My husband deployed Valentine’s Day 2004. I can honestly tell you that was, hands down, the worst Valentine’s Day I’ve ever experienced.
Being away from us, from our children’s happenings, he was starved for photos and videos from home – some sort of normalcy amongst the chaos of war. Back then, though, it was hard to show him videos of things that had happened when he wasn’t online, because we used the webcam. We LIVED for the webcam. He would wait an hour or more for a computer in the MWR tent just to see our faces everyday. E-v-e-r-y-d-a-y. I lived chained to that computer, to my home phone, lived waiting to hear the phone ring or the “ping” of him messaging me online.
I took screenshots of every chat we ever had. Just so that I had recent photos of his face. He didn’t have that ability, though, so I’d take screenshots of us and send them to his email. After he’d leave the tent, he only had whatever photos we laminated and sent to him. He clung to those. He fell asleep with them in his hands and under his pillow.
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Webcam images of Super M and myself in 2004
Today’s technologies, though, have made it possible for soldiers to have photos and videos with them at all times. Soldiers are now taking their laptops, tablets, and smartphones overseas, to use their digital devices to be able to see their loved ones at any time. And I am super excited to share with you a giveaway that YesVideo is currently hosting, one that will make give military families have spectacular Valentine’s Days, even if they aren’t together.
YesVideo has announced their Holiday Gifting Program for U.S. Military Families. This month, they’re giving away five $300 gift certificates to military families to digitize their family’s memories. Memories that will then be taken from their current format, transferred onto DVD and stored on their password-protected cloud server and viewed from anywhere in the world, being (romantically) delivered to the winners by Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2013.
This contest is open to any U.S. military family who has a loved one serving abroad. Interested families can sign up on the short entry form located on YesVideo’s Facebook page. Act fast, because the opportunity for this giveaway ends at midnight PST on January 10th. Winners will be notified within one week. Final deadline for winners to submit their videos is January 31, 2013 in order to be processed and returned by February 14
Be sure to share this contest with any military family you know that has a loved one deployed. My Valentine’s Day with my husband deployed was my worst ever, but it doesn’t have to be for everyone with a loved one overseas. I am grateful for what YesVideo is doing. The holidays are the toughest when our soldiers are gone.
“We are incredibly grateful to our military for their service to our country, and we want to say thank you to them by delivering special memories to them,” says Michael Chang, CEO of YesVideo. “We recognize that they are not home with their families to celebrate the holidays, and we want to give them the next-best thing – videos of their loved ones.”
