Lifestyle Change

My husband and I have decided to start eating healthier. Oh who are we kidding we are on a diet!  I'm trying to love it, but lets be honest eating fat free cottage cheese, celery sticks and pretty much zero bread SUCKS!  One of the few shows he and I watch is Extreme Makeover Weight Loss Edition. The guy that is on there Chris Powell has a website called Reshape the Nation .  Its a great site.  They give you an entire meal and exercise plan based on your height, weight, and body type.  We have been on it now 4 days and I'm already down 7lbs.  Of course I realize most of this is water weight, but who's complaining.  So for now this weight loss is enough to make me stay on it.  For the record however I am sick to death of cottage cheese and extra lean ground turkey.  I'm looking forward to being able to switch it up a little.  I also just for fun decided to stick the meal into My fitness pal , just to see how many calories this meal plan is. I was amazed I eat 5 times a day and am only eating 1500 calories.  I have added a few things that I love just to make sure I stick to it.  I have either a hot tea or hot chocolate once a day.  I can't live on just water and I hate those added flavor things you can put in water.  All in all I guess I really shouldn't complain.  I know I'll feel better and I know I'll get used to it.  I just miss my comfort foods. 

I made the decision a few weeks ago to fly the kids and I out to Idaho to visit my grandparents.  Now as the trip approaches I'm thinking to myself am I NUTS!  Flying with an 18 month old who doesn't sit still (on my lap mind you) and a 4 year old that is into everything.  I think I've lost my mind.  I know it will be the longest 7 hours of my life.  Buggy is super excited.  She loves going to Grammie and Popo's house.  They live on a huge farm so she gets to run around and explore.  I'm excited to go but dreading the trip and being away from the hubby for 5 days.  Should be an interesting few days. Pray that I make it without a total melt down!

 

Planes, Planes, Planes!

We live in post housing and not new post housing. We live in old post housing!  Although I love our floor plan there are many things left to be desired.  We have office building carpet, linoleum that is made to look like hard woods, the ugliest cabinets known to man, and of course 20 layers of paint on the walls lol.  We are allowed to paint, but that comes with the stipulation of having to paint it all back when you move out.  I started out thinking oh who cares its not that hard.  I'm painting any and every room in this place.  Then I painted Buggy's room.  Although it turned out super cute my motivation for painting soon flew out the window.  Now I am stuck with trying to come up with other ways to enhance each room in our home.  Right now I'm working on our son's room.  He is only 18 months old so he could really care less, but I want him to have a room straight out of better homes and gardens lol.  Problem with that is I'm no interior decorator and lord knows the army doesn't pay enough to hire one.  So what do you do, you go to pinterest.  Little man's room is themed in Old school airplanes.  I found a few cute paintings and some other things to go in it, but I really haven't found a lot.  Because of this I decided to create something to help spruce up the walls.  I'm very happy with the outcome. 

In all there will be 6 or maybe 8 depending on how much room 6 take up. Of course the pinterest version the pictures were framed in real frames.   After pricing frames I decided that was just way to much for my budget so I improvised.  I went to Michael's and got the 9x12 artist loft canvases.  They are flat and just the right size. Because the walls in his room are white I decided to paint the canvases a bright color.  I used plane old acrylic paint and had to put 3 coats of paint on each one.  I got the pictures off the Internet and printed them on regular ink jet printer paper.  Then I mod podged them onto the canvas and voila.  I really do love them and can't wait to see them hanging on his walls!  All in all it cost me 15 bucks for the entire project!

Painted Vase!

I've been so busy with other stuff I haven't DIY in a while. So I decided last night I was going to do something today!  I have been wanting these vases from Cracker Barrel forever because they would go so good in my bedroom, but I refused to spend $30 dollars per vase.  I had seen on pinterest that you can actually paint your own cheap vases I decided to give it a try!  Man I'm so excited I did. The first one I did turned out GREAT!  Here's how I did it.

