At a little school just outside the gates of Naval Base Kitsap, a special group of students file into a small office to eat lunch and put the finishing touches on their latest craft project. They've created handmade picture frames and are discussing whether magnets or tape would be the best way to hang them in the rack of a Navy ship. Once gifted, these special frames will likely travel thousands of miles, many of them deep under the ocean, as their recipients serve their country at bases and onboard ships and submarines around the world.

The group is the Clear Creek Elementary Deployment Club, and the kids are all military dependents, each dealing with the deployment of a parent with the help of a woman that understands deployment.

Navy spouse, Robin Earl, started the Deployment Club seven years ago. Her own husband was preparing to deploy, and after learning that a similar group had recently disbanded, she knew she had to start the group back up again, for her children and for all the kids around her she saw struggling with deployment.

She began hosting weekly lunchtime meetings at the school and invited all the kids who were dealing with a parent's deployment. From the beginning, she seemed to have a gut instinct about what the kids needed and would respond to.

"It's not just a talking group," she said. "Kids need to keep busy so we do little craft projects and play games. Sometimes we role play how to deal with different situations during deployment."

It's in the midst of their fun that real truth comes out.

As she colors her picture frame, one student mentions, "My dad's gonna miss ALL our birthdays this year."

Another excitedly shared, "We might get to go to Disney this year! We've been planning to go for a long time, but Dad's been gone a lot."

It's these types of issues that set military children apart from other kids and that highlight the need for groups like Mrs. Earl's Deployment Club. It's also the reason that Earl has set her sights higher than serving just one school.

Mrs. Earl smiles and her eyes light up as she nervously reveals her dream of creating a nonprofit organization to fund her Deployment Club curriculum and train volunteers to bring it to other local schools and eventually to schools serving military children around the world. Already, Cougar Valley Elementary has instituted a similar Deployment Club program, and talks with other local schools are in progress.

"Kids need an outlet for their feelings and a safe place to work through them," she said, and at Clear Creek, it's working. If the high fives and smiles of the students around the table today aren't proof enough, just ask the students themselves.

On this day, Mrs. Earl has asked the kids to evaluate the club and share their favorite and least favorite activities, and one smiling fourth grader replied, "I love Deployment Club! I don't have any least favorite things we do!"