Mother's Day!

Happy Mothers Day to all the wonderful Mom's out there!  I hope everybody's day was as special as mine!

I love being a Mom and even more then that I love being HANNAH'S MOM!  All I needed today was her and Josh.  I got them and so much more!  My day started with sleeping in (Josh got up with Hannah), and breakfast in bed!  I also got flowers and a new Coach bag!  To top it off I was also taken out to Mexican for lunch.  My husband sure knows the way to my heart!

It made me feel special that Josh went out of his way to make sure I had a special day.  It feels nice to know I am appreciated! :)  I am oh so lucky to have such an amazing husband and daughter!

Catch up time!

Life has been busy and the days seem to be flying right on by!  I took Hannah to her 15 month appointment last week and she has grown 2" inches and gained almost 3 pounds since her 12 month appointment last January!  Besides getting bigger she is also FINALLY starting to walk and has been talking up a storm!  Her new favorite word is "NO"! LOL. It surprises me how something like her telling me "NO" can be so cute, yet so annoying at the same time!

I still at times struggle to find a balance in life.  Taking care of Hannah's needs and wants are my number one priority in life (I am not complaining about that) and I wouldn't want it any other way, but I often times forget to take time out for myself to do the things that I enjoy.  I feel like I have in away let myself go. I guess I am trying to find a balance of the person I once was and the mother I am now.  Does that even make sense?

Despite feeling overwhelmed at times, more then anything I am thankful for Josh and Hannah.  I really do love being a wife and a mother.  I have been blessed with a very happy energetic child.  Her personality is so cute and lovable! She is social and outgoing already!   I know more then anything that she is my purpose in life.  Her and Josh are the life that God had planned for me all along. All I had to do was let go of the things of the world that I THOUGHT I wanted and expect the wonderful gifts that God wanted to bless me with! :)

 

Water for Elephants

There are few things I love more then a good book.  I find that I can lose myself in reading and actually picture the characters as if I am watching a movie in my head!  I have a vivid imagation and I love to escape to a make believe world! 

Since having Hannah I find I have little time to enjoy this simple pleasure anymore.  I have too many interest and not enough time to fit them all in anymore! LOL.  I did however find time to read "Water for Elephants."  I was an amazing story something I would suggest to anyone who loves to read!

It is about a 93 year old telling his story of when he was a young man and ran away with the circus!  It is romance, deceit, murder and much more.  I found it not only entertaining but very interesting!  I could barely put it down... just ask my husband who got very annoyed with the night table lamp being on while he was trying to sleep!


If you aren't much of a reader I recently saw a preview for the movie version coming to theaters later this month.  I am sure it won't be as good as the book, but I will see it anyways. That is how much I LOVED the story!  I loved it so much that I had to bore all 8 of my readers with this blog! LOL

So much for security!

When my husband re-enlisted we knew we would make sacrifices, we knew we would be moved from post to post, and we knew that we would face deployments.  In exchange we were getting guaranteed paychecks and health benefits. Well today the government has disappointed us greatly by following through with it's threats of a military pay freeze.

LES's were released earlier today confirming what everyone feared.  No one is getting paid after April 8th.  This means that when payday comes around on the 15th every military member will be receiving roughly half of their regular pay and if they don't settle on a budget, by the time the 1st rolls around there will no paychecks at all.

This baffles me.  How can our government with hold pay from those who put their lives on the line for our country.  How do they sleep at night knowing the position they have put thousands of families in?

 
The one thing we thought we would never have to worry about is how we would pay our bills or how we will feed our daughter, but now I am questioning these very things.  Realistically we have the savings to make it for a couple months and I really don't see it going that long, but the fact that I even have to wonder or question it makes me sick.  What kind of country do I live in when men and women on welfare and unemployment receive constant paychecks and my husband who has been wounded in combat defending our country pay is being withheld? Someone please tell me where the logic in that is!

The principle of this is what bothers me more then anything, but as my husband says on his facebook today "Don't worry America, I will continue to fight for you even if my family and I have to live in a card board box!"  and I in turn will continue to support him.

Another weekend come and gone....

Hannah outside playing and enjoying the Georgia sun!

It seems as though the days have just been flying by lately! In a way this is good.  It means we are getting closer and closer to moving back to WA, but that means we are getting closer to our unknown future and I hate the unknown! 

I also LOVE and HATE how fast Hannah is growing up.  It seems like only yesterday I brought home my tiny 4 lb princess and now she is starting to talk and is on the verge of walking.  She has been saying "Mama" and "Daddy" for months but just this last week she has added "Thank You", "Ducky", and "Kitty"  She isn't quite walking on her own yet, but she is getting there!

