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Kris and Jubee Moxley sit in the living room of their new home, which Jubee completed while Kris was serving in Iraq.
Kris, Jubee, Nathaniel, 11, and Kristopher Moxley, 13, are reunited and living in their new home.
Kris Moxley pets Freedom, a horse born just before he returned from Iraq. Jubee Moxley began running a business on the property of their new home to board horses.
Kris and Jubee Moxley walk through the straw-covered seeded yard of their new home. While Kris was serving in Iraq |
As the wife of a Marine, Jubee Moxley has learned a thing or two about hush-hush operations.
She pulled off a major one in the past few months.
While her husband, Kris, was flying helicopter missions in Iraq, Jubee worked with a contractor to get the couple's dream home built before he returned.
In e-mails and regular phone calls, Jubee told Kris enough to keep him from getting suspicious. But she never let on that the house in the Chancellor area of Spotsylvania County would be finished--and furnished--when he came back from seven months in the desert.
"I didn't know that it would be complete, and I surely didn't expect it to be all made up like it is now," he said this week, as he sat on brand-new furniture in his freshly painted living room. "I thought maybe it would be in the final stages of construction, and we could move in, and they could work around us.
"She kept me in the dark."
Jubee, who grinned throughout the conversation, purposely kept her partner out of the loop.
"I learned from a Marine how to be--what's the word--covert," she said. "I just wanted everything to be perfect for him."
Kris, a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Reserves, returned to Spotsylvania on Tuesday. He'd been in Iraq since September 2005, on his second deployment in less than two years.
He'll return to Norfolk tomorrow and will be stationed there during the week, through July, as he fulfills his duty in the Reserves. He'll be able to come home on the weekends to be with his wife and their two sons, Kristopher, 13, and Nathaniel, 11.
The 21/2-hour commute to Norfolk won't bother him.
"It's better than being in Iraq," he said.
Kris, who's 41, spent 12 years in the Marine Corps before he joined the Reserves in 1999. His unit was deployed to Iraq the first time in August 2004.
He said he felt much safer on the second visit to the Al Asad Air Base, about 100 miles northwest of Baghdad. During his first deployment, the base got hit by rockets every two weeks or so, knocking out electricity.
"We didn't get rocketed on our base for the last four months I was there," he said. "It was definitely safer this time."
Despite almost daily reports in the American media about insurgent attacks, Kris believes most "Iraqis just want to get on with their lives," he said.
"So they don't hate you?" Jubee asked.
"Some do," he answered. "But I think the large percentage appreciate what we've done, and they want us to finish up and leave them to their own country."
Back on the home front, Kris and Jubee had bought the land and picked out the plans for their dream home before his second deployment.
They agreed on a stone fireplace and cathedral ceilings in the living room, a master bedroom with a walk-in closet upstairs and rooms for the boys downstairs.
The two also wanted a screened-in porch off the breakfast nook, where Kris could see the garden he hopes to plant, along with deer and turkey coming out of the woods. Jubee could watch her horses, and others she boards, in the pastures next to the house.
The Moxleys also picked the contractor, Battlefield Homes.
Kris had to leave for Iraq before ground was broken. The day-to-day decisions--and the changes that always come with construction--were left to Jubee and the Battlefield team.
She came to look at Michael Tierney and Allen Harrison, Battlefield's owner and vice president of operations, respectively, as friends and big brothers. She got their advice--and a male point of view--on everything from stonework for the fireplace to what kind of TV to put in the basement room dedicated to Kris' hunting trophies and Marine medals.
The builders agreed to push the construction schedule and added extras they though Kris would enjoy, such as recessed lighting in his basement room.
Jubee also clicked with Kathy Metts, Battlefield's project superintendent. The women dealt with each other almost daily.
"Not only did I build a house for a nice person, I ended up getting a good friend out of the deal," Kathy said.
Others rallied around the couple in similar ways. Kris got dozens of care packages from people he never met and schools he plans to visit. Jubee got help with fencing and farm equipment from new neighbors.
A couple who started boarding a horse with Jubee helped her and her sons move into their home in late February--only three days after the couple met Jubee.
The family is grateful for all the support.
But no gesture was more appreciated than the mini crisis Battlefield averted a few hours before Kris returned.
Jubee was in her bedroom, "trying on a zillion different outfits" the night before she went to pick up Kris.
She realized the door didn't close properly.
The contractors had checked all the doors earlier, but shifts sometimes occur due to temperature changes. Jubee hadn't needed that much privacy before, but she would soon.
She left a frantic message with Battlefield that "it's really important that we're able to shut the door."
The day, while Jubee drove to Norfolk to get Kris, a Battlefield crew fixed the door.
The Moxley homecoming, like the hush-hush construction project, was complete.
To reach CATHY DYSON:
Email: cdyson@freelancestar.com
