Favorite charm?! You want me to choose one?! I think my most favorite charm is the original Army Dog Tag that Kyle engraved for me. When we got married, one of our ROTC Cadre’s wife gave me a bracelet with our college charm because every time her husband went away he’d bring her back a special charm…it was such a special tradition that we started! It was a few years later at Ft. Hood (Cavazos) that we found Nomadés- it was made for me!

Kyle and I had been married 6 years when that little Dog Tag was gifted to me - we’d already survived 4 PCS's  & more than 75% of our marriage separated due to deployments & trainings. That charm gave us a way to tell an important story, the good, bad and the ugly. Years later, we used the same charm to start our little girls’ stories, and it means just as much as it did the first time I saw it dangling on my bracelet.

You can read Caitlyn's daughter's story in her very own Stories From the Porch.