My Yearly Post

I haven't posted since last August and so much has changed!  We now have another little girl who looks almost exactly like Ladybug in my sidebar ;)  Seriously, twins born 2 years apart!

I sometimes think about blogging.  I think it would be great to document our journey and special to look back on it, but...time.  Not my strong suit.  Time management is something I struggle in!

SO, to update:

Little Girl is 5 now and getting ready to start part time Kindergarten in a couple weeks.  We are going to do some homeschool  in the afternoons.  We are using My Father's World Kindergarten curriculum.  Mr. Man is tagging along as he sees fit.  We do this during the 2 little girls naps.

Mr. Man is 3 and going to go to preschool 3 days a week at the same school as his big sister.  On his mornings off (2 days a week), we are going to do some before Five in a Row which I am so excited about!  Ladybug will be tagging along as she sees fit.

Ladybug is 2 and we will doing Tot School while the biggies are in school.  We are using a combination of Letter of the Week Preparatory Curriculum and this new website I found called Let's Tot School.  I used Letter of the Week with Autumn.  The emphasis isn't actually on letters (misleading title!), but it has a weekly theme and I use the theme to find fine motor activities and fun books.  It really is a lot of fun!  Between LOTW and the Tot School website, it will be about 30 or 45 minutes a day of "mommy and me time"...I think.  We haven't started yet so we'll see.

Then we have a new little miss!  Maybe Little Miss should be her nickname on here :)  She is 10 weeks old and a sweet, snuggly thing.  She will be just held a lot and kissed a lot and hopefully will be awake during some of our read aloud time.

I sure do love my little family.  It's stressful at times and my house is pretty much always messy, but I try not to let that get me down.  It's a season.  Before I can blink, I will have big kids doing all my household cleaning anyway, right?!  My husband will be deploying soon and I can't really let myself think about that or I cry.  But ready or not, it's happening soon.  Even so, I am blessed to be his wife and so blessed to be a mama.

Lately

My life of late has been as follows...

Craughing at it's finest ;)

She's getting so big!

We don't do this nearly enough!

This.  Always this. 

This looks like they all are happy to be sitting next to each other...

Looks can be deceiving :)

And this too.  We are battling food allergies :(

Oh, and this!

I've been getting "fit".  I use that term loosely ;)

I have been trying to put my health first lately and finding it to be challenging.  Working out everyday is nice in theory, but getting us out of the house everyday is hard and then coming back home hot, sweaty, and sore doesn't lend to much energy.  We would wake, eat, get dressed, go work out, come home, play for 30 mins while I sat on the couch, eat lunch, put Caleb to bed, shower, and then if I had any energy left over I would do something productive with Autumn.  It wasn't happening very often!  Then Caleb would wake up and they always watch a video while I make dinner.  So Caleb wasn't really getting any quality time with me.  So just in the last week I decided to only go 2 days a week and my parenting has been more focused.   I feel much better about everything.  In my opinion, my spiritual life and my family life must come before anything else.  I was sacrificing my kids for my health...which needed to happen because I was eating all kinds of junk and couldn't lose the baby weight and I think it is important to be healthy!  However, now that I got a grip on my eating, I needed to go back to having days at home with energy to play with my kids.   

I've got this grand plan for next week ;)  I will try to document it!  Here's my plan.

Our week will be ocean themed.  

On Monday we are going to make an "ocean" out of blue gelatin.  (Monday is "Messy Monday" haha)

On Tuesday we are to make fish and octopus crafts I found online. (Tuesday is craft day or maybe art day if I can get more into that...my kids are just so young right now)

On Wednesday we are going to have an ocean-themed bath. (Wacky Bath Wednesday)

On Thursday, they will play will an ocean themed sensory tub. (Sensory Day)

On Friday we are going to wear black and white and pretend to be penguins. (Pretend play)

Everything I found is appropriate for a 3 year old and a 19 month old.  I think it's pretty manageable.  We'll see though.  Sometimes I have these great ideas and then they flop.  Or I flop.  Or something like that.  Plus most of this stuff is just for fun...so as far as teaching Autumn to write or teaching Caleb his letters, I'm not sure how I will incorporate that stuff in.  I know they learn through play, but if you don't teach them their ABC's, they won't learn them by playing in blue gelatin.  Or something like that :) 

In other news, Chris has been gone waaaaay too much this summer.  Being married to a soldier is a total drag at times.  Last night I showered with all 3 of the kids.  Really!  I was just going to do the big kids and then Elizabeth had a poop monstrosity so I thought what the heck.  Anyway, he's only been home one evening this week.  It's a DRAG.  