This is my finished product!  Not to shabby for someone who isn't all that creative.
First thing you do is clean out the vase.  Then just has a little paint and start twirling making sure the paint is covering all parts of the glass.  Once you have the first color started add a little of the second color.  Keep twisting and the colors will swirl together.  It does take patience which if you anything like me is hard.  I added more paint then needed.  What I should have done was just be patient and wait for the paint to move.  I ended up with a lot of excess paint on my tin foil lol.  Once the entire vase is covered leave it upside down until dry.  I moved mine often so the it wouldn't stick to the tin foil while drying. 

 This is during the drying phase!  I love how the colors have  swirled together.

This is the paint I used for it.  I know a lot of people use the enamel paint and not acrylic but acrylic worked great for me! I can't wait to do the other two I bought and display them on my dresser.  All together for paint and the vase I spent $3.51. Happy Painting!

Settled?

We have been at Ft. Drum now about 3 months.  We are mostly settled in to our house and I say mostly because we are still waiting on our stuff from Washington to get here.  My dad and step mother and driving it up here in Sept.  I can't wait to have ALL my belongings in one spot.  We have a routine down for the most part and my precious girl has started taking ballet.  We've settled into life.  There is just one problem.  I am having a terrible time making friends.  I've met a few that were very nice, but didn't seem to interested in being friends.  The other problem I have is that my husband and I are older than most of the guys in his rank and so there is a big maturity difference.  I've never had such a hard time making friends before.  Is this what happens when you get older?  I refuse to give up though and I have found a few ladies that I'd like to meet in person.  Hopefully we can get the ball rolling.  I love my family but I need a girls night!  Lord knows my husband won't go with me to see Magic Mike!  Until then I'll keep myself busy with the kids, hubby and a house that still needs a little sprucing. 

BJ's work seems to be going OK.  I say just OK because he found out today that there is a pathfinder class opening up soon and he wants to do it.  The problem is his Commander won't allow anyone to do anything if there PT score isn't at least 280.  Keep in mind that the Army only requires you to pass the test which I think it like a 200.  Its frustrating because BJ is above that score, but not at 280.  The max you can get is 300 so they want them close to maxing out.  Its like this for anything including going to school.  Although I can understand it a little, it annoys me.  You are stopping your soldiers from becoming better soldiers cause they can't run 2 miles in under 13 minutes, or can't do 75 push ups in two minutes.  That's seems silly to me.  Now BJ is spending ever chance he has at the gym in hopes of increasing his sit ups and run time.  I know he can do it, but I wish he didn't have to jump through so many hoops.  Guess I better get used to it. 

On a happy note here is a picture of buggy on her first day of ballet!

Holy cow has it really been a month since my last post?  Crazy how things can change in a month.  We finally got into Post housing!  The house is by no means fancy, but I really like it.  Definately needs some paint and a little TLC, but for now its awesome.  Bj and I decided we would start doing one home project at a time just to ensure we didn't over extend ourselves.  In our housing community they have a contest every month for Yard of the Month.  My husband is determined to win it so that is where we started.  So far we have re-seeded the bare spots in the yard and put mulch around the gorgeous trees in our front yard.  Now we just have to clean out the flower bed area lay mulch and plant flowers oh and wait for the grass to grow in.  We have been watering it just about everyday and the seeds are already sprouting.

In other news we are now the proud owners of a purebreed huskey.  He is so pretty and super good with the kids.  His one downfall.  He's still in the chewing phase and he refuses to be in the backyard. Guess thats two downfalls isnt' it?  Jake as already managed to dig various holes in the backyard and escape.  I can't tell you how infuriating it is to chase after a dog while pushing a stroller.  On top of the fact that he chewed right through our new garden hose.  I just have to remember he's a puppy he's a puppy lol.  Thankfully when he got out we and some nice neighbors help me catch him. 

