Thank you, again, dear readers, for making Deployment Diatribes popular enough to put it on Pop Sugar’s Circle of Moms’ Top 25 list of Military Family blogs. I know I’ve thanked you before but thanks to the rating, I got invited to focus on military families with the First Lady on September 11, last week.
In honor of the 9/11 Day of Service and Remembrance, First Lady Michelle Obama visited the newly opened USO Warrior and Family Center and the National Intrepid Center of Excellence, Intrepid Spirit One (NICoE), at Fort Belvoir, VA. The USO center is a beautiful facility for the military servicemen and women and their families and the NICoE is dedicated to the diagnosis, treatment and research of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Post-Traumatic Stress (PTS), and other service related illnesses and injuries among service members, veterans and their families.
I met up with one other blogger, Rheanna of Cammo Style Love, and about 15 other press representatives in the White House Briefing room.
We loaded into vans and joined the motorcade which shuttled us from the White House to Ft. Belvoir. I must say that I enjoyed the mode of travel, lights flashing, cars moving to the side, no stopping for traffic lights… Makes DC traffic seem not so bad.
We joined Mrs. Obama, and surprise guest, Gary Sinise, good friend of the military community, as they did a service project with children at the USO Warrior and Family Center. Mrs. Obama brought cookies, in the shape of the new family pet, Sunny, a Portuguese Water Dog, for the families. She sat down with the kids and drew a pair of construction paper hands and glued them onto a larger project for the wounded warriors at the NICoE.
Mrs. Obama interacted with the children with poise and ease.
She was clearly comfortable with the children and very much enjoying herself, as she chatted casually with them and helped them with their artwork.
She is more stunning in person than these pictures can show.
As a member of the community her Joining Forces effort aims to help, I appreciate her endeavors. I hope to work with the organization in the future.
The Deployment Diatribes 