The military wife

I received this in a forward, and I thought this is one that sums it all up. It's a pretty good description of the military wife.

To all the military wives.

To all the wives who hold it together and those of us who
on occasion lose it...Thank you for being so wonderful!

They may look different and each is wonderfully unique.

But what do they have in common? They have this in common:
Lots of moving. Moving far from home.

Moving two cars, three kids and one dog----all riding with
HER of Course.

Moving sofas to basements because they won't go in THIS house.

Moving curtains that won't fit.
Moving jobs and certifications and professional development hours.
Moving away from friends, moving toward new friends.
Moving her most important luggage; her trunk full of memories.

Often waiting-
Waiting, waiting; waiting for housing; waiting for orders; waiting or deployment; waiting for reunion; waiting for phones calls; waiting for the new curtains to arrive; waiting for him to come home for dinner----AGAIN!
They call her 'military dependent', but she knows better.
She can balance a checkbook, handle the yard work, fix a noisy toilet, bury the family pet... She is intimately familiar with drywall, anchors, and toggle bolts.
She can file the taxes, sell a house, buy a car, or set up a move ---- all with ONE Power of Attorney.

She welcomes neighbors that don't welcome her.

Reinvents her career with every PCS; locates a house in the desert, the arctic, or the deep south and learns to call them all home. She MAKES them all home.
She is fiercely IN-dependent and somewhat hasty; Leaps into decorating, leadership, volunteering, career alternatives, churches and friendships.

She doesn't have 15 years to get to know people. Her roots are short but flexible. She plant annuals for themselves and perennials for those who come after them.
Military Wives quickly learn to value each other. They connect over coffee, rely on the spouse-network and accept offers of friendship and favors and record addresses in pencil.

Military Wives have a common bond. The Military Wife has a husband unlike other husbands, his commitment is unique.
He doesn't have a job, he has a 'mission' -- he can't decide to quit -- he's on-call for his country 24/7, but for the military wife, he's the most unreliable guy in town!
His language is foreign:
TDY
PCS
OPR
ACC
BDU
And so, a Military Wife is a translator for her family and his.

She is the long-distance link to keep them informed the glue that holds them together.

Military Wife has her moments ---- She wants to wring his neck, dye his uniform pink, and refuse to move to Siberia. But she pulls herself together. Give her a few days, a travel brochure, a long hot bath, a pledge to the flag, and a wedding picture. And she goes. She packs. She moves. She follows.

Why?
What for?
How come?
You may think it is because she has lost her mind. But actually it is be cause she has lost her heart. It was stolen from her by a man who puts duty first, who longs to deploy, who salutes the flag, and whose boots in the doorway remind her that as long as he is her Military husband, She will remain his Military wife.

My favorite time of year

Well, it's time to play catch up. Every time Doug comes home, he brings Tristan a present. This time it was a big gun with a scope on it. The main part was that it had a scope or a pipe as Tristan calls it. I'm not sure who's played with it more, Tristan or Doug.

We went to Pekin for Thanksgiving. Our trip was nicer this time, only two stops on the way up and one on the way back. Gavin is becoming a good traveler. He turned five months on Thanksgiving and decided to start rolling over, back to tummy. But he's forgot how to roll tummy to back, so he gets stuck. He was a pretty happy boy though, more people around to hold him and all.

Tristan's big idea of something to do was to go ice skating. It's been YEAR's since I've ice skated and I'm happy to say I didn't fall once. I almost did but I just pulled the muscles in my back doing that wiggle arm wave to keep from falling. Tristan got to push around buckets to keep from falling. He had a great time and even skated a little bit with no buckets.

Now that we're back home, it's just been busy getting ready for Christmas. I love Christmas. Decorating, cookies, shopping, Christmas music... Tristan decorated his tree and we got our tree yesterday. We have more outside decorating to do and of course lots of shopping. I'm actually having a hard time thinking of things for the kids. Tristan has everything and Gavin has all his old toys. Between the two of them we have a least a quarter of a toys r us store. No matter what, December will just go to fast and I will never get everything done that I want to. But it's still my favorite time of year.

It's Fall!

We took full advantage of the last few nice days of fall we had. It was in the 60's and 70's, sunny and just so nice to be out after school. Tristan raked some leaves into a pile to roll and jump in and throw.



I finally got the baby saucer out for Gavin. He loves it and sits really well in it. He loves to sit and he pulls himself up if he's laying back at all.

Gavin is trying to wrap Doug around his little finger. He is just smiling and talking to him now. He knows that he has trained other people (Grandma and Grandpa) this way. If he is smiley and cute, he gets picked up. It's nice that he warmed up to him pretty quick. Although for some things like eating and sleeping, only Mommy will do. And most of the time, that is ok with me. He's such a cute and cuddly baby boy.

