Today is National Women and Girls Sports day. Sports are a vital part of growing up, whether it be team sports or individual sports. Activities like these teach discipline, respect and build confidence. Dance is no different, as it can be performed in a group or individually. For Sabina, it also fills a hole that her father’s deployment has left. To have a parent deployed can cause stress and anxiety in everyday life. A deployment is a family job. Chores need to be picked up from other people in the family, school doesn’t stop, and the parent’s absence becomes a missing piece in the family puzzle. Sabina finds solace in ballet. Ballet is calming, disciplined, and distracting in a positive way. She has been dedicated to ballet for 10 years and two deployments. “Ballet for Sabina, I have found, relaxes her and keeps her centered as we know the music alone is very soothing.  The stress that our military children go through is more than we know at times,” Sabina’s mother said, providing some insight on her daughter. Sabina is the oldest of three children whose ages range from 1-16. Sabina’s father is a Navy Reservist and a lifelong Texan. He is currently serving overseas and started deploying to the Middle East in 2010, leaving his wife at home with three kids.  At the age of 16, Sabina is now driving and able to get herself to dance which helps her mother, but there are still other burdens for a military family throughout a deployment. Financial burdens are one of the most common challenges during a deployment. “Financial awareness is a constant awareness for deployed family members to ensure that family is taken care of back home in this regards to allow the service member to be fully focused on the mission. One of the key advantages to the grant offered by Our Military Kids is this peace of mind knowing that the grant will be allocated for extracurricular activities-lessening one more financial consideration on our family,” commented Sabina’s father. Our Military Kids has helped Sabina continue to dance. “These grants are a HUGE help.  Cost of deployments are sometimes so much more as we need to rely on extra childcare because one parent is gone and so the cost of this taps into other funds and many times sports or extracurricular activities have to be scaled back,” said Sabina’s mother describing a few difficulties military spouses face.