Neighbors what can I say.  We have some good and a lot bad.  The neighbors directly connected to us started out nice.  They let us borrow their broom to sweep the moving truck out before we returned it and they have been very friendly, but I'm starting to wonder about them.  They have 3 kids who spend the majority of their day hanging out of their second floor window talking to Jaden.  I'm worried one day one of them is going to fall out and land on their head.  On top of the fact that some of the things that have been said to Jaden have cause for concern.  One of the little boys who couldn't be more than 5 told her he was going to break into her room in the middle of the night and steal her panties.  What kind of 5 year old says stuff like that!  Then he told me yesterday he can't help but steal things all the time, he just can't quit.  Apparently the MP's have been called multiple times on them because of their kids hanging out of the window.  I know this because their mother came over and told me that I should watch out because Jaden was in the window and the lady behind us will call the MP's on us.  She apparently has called on our neighbor many many times.  She then proceeded to tell me how everyone around here is a gossip and that I need to be careful.  It was kind of an uncomfortable conversation to say the least.   I'm hoping it doesn't get much worse, but if these kids keep saying things like they have been to my child their parents and I will be having words I can feel it.   All in all we are settling in and enjoying being in our own home again.  In one more month we will get the remainder of our things from Seattle.  Then we'll really be able to call it home.

Itching to DIY

We have been at the Fort Drum Inn now for almost 3 weeks.  I can't say its been totally horrible because I haven't had to cook every night, but it really puts a damper on the DIY projects that I'd like to get finished.  I have a list of stuff I started before we left Georgia plus a bunch of other stuff I have now decided to do since moving here and I can't do any of it.   So I'll patiently wait the two more weeks we have until our house is ready to move into and then I'll DIY myself to death! 

BJ is settling into his unit and has found out that they pretty much do nothing all the time.  The only time they work is when an Apache breaks and it takes more than an hour to fix.  Apparently that hasn't happened since December.  So they'll wait for another to break and in the mean time he gets to work on getting his PT score above 250.  I have a feeling he's already there. We will know by Monday of next week when he takes his first PT test.

On a positive note, I have met a few ladies. They seem pretty nice and hopefully I can cultivate a friendship here and there. One of them I'm not to sure about. She was nice, but a bit aggressive when it came to letting me know about how crappy the women on this post are and how crappy the FRG for my husband's unit is.  I appreciate the heads up, but I'm more the type to find things out for myself.  I am of course wiry based on a few of the Fort Drum Wives websites I've seen, but I'm going in with and open mind.

Have I mentioned my kids are driving me nuts?  I guess for me that nothing new, but this hotel room is getting to them as well.  They are into everything, messing with everything, touching everything.  They have become those kids at the store that you look at and think wow their parents have done a crappy job with discipline.  Poor Jaden has been grounded from TV a total of 2 weeks of the 3 weeks we have been here lol.  Time out seems to be her new best friend as well as " front leaning position"  I'm not sure about asking a 4 year old to sit in the push up position as punishment, but my husband does it any way and ironically it seems to get her to chill out and stop her crazy ways at least for a bit.  Yet another reason I can't wait to get into our house and get them back into their routine.  14 days and counting :)

Here is a few pictures from out stay. ENJOY!

Fort Drum I hope your ready for the LIttle's

We have officially been at Ft. Drum for 10 days.  The post is beautiful and we've seen plenty of deer and even wild turkeys. Billy spent most of his first week in processing which even involved the kids and I doing stuff.  Its been interesting.  I think we are pretty much done with all of that thankfully.  Currently we are staying at the illustrious Ft. Drum Inn. Let me tell you I haven't stayed in this crappy of a hotel in years!  I know it sounds mean, but I really do hate it. The wall paper is old and peeling off the walls.  The linoleum in the bathroom is also peelings off the floor.  We have a small "butlers pantry" not even a kitchen.  We are here in total 35 days. I was told by the housekeeper that I am not allowed to cook using anything they haven't provided.  So no crock pot or steamer.  You can bet I just wait to start cooking until after she has cleaned the room.  How can they honestly charge me 65 bucks a day and then tell me I'm not allowed to cook for my family.  Your taking all our money I can't afford to go out to eat for every meal!  I guess to be fair they do provide breakfast and dishes to microwave food.  I think maybe that is how they make the breakfast as it seriously doesn't resemble food.  The kids are pretty much having cereal every morning and I have a bagel and cream cheese.  Beyond the horrible living conditions the post is nice and its so nice to have my hubby with us.  JJ is in daddy heaven.  All you ever hear out of her mouth is daddy play with me daddy play with me! 