At least it's one less mouth to cook for though, right?! :)

On that lovely note, I'm out.  Autumn & Caleb are fighting over a blanket.  We only have 200 of them in this house.   

So Much

So much to write about.  I am so far behind with blogging.  My excuse is that in the past 30 days me, my husband, and our two children have lived and/or visited 2 continents, 3 countries, and 3 states.  The other day someone wrote somewhere they were tired of living out of suitcase for a week and a half and I just had to laugh.  We have lived in 3 hotels and both of or parents places.  I am tired of it.  Of course I am!  Who wouldn't be?  We have 3 weeks to go before we are all back together in our new home.  (Yes, that means me and the hubs are temporarily separated again).  Those 3 weeks cannot come soon enough!  Le sigh.  

In my head, the posts I want to write are: 

Our Trip to England
Here's me and Caleb in a red phone booth! Any Harry Potter fans out there?

Halloween

Me and my munchkins.  Two years in a row now that Chris has missed :(

The Gender Reveal

No pics...that one deserves it's own post!!

I would also like to discuss my New Years Goals and my best and worst reads of 2012.  I also love talking about Christmas and what it means to me.  See, I have so much to write about!  

For now, let me just emphatically say I love Once Upon A Time and Grimm.  Seriously, those two shows are completely up my alley!  My dear mother has DVR'd all the episodes so I am being unproductive during naptime and bedtime and watching TV.  And I love it :)  I know this won't last forever.  One, me and Chris have never had a TV in our home (we have a TV for DVDs but no TV if that makes sense).  We have no moral objections to television, but we can't quite justify spending the money.  I think we will add it to our budget in the next year however.  Two, even if we did have TV, I would force myself to self regulate since it is such a time suck.  However, I just realized that I can watch episodes on the Internet (I know, I'm a bit behind the times)!  So, I'm excited about that prospect. 

I'm also kind of pregnant.  I mean, duh, of course I'm pregnant, I meant I'm kind of looking pregnant.  And, by kind of I mean a lot.  This pregnancy has been my biggest bellied one so far.  Weird.  There better only be one baby in there.  

This was 5 weeks ago so you can imagine how big my belly looks now!

That's basically it.  Well, not really, but that's all I got in me for now.  Time for bed.  Can't seem to get enough sleep these days!

I Actually Acted Like An Army Wife!

This is new for me.  I, ahem, did not embrace this life with open arms like some fantastic wives out there.  I pretty much do the minimal.  And then I complain about that.  Ok, actually, I'm being too hard on myself.  (See, I'm trying to get better about that!!)  Part of the problem is we have are coming up on our 5th move in 2.5 years and it is hard to for me emotionally transition between places and hard for me to get out there and meet people which means I never have a baby-sitter so that makes it even harder to attend things with Chris (sorry for the long, probably run-on sentence).  I am planning on jumping into life with both feet once we hit Oklahoma in a month or two.  We've lived there before so I think the transition will be easy on me.  I HOPE so at least ;)

Anyway, night before last we hosted 16 adults, 2 children, and 3 babies in my home.  I can safely say that it is first.  And it was pretty dang fun too :)  I have learned a few things about myself, some I pretty much already knew, but they were confirmed:

* I enjoy planning meals for groups of people and bringing it all together
*I enjoy cooking
* I enjoy hosting things in my home
*I enjoy serving people and being kind to them

*I do not enjoy cleaning my house.  Hate it, in fact
*I do not enjoy picking up after everyone has left
*I do not enjoy excessive cussing in my home (but that one comes with army territory)
*My son does not do well with others (I knew this to be true outside our home, but I thought he'd do better in his own environment. Wrong.)

