Strong Bonds Review

My family and I had the privilege of attending the Army's Strong Bonds retreat last weekend in Anaheim, CA. We attended the family version of the program. There is also a couple's version that I hope we can attend someday, but this review will pertain just to the family one.

We stayed at a lovely hotel in Anaheim. It was the Sheraton Anaheim Hotel it was beautiful and was referred to by the staff as the "castle" hotel. A fabulous buffet breakfast for two was included for each room, then we paid for my sons at $10 and the baby was free, although he ate more than my son!

The deal with Strong Bonds is you do have to pay for the hotel upfront it was about 130 a night I think, and then your soldier submits it for reimbursement on DTS (Defense Travel System). Ideally your soldier is a government card holder and you can just charge this. The caveat with that is you have to make sure his unit turns on the card. (They turn it on and off with every set of orders.) We discovered when we got there that they had not turned his on, thankfully this was not a first for us, a few phone calls up the chain of command to a few not so nice officers got it taken care of and we were good. Personally I love how my husband was read the riot act by an irritated Major because someone else didn't do their job. He was on speakerphone and OH how hard I had to bite my tongue!

Meals also needed to be charged or paid for and then you received per diem back. For our 4 day trip the per diem was 248.50 per person. This is definitely a sufficient per diem and the way we choose to use it was to eat cheap on most meals and then splurge on others like Dinner with Goofy and Breakfast with Mickey. These are character meals at the Disney hotels so no admission into Disneyland is required.

Did I also mention that your soldier is on orders so he is paid to be there? Again, you are paying in advance but for most people this offsets the cost of Military Disney Tickets that you can purchase through an ITT office on base.

The general schedule for the family retreat was a mixer Thursday (no its not check in and leave like most of us thought), this lasted about an hour and a half and all family members must be present. Friday was 9a-4p, and yes they went the whole day. Saturday was 9a-12p, so plenty of family time after. Then Sunday was 9-11a with an optional service before if you choose to participate no pressure at all.

Now off of the details and onto the actual review of the retreat. The retreat is put on by the Chaplains. This scared me away a little but don't let it. It is definitely anything from preachy and very little religion if any is actually mentioned. There were some fun family activities and some lectures too. We made a family mural, which was actually a little more fun than I thought it would be, it was just a little difficult to get onto the floor to trace each other. My family choose to take a more creative spin on it and the boys made each member a superhero. My husband was of course Captain America!

There were activities about actually listening to your kids and what they say. Most of these activities were to my dismay done with other peoples children. I didn't really find myself overjoyed at the idea of bonding with another couples kids which we did three or four times over the weekend. I do understand the concept though, that your used to tuning out your own kid (come one admit it you do), so another child is probably necessary, and then one of the other activities was meant to have someone else brag about your kid. I would have liked on the whole more interaction with my own child.  My oldest child is 7 and some of the content was presented in a way that was over his head, did I mention the PowerPoint's, now I know the Army LOVES it's PowerPoint's, but with a group of kids its a little dry for them!

Bottom Line would I do it again ABSOLUTELY! We got a basically free trip to Disneyland out of it! Was there some useful information, yes, most of it is relatively common sense, but its also some of the stuff that if it isn't in front of your face you may not even realize it!

If you want to attend you need to check out Strong Bond's Website for upcoming events. Some of them are unit specific some they have Open Enrollment for, for us this was key! Also, make sure you ask your soldier what RSC (Regional Support Command) they are under, it was the one number in the chain of command I didn't know. Wow didn't I feel silly when the chaplain who told me about the event was like uh your in this one, hehe! Also, you have to attend the one in your area, don't try and go to Hawaii, it's only for those stationed there! (I'll admit it I tried.)