We found out a few days ago we will be living in a 3 bedroom townhouse on post.  It only took two weeks to get offered which is really good. We move in on the 14th of June.  I can't tell you how excited I am to have my own house again.  We've actually bought furniture for this one and really want to make it a home.   So only 22 more days and I can officially settle into our new life.  I will post pictures soon!

AIT Graduation and the longest drive home!

Finally BJ has graduated AIT and his home!  We are getting all packed up and ready to go.  I can't believe its finally come.  I'm so excited to get up to New York and get settled. We found out Friday that we are only number 4 on the wait list.  Hopefully we will be getting a call soon for a house on post. 

Graduation was fun. We got there on Tuesday afternoon and I was able to find a cute dress.  I hate dresses so the fact that I found one I liked was a miracle.  I'm a jeans and t-shirt kind of girl.  Lucky for us we were able to pick BJ up that evening and he didn't have to be back on Post until 5am the next morning.  My parents decided at the last minute they wanted to come and so they met us that evening for dinner.  We had a good time. Some of us more than others as BJ ended up drinking a little more than he should.  By the end of dinner at Texas Road House they had him on a saddle as they congratulated him on "graduating AIT for helicopter thingy repair" lol.  It was a blast, until we got back to the hotel and reality set in for him.  Lets just say he spent a good majority of his evening in the bathroom!  Poor guy woke up the next morning still sick and having to hide it as much as possible from his Sergeants.  He blamed it on some bad meat ha ha.  Graduation thankfully was quick.  BJ graduated with honors which was really exciting for him and for us.  I was so proud to watch them place his wings on his uniform. 

Out processing took a good 3 hours and then we were able to pick him up for good.  After 2 months of BCT and 5 months of AIT he was finally finished.  We decided to spend one more night in Virginia before the long drive home.  I have to just say the Embassy Suites in Hampton was AWESOME!  Any Embassy suites is nice to stay at but this one was newer and so nice. 

The next morning we began our long drive home.  Keep in mind that I have now driven from Georgia to Virginia and back 3 times.  I have a system that works well for me.  I explained this to my husband, but apparently he didn't understand the fundamentals of this plan.  I stop only when I have to which means when the gas tank is empty you better be ready to pee and eat cause we aren't making any additional stops.  It takes me 9 hours to get from Georgia to Virginia with just me and the kids.  With my husband it took us I'm not kidding you 12.5 hours.  I wanted to kill him. We stopped 4 times in North Carolina alone.  By the end of the night I wanted to kill him.  He just kept saying I hate being in the car.  I kept yelling " then lets not stop eight thousand times so we can get home and not have to be in it anymore"  I also noticed I spend a bunch more money when he is traveling with us.  UGGhhh.  I guess I shouldn't complain he is home and we are adjusting to being a family again which honestly is a whole other post in itself.  5 days until we leave for New York.  We will be driving separately as we have decided to do a DITY move. He will be in the uhaul and I will be in the car with the kids.  I have a feeling he's going to be left behind because I refuse to stop eight million times.  We'll see what happens :)

One of those day! Yeah you know which one I'm talking about!

Do you ever have one of those days where you start out just fine, but it ends just crappy. I got up this morning in a great mood.  Kids seemed to be in a good mood. We didn't have any immediate crying or anything.  Really the whole day was good. I didn't get nearly as much done as I would have liked, but all in all not bad.  Then 6pm hits.  All of the sudden my kids were crying, my husbands was on the phone being a douche, and it just went down hill from there.  I think my biggest issue was knowing tonight finally that I would not be homeschooling my kids.  I've been doing research for months getting prepared for the conversation with my husband about at least giving me preschool and if that went well kindergarten etc.  I knew he'd be very resistant, but I had know idea it would be this bad.  He is so dead set against it its unreal.  He just keeps going back to the fact that she won't know how to deal with peer pressure and bullying and being in a normal school environment.  No matter what statistics I gave him, what solutions to the various issues he thought would come up he just sat there and told me no.  Then he said it the real reason. " I don't think YOU can do it"  Pretty much just said that he could get over all that other stuff, but didn't think I could properly teach our children.  This may seem silly to some, but I feel as though I have been punched in the heart.  I have spent the last 6 month supporting him and believing in him with this Army stuff. No one thought he could do it.  Not his family not mine.  I stood there and told him I knew he could do it. I knew he would excel.  Never once did I worry he wouldn't be able to do it.  I had faith in him and I feel like he has none in me.  "Become a teacher with that piece of paper and then you can do it."  Granted I know I'm not the smartest person on the planet, but I got straight A's in high school. I've done well in college and I am so committed to this I've even started refreshing on things.  He still doesn't think I'm capable.  I'm not sure where to go from that.  There is a part of me that wants to say screw you and do it anyway and then there is the part of me that is hurt and beat down and just wants to say fine. If my own husband doesn't have faith in my why have faith in myself.   So for now I'm just going to start sending JJ to preschool come fall and I'll continue to work with her like I have been. I pray that with all the moving we will end up doing and all the change she gets a good education and doesn't fall behind at any point.  I guess we'll deal with that as it comes.  In the end I'm just ready for April 23rd to be over and done. 

