Blue Star Stories
Blue Star Welcome Week: A Community-Building Event for Military Families
By: Marla Bautista Moving to a new duty station can be an exciting, but sometimes difficult transition for military families, especially those with small children or those who don’t have close friends or family nearby. Blue Star Welcome Week provides an opportunity to meet your community and welcome new members into your neighborhood while also…
Read moreHow Eating Together Improves Nourishment & Connection
Between working late, kids activities, and other obligations, a packed family schedule may mean less time to sit down and have a meal together. For military families, that time to sit down together can be further disrupted by TDYs, deployments, swing shifts, and irregular schedules. It’s no wonder why one of the top issues affecting…
Read morePRIDE in Network: How One Spouse Found His Again
As a successful New Zealand diplomat of 14 years, David was a well-traveled and established professional. He’d been through several overseas tours to places like Indonesia, Chile, and finally, Hawaii, where he met his future spouse, John, an Army Chief Warrant Officer 2. “My career as a diplomat was promising and on an upward trajectory,”…
Read moreMoving with the military? Know this one thing!
It’s a well-known fact that you’re no stranger to moving as a military family. In fact, you could probably consider yourself a moving “expert” thanks to new orders every couple of years. While most of us understand the basics of a move — our stuff gets boxed, moved, we unpack, organize, and more — some…
Read moreGet the Most Out of the School Year: Advice From a Military Teen
As a military family, we often get lost in the sauce when preparing for our kids’ school year. We do the shopping, sign the papers, confirm bus routes, enroll kids at the last minute for reasons that come with our lifestyle, and the list goes on. This year, I took a different approach to keep…
Read moreBeing Authentic: Growing Connections Between More Families of Color with Transparency in the National Capital Region
Metropolitan Washington, D.C. has grown steadily to become more diverse, especially between 2010 and 2020. Today, more than half of the region’s residents identify as non-white. For an area ranked as one of the most diverse places to live in the U.S., it should come as a surprise that military families of color still feel…
Read moreEn route to a new duty station? Protect yourself!
Did you know? Nearly one-third of the military, and their families, are en route to a new duty station right now and are at risk of their sensitive data getting stolen by someone they know. Protect yourself As you shuffle around, beware that your personal info is more accessible to movers, family members, dumpster divers,…
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