Free Retreats for Army- Strong Bonds Program

If your an Army spouse chances are you may have heard of the Strong Bonds program. If you were like me you knew about it but had NO idea how to actually use it.

What it is: A program for Army families, Couples, and Singles meant to strengthen relationships.

From their website:
Strong Bonds is a unit-based, chaplain-led program which assists commanders in building individual resiliency by strengthening the Army Family. The core mission of the Strong Bonds program is to increase individual Soldier and Family member readiness through relationship education and skills training.
Strong Bonds is conducted in an off site retreat format in order to maximize the training effect. The retreat or “get away” provides a fun, safe, and secure environment in which to address the impact of relocation's, deployments, and military lifestyle stressors.

Where do you find more info: www.strongbonds.org

You DO NOT always have to attend with your unit. While it is designed this way they do have ones that state "Open Enrollment" we are attending one in about a week that is an open enrollment retreat.

For us it is an opportunity to get away right before a deployment and if it help[s our family all the better. We live in the southwest so out retreat happens to be in Anaheim, which happens to be where Disneyland is located. So I bet you can figure out where we will be in our off time!

Whats the catch you ask? You do have to sit through the classes, don't try and skip them. The other catch is outside of airfare (if necessary, we are driving) that the expenses are reimbursed, so food, gas, hotel do have to be paid up front. If your spouse is a Government Card holder, they can be put on the card. For us per diem is 248 for the four days per person. So we eat cheap most of the time then we can splurge on things like dinner with Goofy and Breakfast with Mickey and maybe a souvenir or two for the kids.

I will let you know how it goes when we get back! Seems like a good deal, I suggest you check it out!