I've become DIY obsessed!

We finally have a date that we will official be at Ft. Drum.  May 16th is the big day. This is a little sooner than expected, but BJ didn't get Hometown recruiting like he thought he would.  Apparently because he is on a profile and getting a wavier to skip his last PT he is disqualified from HRAP.  He's still having a few issues with his knee and its not going down into his foot, but that's a entire other post.  So BJ is taking 10 day personal time so we aren't rushing to get up there.  I'm so excited we are finally getting close.  I've been getting everything ready for the big move including getting stuff ready for our new house.  We sold most of our furniture when we moved back to Georgia so we are buy a lot of new stuff.  I ordered a couch that should be here on May 1st and the kids rooms are being completely re-done.  Really Max hasn't ever had a proper room so his is being done for the first time.  Jaden wants butterflies so we did a little name thing to hand on her wall or bedroom door.

We also mad one for Max's room!

Max of course is having Helicopters and Airplanes for his room. 

For our room the hubby and I were in real need of a bed. We have a queen mattress and box spring but no headboard or foot board.  Originally I had one picked out form Ikea I wanted, but being realistic I have other things we need more than a 300 dollar bed.  So I started searching around for headboard ideas online and was able to find a DIY cloth headboard.  I spent about 90 bucks, but I think it was so worth it.  I'm doing my bedroom in black, white, and Tiffany blue. Doing this headboard made doing this so easy.  I'm almost done with the headboard.  I was able to do it in one day during one of Max's naps. At least most of it.  I still have 4 buttons to sew on, but otherwise its done. 

At first look it seems super busy.  The Pattern was a little more than expected it to be, but I think with a few pillows and a white comforter this will look awesome! I can't wait to get it in my room and get everything put together.  I also made a distressed picture frame, that I LOVE!  I think I might make a few more and hang them on the wall. 

Its been fun getting into designing stuff for my house and with pinterest there are a ton of DIY projects to do that are easily accessible.  I can't wait to get in a get going on it.  Its going to be an exciting couple of months.  I will be blogging soon about how I made my headboard if interested.  It was super easy. 

B.A.W.S. are you suffering from B.A.W.S.?

I'm sure by now your wondering what BAWS is lol.  Bitchy Army Wife Syndrome.  Its amazing to me the way some of these women act.  Honestly I feel bad for them and their husbands.  I belong to a lot of forums and a couple of facebook pages that have a lot to do with Army wives.  Going into this I figured no one would understand this new crazy life better than other people going through it, but I'm started to feel like most of the women are BITCHES!  I know thats harsh and probably not true for all that many, but I can't help but wonder.  I was reading a post the other day about how some wife was annoyed with others wives that she didn't know wearing their husbands PT uniforms.  This post had 69 comments on it.  These comments had my jaw on the floor.  It went from venting to being down right nasty to eachother.  One women couldn't get past hating on "Fat Wives"  and really fat people.  One wife couldn't get passed wives not looking perfect every momment of every day.  They started attacking eachother.  I was super shocked.  These are women who will be living down the street from me.  I'm trying to keep in mind that a lot of these women are also new to adulthood, but still when are women going to stop attacking women and start to support eachother?  Why are we so judgemental of one another.  It makes me sad and scared to be moving to a place where women have no problem attacking one another.  I'm going to keep a positive outlook and give everyone and equal chance, but if they are suffering from BAWS I can tell you we won't be friends.

