Early on in my husband’s deployment, raising four kids seemed to bring a heavy burden on me AND the kids. However hard it felt, we knew that this was uncharted territory. We needed a plan.

I knew that we had to call together a family meeting and set some ground rules to getting through the deployment, in one piece. We had to decide together, how we were going to get through it TOGETHER.

At first, we cried a lot, and we were angry with my husband. We all talked about how we felt abandoned.

Sitting back and listening to our children share their feelings about all that had happened over a course of 4 weeks since my husband deployed, I started to see a similarity; each of the kids spoke of advice that their daddy gave them. He gave them the green light to be mad, and that it was okay to be sad. He encouraged the kids to talk about it and to promise to always share with me how they felt.

He said that because he was sad too and that he was mad for the families in Iraq, he felt that he needed to do something to help. And he spoke of ways that the kids and I could make a difference here, even though we were obviously not going to deploy.

This was the moment that I realized that my husband gave permission for my kids to feel all their emotions, but also gave them a way to feel. He gave them a path to take, a path that we would all end up taking, and grow from.

This is where, we as a family, first began the idea to write a story together. It became a family affair. I got the idea for the title from a Christmas ornament that my daughter gave me. It said, “100% Red, White, & Blue MOM”. I was looking at that one morning and felt bittersweet with my husband gone, and looking at the ornament. It reminded me of something that my husband told me. He said, “Deanna, I believe in you.” I realized that I was 100% supportive of him, and I knew that I wanted to give 100% to the kids, but why did I feel like I was running at 50%? I didn’t feel very patriotic. I was feeling Red, White, & Blue on that particular morning. I was mad, I was afraid, and I was certainly blue. Then it hit me, I was feeling patriotic. I was Red, White, & Blue.

I ran the idea past the kids and then we spent the entire weekend working out ideas, and over the course of three years, we finally came to what we have today, our final version of our story.

We took pictures, drew sketches, and searched on the internet for artists. Once we finally decided to commission an artist, we knew she was the right one, once we saw her teddy bear sitting on a porch watching the sunset. It was something that we did often.

This story is our story. It is that of my husband giving words of encouragement to our kids and teaching them that the way to feeling better, is to GIVE BACK to each other!

We hope you enjoy our book. God Bless and God Speed!

Warmly,
Deanna, Shane, Molly, Alexis, Larissa, & Sawyer Cole