I'm glad it's over

I didn't even watch all the political stuff last night. I knew I wouldn't be up late enough and I'd hear about it this morning. I'm just so glad it's over. I was so tired of all the political commercials with the "he did this, he voted this way", "no I said this and voted this way". Uh. I agree with my Mom, why can't they just say what they are for, what they want to do and stop with the negative ads. I guess it would be a perfect world. It would also be a perfect world if it wasn't so much about race. So there is a black man that's President now. Can't we move past race? He's still just a man. Get over his color, look past that. What's he going to do for our country? So finally the political commercials are off and now comes the Christmas rush.
October and early November is too early to be playing Christmas music in the stores. And this is coming from the biggest fan of Christmas. I love Christmas, it's my favorite holiday. But while I'm still shopping for Halloween stuff is not the time I want to be listening to Christmas music. And I never realized how many toy commercials there are until I went from watching Disney channel or PBS kids to Nick Jr. Oh my goodness. We are only watching commercial free PBS kids from now til after Christmas. Every new toy Tristan sees, he wants. Every commercial, even it's a doll or girl toy or baby toy, he wants it.
So, Doug is home again. He came home last night, dropped all his bags and stuff throughout the house and went to work this morning. He's home for a couple weeks, leaves, comes back for a while, leaves again....so it goes. But Tristan is so happy to have his Daddy back and poor Gavin doesn't know him. I feel sorry for military kids sometimes. When Tristan got up this morning, Doug wasn't back from PT yet and Tristan saw he was gone, you could see the worry and disappointment in his eyes when he asked "Where's Daddy?" I told him he would be back soon and he was relieved. I'm just happy Doug will be here for the holidays. He'll be gone all around them, but home for some the good family times. I'm lucky and thankful for that.

Four months have gone so fast

Gavin is four months old. I can't believe it's been four months. He is just getting so big. He's been eating cereal for about a week now. He is a hungry little boy, well he's not so little. He weighed 15.7 lbs and is 25.5 in at his four month check-up. He is obviously growing well and he is doing everything he is supposed to. It just makes me so proud to be able to mark all the yes boxes on the developmental chart.

So what else is new... Tristan had his last soccer game Saturday, yea! No more early and cold Saturday mornings. He was so proud of the trophy he got. He says he won "40 80 60 games". Ok.
Tristan carved his pumpkin tonight, and when I say he carved it, I mean it. He was a little scary with a knife but there were no accidents. And he did a good job. It turned out cute, or scary according to Tristan.




Halloween is his favorite holiday now. He has such big plans for decorating the house and having a Halloween party. They are good plans, they are just not going to happen. He wants a maze in the back yard and all kinds of decorations. He'll be one of those people who go all out for Halloween. We have some very cool houses in our neighborhood. I need to go take some pictures. Some people put a lot of work into their decorations and I can't help but wonder, where do they store it all? It's some big stuff and we have no storage here. They must have storage sheds somewhere but their houses are impressive. Here's mine.


Not quite as impressive.

Happy Halloween to everyone. Have a spooky night.

Fun, fun day

So in the last post, I said "It's been one of those days all week", well the week wasn't over. Early, early this morning I hear "bloop, blop, bllloooop" coming from the bathroom. So my weird mind is thinking of those stories about big snakes coming up the toilet pipes, and I'm lying in bed thinking, "well if there's a snake coming up, Dora will get it." I checked the toilet and the water wasn't rising, just air bubbles. So silly me thinks maybe if I flush it, the air will get out. Nope. Apparently not. The waters rose. I went back to bed. Later, Tristan gets up and I told him go to the bathroom in his bathroom and he yells, "there's water all over my floor." Great. Time to call maintenance. Well not only was water all over his floor but both bathtubs were full of brown chunky water. So that's what smelled so bad. The little flood went out of the bathroom and down the hall and into the hall closet where we have boxes and stuff. So my fun morning was cleaning it all up. I threw away all the bathroom stuff and went to get new things and some storage tubs. The boxes had Doug's books and memorabilia. Kind of funny that only his stuff got ruined. On the up side, I don't think my bathrooms have been cleaner.

We've been busy

It's been a while and we've been busy. My Mom came to visit at the end of September for a week. And I got spoiled having help here and Gavin got spoiled being picked up by Grandma all the time. He really had her trained. So then we all went to Pekin for a visit. My 6 hour trip took 7 1/2 hours and I'm not doing it again. At least not soon. We all had a good time, I went out with friends, took full advantage of having help around, Tristan played with a neighbor kid, and Gavin got spoiled some more. Then we went to Lockport to visit Doug's family and I showed off Gavin to everyone. Then drove back here by myself, 2 boys and a dog. Actually wasn't too bad, just not exactly fun. So now we are back... the house is a mess and it's been one of those days all week. Tristan got a cut on his eye from a piece of paper, quick trip to the clinic. He's better today thankfully. But you know when you've been away for a while, it's hard to get back to a routine. It's hard to go back to being alone and yes I'm throwing myself a pity party. I'm tired, stressed, a little overwhelmed right now, and am really ready for Doug to come back. But on the bright side, here are some recent pictures of my boys.