I'm so tired of the waiting!

I learned pretty quickly when my husband joined the Army that waiting was pretty much what I'll be spending most of my time doing.  Waiting to here from BJ when he first got to Basic, waiting for phone calls through out basic, waiting for graduation, waiting for that first visit at AIT, waiting for AIT graduation, waiting for orders.  All this waiting SUCKS to say the least. I thought I was handling it pretty well.  I've tried to keep busy, took a few trips, spent most of the month of Feb gone , went to see BJ twice, and even went to Florida for a week.  Now we are about a month out from AIT graduation and time has stopped.  I feel like it won't get here fast enough.  I'm supposed to be getting ready to move, but being the over achieving researcher that I am I've got everything pretty much set.  We are letting the army move us so they'll do all our packing, I have looked into housing, schools, things to do in the area.  I have even planned our drive up to Fort Drum.  Now what?  The kids help to keep me busy, but time is still crawling.  I'm just fed up with waiting.  Part of me wants to drive up to Ft. Eustis for the weekend, but I know that it will cost us in other area's like not getting that big new bed I want.  How do you decide which is more important.  48 hours of family time or a big bed to spend countless hours of family time in.  Hurry up May just freaking get here already!

The 4 year old tantrum!!!

I've read a ton of stuff saying that when one parents leaves for an extended period of time that children will find various ways to let you know they're upset about it.  I think my child has decided to show me this by throwing tantrums about everything!  I could be wrong it could just be the age, but I don't see other 4 year olds acting crazy in store like mine seems to.  The last few days in our household has been HELL.  Jaden has been becoming a little bit more bratty everyday since BJ left. For the most part I thought I had it under control.  I will now ammend that though and say I have lost all control.  Buggy has will scream and cry anytime she is told NO.  We aren't just talking crying on the floor for a few min. We are talking ear shattering, dropping to the floor flopping around, going into convulsion fit throwing.  I've become that mother in the store who has the child who touches everything, runs around like a crazy person and will scream and throw fits no matter where we are and who's around.  I feel like I failed somewhere. This is my fault she didn't do this when BJ was around.  She wouldn't dream of acting like that in front of Daddy.  So my first train of thought is to talk to my husband about it and see what he says.  BIG mistake HUGE!!!!  I get a lecture about how I'm to soft and I don't intimidate her like he does so she runs me over.  Ok while some of this might be a little true I don't want my child to be scared of me.  I'm not going to spank her every two seconds and scream at her.  How do you think she learned to scream and yell  in the first place.  Clearly that doesn't work for either of us.  It took me a while, but I finally came up with a plan I think will work.  We talked and I explained to her that she can't get upset every time she is told NO.  I let her know that I understand why she is upset, but screaming isn't doing any good.  Obviously this isn't the master plan as talking to a 4 year old and trying to reason with her is silly. Now here is the master plan.  Everytime she is told no and she has a bad reaction and begins to cry and throw a fit we take one of her Favorite toys and put it in the special bin.  That toy stays in until I feel she has earned it back.  I figured by the time we were done with the first day she wouldn't have any good toys left lol.  We started yesterday and I have to say it seems to be working.  She had 3 toys taken yesterday, but we had far less fit throwing.  The minute she realized a toy was gone she stopped crying.  She also was grounded from the TV yesterday.  We don't watch a ton of TV, but she does enjoy a show while eating breakfast and right before bed.  She was not happy she couldn't have that last night.  The store is a whole other story.  She was running everywhere yesterday to the point were I finally gave up and told her because of her actions we were leaving.  We got to the car and she was clearly upset, but not freaking out.  I told her she would not be going back to the store with anyone until she learned to behave like a nice girl.  I plan to stick to that for a while until the tantrums are few and far betweeen.  I am praying this will work because I don't want her to think crying will get her what she wants.  I also hope it teaches her to appreciate a little bit more the things she does have.  Wish me luck!

Virginia 3 times in 6 weeks?

