The Moran Family

I met Melissa days after moving to Germany.  We were both traveling on the military base bus trying to navigate this foreign environment we were to call home.  I was eight months pregnant with my first and she was an experienced mother of two.  As strangers, we helped guide each other through this strange territory with the little information we had.  This chance encounter would be foreshadowing our soon to be friendship.


I've mentioned before how good friends are hard to come by.  Melissa and her family are one in a milion.  During my first anxiety filled months (er... 2 years and counting) as a mother, Melissa was a calming voice full of understanding and encouragment.  I owe it to her and her recommended literature that my little boy was sleeping through the night by 5 months and thus making my life a bit easier.  For her, I was able to be a sounding board as she learned to adapt to a dreary and sometimes isolated climate.


It took time, and a helpful nudge from Melissa, but our friendship soon expanded outside of the safe confounds of our apartments and we began to enjoy life in Germany.  Coffee/play dates turned to outings with our families, PWOC sessions, photography classes, holiday gatherings, date nights with our husbands, girls nights, and a reliable babysitter for our children.  


When I learned my husband was deploying, Melissa was full of experience and advice from when her husband deployed two years before.  My motto of deployment was one she shared with me "You don't have to succeed in deployment, you just have to survive it".


During the deployment Melissa and her family invited me to countless dinners/holidays and even on their family vacation to Croatia.  Her children began taking Jude under their wing and he began to idolize them as brother and sister.  Jason was a father figure to Jude when his father was at war.


When my husband returned, we experienced a little more freedom and were able to go on more girls outings and share family vacations together.  Even better, we were each able to take two child free weekend trips.  See what I mean by one in a million friends.


Our time in Germany is coming to an end but before they left I wanted to add their family to my growing portfolio.  Their family was as easy to photograph as it was to befriend them.  They are beautiful inside and out and I am so blessed to have them in my life.


Thank you Melissa, Jason, McKenna, and Myles for letting us be a part of your family.  I look forward to meeting up in the great state of Texas and getting our families together again soon.