As most chaplains take time for Sermon Prep, (some more than others ::wink::) preaching on Sunday usually "earns" you a CTO (compensatory time off). In other words - since you'll most likely spend time on Saturday prepping for a sermon and Sunday preaching and running a service...you are given another day off during the week (in other words you get a full day off somewhere in the week). We discovered quickly that CTO's are not always feasible. There are always commander calls, invocations, fun runs, "mandatory fun" and the like, which cause a chaplain to have to "run in" on his CTO....and it is rare to have TWO DAYS (as in a weekend) off in a row. ::snort:: With the current climate and manning issues in the Air Force some commands have done away with CTO's altogether. All that say that Fridays are Michael's CTO.....but I have learned this means maybe once a month he will be with us - the rest of the Fridays he will be working - sometimes a short day of say 9-5:00 p.m. (as opposed to the typical day). You can tell us to plan better - but honestly - we've tried several ways of dealing with this. I used to keep Fridays totally clear. This simply highlighted for the family that Dad was working on his CTO. We've tried to guess which Friday he may be actually able to be home - but that is often very unpredictable. We've decided I will simply make "pencil plans" on Friday - though a few are just not penciled - like today's fun event.
I was quite surprised to discover Wednesday that Michael was really and truly taking Friday off this week. It would be a "Family Day" - sort of. By the end of the day we were laughing and declaring his CTO to be an "Un-Family day."
It began with my commitment to attend a Chapel Spouse function - which I WANTED to attend...and Michael had no ill feelings about me attending. Arielle watched kids. I had lunch and sweet talks with wonderful ladies. We said farewell to a wonderful Wing Chaplain's wife as she will be very busy with wedding, retirement, packing in future weeks before her move. Arielle was possibly given the best pay and highest praise today when Lily told her, "Arielle, you're the best babysitter, I want to pay you." She then gave her a Brave sticker - which Arielle wore all day and will probably save.
After the luncheon Arielle and I headed to the commissary - with vision of "Family Day" in a "a bit."
We got home at 3:00 p.m. Unbeknownst to us, Michael had spent most the day on the phone with various "chapel and staff issues." He had the young ones out shopping for Arielle's belated birthday celebration - but continued to be tethered to his sparkly, new, government issued iphone! ::snort::
Arielle and I made her a birthday cake while we waited for them to get home.
They got home and the kids wrapped gifts. Michael fielded two more phone calls.
We had dinner, the calls stopped, and we watched Night at the Museum and declared it a very nice Un-Family Day after all....but we still haven't made it to the Sacramento Zoo.
Thankful to have married a man who "only works on Sundays." ::snort::
Choosing Joy!
©2014 D.R.G.
~Coram Deo~
Living all of life before the face of God...
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