HILO, Hawai'i — There are the bulky care packages stuffed with passion orange juice, local foods and videos of the kids. There are the e-mails to keep in touch, and the phone calls. There are special military Web sites where they can post and look at pictures, and exchange messages.

It all helps, but the holidays are hard on Hawai'i's deployed military personnel and their families. Families have traditions, and somehow those traditions aren't quite the same when someone important is absent.

For Caroline Tumpap, 34, and her two sons, this year will be their second holiday season apart from National Guard Capt. Tino Tumpap. Capt. Tumpap is commander of Alpha Company, Special Troops Battalion, 29th Brigade, and is based with his unit in Kuwait.

Caroline is hoping for a call from Tino today, but isn't banking on it.

"I guess for me, I'm very flexible. Personally, I don't get real hung up if I miss a holiday," she said. "I focus on the fact that there's always a reason to celebrate, even if it's not on that day. If you just focus on the positive things, it makes it a lot easier to get through all the emotions that otherwise could pop up."

Caroline and Tino are high school sweethearts who graduated from Hilo High in 1992. Tino has been in the military for 16 years, and also taught at Kea'au High School before moving his family to O'ahu.

He was deployed to Iraq for the 2006 holiday season, and will be gone again this year. His unit has been in intensive training or on deployment since early June, and Caroline has had to pick up the slack at home.

She works parttime as corporate director of credentialing for Hawai'i Health Systems Corp., helps with the kids' homework, and hurries around to get the boys to football and judo practice in an effort to keep their routines as normal as possible. A regular routine helps make the separation from their dad a bit easier.

"I find a lot of support in my church family and friends nearby," she said. "I think it's difficult because you just get very weary."

Caroline said their sons, Micah, 10, and Kainalu, 6, rarely complain.

"There are times when as a mom I can sense the sadness in them, but I think my children are very aware of what their father does, (and) they support him tremendously. My children highly respect what my husband does, and so they're very proud, even though every once in awhile my son will say 'I wish dad could come to my game today.' "

Today, Caroline said she will pack up some pumpkin squares and gather with family in Honolulu for Thanksgiving.

Caroline and the boys will spend today with Caroline's grandparents, aunties and uncles at an auntie's house in Hawai'i Kai. She expects about 50 family members will gather, and the boys hope to splash around in the pool with some of the dozen cousins expected to be there.

On the big holidays, "it can be a little bit of a lonely day, but many families do our best to focus on the positive things," Caroline said. "We celebrate what they're doing, we gather with our other family members as well as each other, and we just provide support for one another."

There is a "Family Readiness Group" — made up of soldiers' family members. Members of the group have grown close, and that provides a special kind of support, Caroline said.

"You do become (a) source of each others' strength because ... there's a little bit more empathy because you know that you all do the same things, which is go home and sleep alone at night," she said. "You face the challenges of parenting alone, just like everybody else."

The 13-hour time change with Kuwait has made it a challenge to get the boys on the phone with their father. Tino usually calls at 8 a.m. Hawai'i time after his workday in Kuwait has ended and the boys are in school, or between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m., after the boys are in bed.

If the boys do happen to be around when Tino calls, they get the phone, she said. "We don't usually know in advance, the phone just rings," she said.

Usually Caroline fills him in on the sports, school activities and his sons' football games. Tino is usually upbeat, but sometimes she can hear the fatigue in her husband's voice.

She doesn't get to hear much about what her husband is doing, either because he doesn't care to talk about his specific duties, or can't talk about them for security reasons.

In general, Caroline knows he is based in Kuwait and his soldiers are attached to a cavalry unit. Their mission is convoy security, protecting vehicles that travel around Iraq, but Caroline said she isn't frightened for him.

"I have a lot of peace. I know that the Lord is watching over him and all of his men," she said. "I know that they're trained for the mission. I just feel comfortable, despite knowing the dangers, the potential. I don't go to sleep with fear."