I had it all planned out and we had done prep work the night before so everything would go smoothly.  My husband was getting off work at 4:30 to come home and help (i.e. watch the kids) while I finished everything up.

It was a good plan.
You know what's coming.

My husband had to take one of his soldiers to the military police station (30 minutes away) at 4 pm.  He got home at 7pm.  Yes, that's right.  He was the last one to arrive to his own little shin-dig.  I got one word for you: STRESS.  Ha!  I was sooooo stressed out! Mostly because of my little man.  Have I mentioned he likes to be attached to mommy A LOT??  Yes, I know I have so I'll spare you, but try taking lots of baked potatoes out of a 400 degree oven while a 9 month old is climbing your back and screaming bloody murder because you dare to put him down for 5 minutes.  Try making cornbread with a baby on your hip.  It can be done, but it ain't fun.

One of the soldiers that I already knew came a bit earlier to help me and praise the Lord for that man because help he did!  He set the table and wrapped the potatoes to keep them warm.  He handled anything that was hot since I had the baby.  He carried chairs out to the family room.  He tried (twice) to hold Caleb, to no avail of course, but he did try.

After dinner, Chris had bought all his soldiers hand blown pilsner glasses and had each soldier stand up so he could something that they do well and how proud he was of them.  Then, they, in turn (without instruction to do so) went around the room and said nice things about their peers and leaders.  It was so awesome!  These men were all in Afghanistan together so after dinner I heard stories about life over there that my husband hadn't shared so that was neat for me.

I was so proud of Chris.  He thought of this all on his own and helped me execute the planning.  Despite the chaos that happened right before everyone arrived, it was a lovely evening and I'm sure we'll do something similar in the future!

Moving is Hard

I took Autumn to her preschool class for the last time this morning.  No, she's not old enough to be moving on.  No, I'm not changing preschools due to preference.  It may not be the last time she ever attends preschool, but it will be the last time she attends this particular preschool.  Because we're moving.  Again.

One would think that moving gets easier.  That saying goodbye gets simpler.  That leaving memories behind becomes less painful.  That is simply and absolutely not the case.  I don't want to leave my life here.  More importantly, I don't want to leave Autumn's life here.  She has grandparents here (all 5 are within 300 miles).  She has friends here.  I didn't know 2 year olds had friends, but she does and she has so much fun with them.  She has a church here (and a preschool).  My parents have the most beautiful backyard in the world and we play in it every single day.  I don't want to go.  I want my husband to come here, not me and the kids go there.

But that's not how it works.  My husband and I don't sit down and have a discussion about if and when and where we should move.  We don't discuss if it's best for our marriage or best for our children.  We are told and we obey.  And it is really hard.

I read other's army wives blogs and by and far they are happy, positive, "fun" blogs about being proud of their husband and trusting God.  Which is all good and well and I appreciate people taking hard and negative things and giving God glory in the darkness.  But it does make me wonder if they think it's hard too?  Of course, everyone thinks deployment is hard.  That is a given.  But what about the constant upheaval?  What about never being able to lay down roots?  Autumn is two and this will be her fourth move.  That is not normal, even among army peeps, and I wonder if the normal "move every 3 years" plan is easier.

Our future looks like our past.  6-7 months in Germany, 6-7 months is Arizona, and then, and then, we get stationed somewhere for 2-3 years and I am so looking forward to that!  I don't want to speed up time or anything, but I am SO LOOKING FORWARD to August 2013!! :)  My family hasn't lived anywhere longer than 11 months since March 2010 (6 months in Oklahoma, 7 months in Germany, 11 months in Tennessee).

So, I'm kind of sad today, but in times like this, I think it helps to remember that my final home is not on earth.  I am a child of God, a co-heir to Jesus Christ and my home, my stability, my "roots" are in Heaven.  Not in Tennessee, West Virginia, or Kentucky.  A house is just a house, just brick and mortar.  And one day I'll have the permanent dwelling place my heart longs for and it will be perfect.