Yesterday was a good day for the Little family.  BJ has been working so hard to be the best soldier he can for the purpose of ranking up.  When he went into the Army he should have gone in at E3 or Private First Class (PFC), but the recuiter didn't do all the things he promised him he would (no suprise there) and he only when in at E2 or PV2.  His goal by the end of AIT was to move up to PFC. Well as of April 11th that goal was realized!  On top of the fact that he was for the second time assigned as squad leader this time recieving 5 promotion points because of it.  I can't tell you how proud of him we are.  He really is exceling! The other piece of good news is he has now phased up to 5+. This means he gets his weekend totally free. He can leave Friday night at 1800 and doesn't have to be back on post until Sunday at 2145.  Normally you have to be there 12 weeks before you can even try for phase 5+. One of his SRGT's was in his room the other night and was so impressed with his locker, bed, etc he told him he was going to allow him to try for it this week.  He's got guys coming to him for help getting squared away.  Is my bragging annoying yet?  :)  I'm over the moon proud of my husband.  He had a lot of people telling him he'd never do anything or be anything. Every step is just proving them wrong. So now the dilema.  BJ and I had decided the kids and I wouldn't come down to see him again until graduation, but when he got phase 5+ the first thing he said was are you going to come down this weekend.  I really really really want to, but it costs a small fortune and the kids and I are going to Florida next week so now we are talking tons of traveling and money spending that we really truely don't need to do.  How do you make the decision?  I'm trying to stick with not seeing him until graduation, but its so hard.  I know he would be so happy to see us, but then we use another 500 dollars in savings to do it.   I'm so back and forth about it. One minute I'm thinking lets just do it and figure everything out later and then I'm like no we need to save.  I don't know. I guess we'll see what happens

First Duty Station Projected!

We finally have a post!  Well techincally nothing is set in stone until he has physical paper orders, but as of right now we are going to Fort Drum.  I'm very excited at the prospect of moving to where we will be at least for a little bit. There are of course a few concerns,  Fort Drum is in upstate New York on the Canadian Border, near lake Ontario.  Sounds great right.  Can you say snow pretty much from end of September till end of April. We aren't talking a few inches we are talking FEET.  The temp can easily drop down to 30 below zero.  This is scary for those of us not good at driving in the snow. On top of the fact that our power bill will probably be a bazillion dollars a month. We are hoping for on post housing, but the wait list is large. The other problem is there are wait lists for the apartments near post as well.  It sucks cause if you want to buy a house they are a great price, but if you want to rent the price is super high cause they know that people would rather rent than buy.  Now the plus sides. We are like 3 hours from Toronto, Ottowa, and some other cool places.  We will be only 6 hours from New York city, Boston, and Philadelphia and the summers are a lot like Seattle as they don't usually go over 80 degrees!  So as with any place there is good and bad. Jaden will be in heavan because she loves the snow. We figure we can take the kids little swimming pool tie some rope on it and use it as a family sled lol.  Let the adventure begin!

Yes I suck at blogging so sue me!

So its been what like 2 months since my last blog. I have no excuse I just plane suck.  I do good for a few days then I'm gone for months.  The hubs is still in AIT at Ft. Eustis. He has two months left (an eternity in my eyes) and then hopefully we will be moving somewhere together. I say hopefully only because as of right now the only opening for his MOS is Korea!  My heart dropped when I found this out.  Korea could be no Hubs for a year.  We have to get command sponsored to go over with him, which in Korea is not an easy task.  Most of it is done by rank which will make it that much more difficult considering he is only a Private. The other problem we have is that Buggy is only 1 year away from being in Kindergarten so they would have to find a spot for her in school unless we decide to home school. 

I have wanted to home school for quite sometime now, but the Hubs has been very against it. He of course goes straight to the socialization issue.  Clearly that is any ones main concern, but I read a great blog today Homeschool Menagerie that really helped me to see that home school is not the death of socialization. I think my favorite point made was when she said that you don't see a lot of home school kids who can't socialize, but you do see a lot of public school kids who can't.  I couldn't agree more. My husbands sadly suffers from this problem. He was never taught how. He is extremely shy and socially awkward until he gets to know someone and he went to regular school.  So with socialization out of the way whats left?  Nothing. I am perfectly capable of doing the research, finding good lesson plans, and deciding what I want my child to learn and when.  I teach her every day.  Now my mission is to arm myself with as much information as possible so my husband has no reason to say no.  My number one attack will of course be us being split up for 1 to 2 years over them not being able to find Buggy a school to attend.  We have already spent almost 6 month apart for the training.

