No tribute to everyday heroes would be complete without recognizing the men and women who serve in our military. In early November 2009, Fort Bragg Army Base in North Carolina welcomed home more than 3,500 soldiers after a yearlong deployment in Iraq.

Watch the emotional homecoming.

Sgt. Soloman is thrilled to be able to spend the holidays with his family. Sgt. Soloman says he's looking forward to cooking pancake breakfasts for his family and tucking his children in at night. "With deployment, it's not just missing family but missing the moments," he says.

Sgt. Soloman's wife says she's especially thankful this holiday season. "This has been a hard deployment. It's not our first, like many of the wives sitting in here and on this base and all over America," she says. "But I'm just so thankful to have a husband [who] even though it's his duty to go away, he puts his family first before his duty and finds a way to be with us every day in some way, shape, form or fashion, and he's an amazing man, not just an amazing soldier, and I'm sure there's a lot of wives here that could say the same thing."