Where IS home, anyway?

Adam's duty station before Alaska was in Florida, and of all the places I've lived so far, Florida is the location I loved the most. Recently, I had the opportunity to visit our old Florida hometown-- and it felt like going home again. I almost didn't want to leave!

When we left to return to D.C., I told our daughter, "We're going home now." But if Florida was home, were we leaving home to go to our temporary home in D.C.? And then leaving that home in a few weeks to go to our actual home, er, house, in Alaska? And then packing up and getting ready to make a new home in Louisiana? Where, for us or for our daughter, was home?

That's when I realized that maybe the trite old saying was true: "Home is where the heart is". For us, home is where our little family is, regardless of geographic location, regardless of temporary situation, regardless of stability or lack of stability. Although as a military family we may not be able to settle in one place we can call home, hopefully we can make our family unit strong enough that as our daughter grows up, where we live doesn't really matter. Home is where our family is, and all the rest is incidental.