On a happier note the kids and I have now been up to Virginia 2 times to see BJ.  The first time we went we got a whole 4 days with him.  We went up to DC and hung out there for 3 days. We got to go to the Smithsonian national zoo and walked around a bit. We also spent a crazy amount of time in our hotel room just being a family again. It was so awesome. Then last weekend Boo Boo turned 1. We hadn't planned on a trip to Virginia, but BJ's company won some type of competition thing and he got a off post pass for the weekend. So Saturday morning at 6am I loaded the birthday boy and buggy up and we drove 9 hours to Virginia.  This time we stayed in Newport News and again spent most of our time in the hotel room being a family, but daddy got to spend his boy's first birthday with him!  He had to go back late Sunday night and this was the hardest good bye to date.  Buggy even cried. I thankfully held it together till he was out of sight, but even he is really feeling the weight of this separation.  So for now we are praying for no orders to be cut until right before graduation.  Hopefully we get to stay in the US and then I'll really have to come up with good information about home school.

I'll try not to make my next post two months from now :)

I'm so bored I'm actually looking forward to school starting!

BJ has been gone for almost a week and I am already going crazy.  I'm so bored. I have cleaned house a lot, helped take down Christmas decorations, cleaned out my room and closet to make myself a little sewing space. Now what. Time is crawling by.  I do have to say I'm glad they get to have their phones so I can at least talk to him and know whats going on.  The rumor is that they are going to be classed today which means AIT officially starts.  Then I can officially start my count down.  Billy however mentioned last night that he doesn't think its gonna happen today because a few guys still have to finish processing.  I'm OK with that as long as they get classed this week.  We will hopefully have orders in about 4 weeks telling us where we will be moving and I pray it doesn't say the words KOREA.  I'm sure its a beautiful country, but with Kim Jong Crazy dieing and his young son taking over who knows whats gonna happen.  Plus I hear its really hard to get command sponsorship to take your family with you.  Honestly I'd love to stay on the east coast, just because that is where all our family is, but I know its not our choice.  I also wouldn't mind Germany mostly because its only a 6 hour drive to Paris and I have already made a friend that seems to want to go to France as much as I do.  The army doesn't joke about the Motto Hurry up and Wait!  That one is going to be hard to get used to!

Wordless Wednesday! Pictures of BCT Graduation

These are pictures from BJ's Graduation and Family day! We had such a good time with all our family and our new army friends!

AIT, BAH, BCT, MWR, I can't keep them straight.

Being a new army wife I am quickly learning the various acronyms of the army. No body speaks English they speak army.  Although I think I am doing pretty good I'm still finding myself googling various acronyms.  You be amazed at the things I've learned.  I can almost do a full sentence in acronyms and the phonetic alphabet.  Thanks to one of my favorite facebook pages I have been working on my phonetic alphabet at least once a week.  Billy left for AIT or advance individual training on Tuesday.  It did not start out well. We of course procrastinated on getting the POA or Power of attorney before he left and found ourselves scrambling to do it only hours before we left. We stopped on the way to the airport at wells Fargo waited 10 min for them to open only to be told that "Wells Fargo doesn't do notarizing for POA's"  really WTH!  OK well lets just wait and do it in March when I bring the kids up to Virginia for Max's first birthday.  Then we get to the airport and guess what there is two notaries at the airport. So we stand in line at the first one and guess what the lady that does the notary is not there.  So they point us in the direction of the 2nd one and she is there, but we only have 1 witness signature and in Georgia you have to have two.  I was so beyond mad by then I just said screw it. Hopefully nothing comes up. We said our goodbye.  I began to cry and that was BJ's  Que to leave as fast as possible. If figures if he can't see it it didn't happen lol.  Once he was gone I got the kids in the car and we made our trek home.  As sad as I was to see him go I am glad he is gone. That means this new part of our life is starting. He will finish up his training and we will be together again at least until the army wants him for something else. :)