"Everybody has to suck it up," Carie said recently while at the dentist's office with twin 7-year-old daughters Kayla and Kyley. "Everybody serves."

In general, the military agrees with Carie, and it has taken steps to alleviate the emotional pain and myriad challenges children go through while a parent is gone for long and sometimes multiple deployments overseas.

"We recognize that families and children have needs," said Utah National Guard spokesman Hank McIntire. "And we know we can do more."

Guard members who are returning home can take part in a "reunion workshop" called "Putting the Pieces Back Together." In a 40-page handout, soldiers and their families are guided through the coming-home process with questions that prompt them to begin thinking about things like how everyone has changed during deployment.

McIntire said some families also use the "flat daddy" approach, which employs the use of a life-sized cutout of a soldier or airman that remains in the home as at least some kind of a presence for the children.

While reservists and Guard members are actually deployed, or if they've been "severely" injured and need time and space to recover, the group Our Military Kids Inc. has a grant program to help children left behind afford to take part in youth sports, fine arts and tutoring programs. The group, using Department of Defense numbers, estimates there are 77,000 children eligible for its grant monies.

Over the past year, Denise Jonas took advantage of something called Utah National Guard Kids, which brings children of deployed parents together for activities and a chance to empathize.

But as McIntire pointed out, there's only so much the military can do to help families and, in particular, children, survive a deployment and its aftermath. In a larger sense, they're on their own.

Denise Jonas was fortunate, compared to the families of other soldiers in her husband's unit. She and her husband would talk on the phone more often than other couples, and at least once a month their children got to see their father over a Web camera.

"He feels bad for those who didn't have that kind of a situation," Jonas said about her husband. "He didn't live in terrible conditions — it's been very touchy for him."

But Justin, Lacie, Skyler, 12, and Blake managed to have what their mother described as a "wonderful" experience, partly because their father was able to be "positive" for the kids.

"They've had challenges," Ronald Jonas said. "I think they just kept going without me — that's a testament to her," he said, referring to his wife, during his unit's recent homecoming.

Instead of Justin being able to come and go more freely with his friends, they came to his house more often.