing nine pounds and a full inch longer than both his older sisters.

He also was born hours before his father deployed.

It was the biggest shocker about his birth entirely.

Due to a series of weird, unpredictable events that only a submariner would understand, my husband didn’t deploy when he was supposed to.

It was pushed off by days, giving me just enough time to go into labor and have our third child – our first son – less than seven hours before he left.

He held our little bundle, tucked me and him into bed – after the long, hard labor, I was struggling to walk and sit up – and started to throw the last few things he still needed in a military-issued duffel bag.

He dozed on the couch for an hour so as not to jostle me and cause me more pain, and then he woke me up, helped me to the bathroom and helped me change our little guy’s diaper, before kissing me and our now three kids good-bye.

My father drove him to the checkpoint, and then he was gone.

Hours after our child was born.  Hours after he held me while I screamed and cried, pushing our son out.  Hours after our entire world changed.

I woke up that next morning, a sleeping bundle on my chest, still in shock.

I waited for him to come in the door.  But he didn’t.

Six days later, my parents went home.  They had to get back to work, and I was back up and on my feet, holding the hands of my 4-year-old and 2-year-old, with the newborn strapped to my chest.

I was scared straight.

And still, my husband didn’t walk in the door.  And reality hit.

He was gone.  Like he had been eight times before.  But this time I hadn’t prepared.  I hadn’t said a proper goodbye.  I hadn’t dealt with it.

Instead, I had had a baby.

A beautiful baby boy who I fall more and more in love with every day.  A love so strong that it almost outweighs the touches of sadness I feel, knowing his father is missing this.

Knowing that he might as well not know him at all, knowing those seven hours with his son were precious.  And knowing they made it that much harder to walk away.  From me.  From us.  From him.

Our son will have a birth story unlike most.  A story of his brave father, who somehow summoned up the courage to walk away when he wanted to leave even less than he normally does.

It may be one of the most stalwart, strong, patriotic things the man has ever done.

And it will be one of our saddest, proudest moments as a military family yet.

A hello and a goodbye, all tragically combined.