Princess Hannah in her Princess buggy!

It is difficult for me to gauge if she is advance or falling behind since she was born almost 2 months early and the doctors say she could take up to 2 years to fully catch up.  I know for a fact that she isn't behind on walking, but she also isn't ahead.  Her social and verbal skills however amaze me.  She has been trying to talk for a long time now.  She sits and reads her books to herself in her own baby Hannah language and hold conversations with me in this same language.  It is so amazing to me to hear her start to actually make out "real" words!  She also listens and understands very well.  For instance she has a little pink car that I push her around in and when I tell her to honk the horn she does it on command!  This and other little things always seem to amaze me!    It is so wonderful to see her develop and grow especially after her rough start, but it also is sad that time goes by so fast and I know she won't always be a baby! :( I love to take pictures of her though...and dress her up in what Josh calls "ridiculous" outfits, but I am positive he means ridiculousLY CUTE outfits like the Easter outfit I have her in above!

People always leave......

Hannah and Abby Easter Sunday 2010

Today my daughter learns a lesson about military life that she is still too young to understand.  Her "best" friends are moving away today.  At 14 months old you might think it is silly for me to say she has a best friend, but she really does.  If you were to see her reaction towards Connor and Abby you would see that even at a very young age she has bonded with them.  They have been a part of her life for a little more then a year now. Connor is 2 days shy of a year older then Hannah, and Abby is just 2 weeks younger.  She knows them by sight and gets excited every time she see's them.  She reacts to them in a way that she doesn't react to any other kids her age.  She knows them when sadly she doesn't even know her own cousins.

Abby, Connor, and Hannah 4th of July 2010

She won't remember them.  She may not even notice their sudden absence in her life, but one day she will be old enough to understand.  One day she will be forced to leave her friends behind as we move on to a new duty station and she will miss them. She will understand.


Hannah will not have the kind of childhood that I had.  I grew up surrounded with the best family in the world.  Loving grandparents, fun aunts and uncles, and lots and lots of cousins.  We were all close.  I looked up to my older cousins wanting to be more like them and my cousins my age were like best friends.  We used to ride rooter scooters around my grandparents basements, have mini slumber parties, play pool, and much much more. I always looked forward to them visiting and spending endless summer days with them.

Abby and Hannah! Beautiful Butterflies Halloween 2010

I have learned that in the Military we have "substitute" families.  For example, my own Nephew who will be 3 this year barely recognizes me, but Connor see's my car coming down the road and startes yelling Auntie.  We have been blessed to make some really great friends here that love Hannah and are glad to be her Aunties and Uncles, but it makes me sad that in reality she has 2 Aunts, one of which she has never met, and a Uncle that she barely knows.  In turn I have a Nephew that doesn't really know me and a brand new niece that I have yet to meet.

Cute girls! Abby and Hannah!

I am happy that we will be going back to Fort Lewis where Hannah will get a chance to spend at least part of her childhood with her Great Grandma Sharon, her Grandma and Grandpa Anderson, My brother, sister in law, and her 2 cousins, and the many many other friends and family we have there, but I also know that the time for us to leave them will once again come and this time Hannah will be old enough to understand.  She will be old enough to miss them.  It will make leaving them harder then it was the first time I left almost 3 years ago.

Hannah and Connor.  Valentines 2010

"Army Wives"

Tonight's episode of Army Wives hit a little too close to home.  Though the show may be fictional, it is based on the lives of military family's.  Family's like my own.  Tonight for the first time is 5 season's a main character was killed in action.

It's funny how these characters can become so real to us that when they die it can bring tears to our eyes... or maybe it just me, but watching tonight I couldn't help but feel like it was real.  The sad thing is it is real.  The characters may be fictional, but the story is true for too many family's. 

So many men and women have died for this country and all their loves ones have left of them are old memories and a folded flag.  They die for their country and to them there is no greater honor, but what about those they leave behind.  How do they feel about the army and the war after they lose someone they love because of it?

With our time here at Fort Benning quickly dwindling down I start to feel the fear and anxiety of our unknown future start to creep in.  We know that we will be reporting to Fort Lewis early next year and we know Josh will once again join a deploy able line unit.  We don't, however, know if or when he will deploy, but with 9 years left to serve in the army as an infantry solider deployment at one point seems inevitable.  All I can do is make the most of everyday we have to spend together as a family and hope and pray that God will direct the path of our future as he sees fit. 

Tonight my thoughts and prayers are with all the military families that have lost loved ones and those who currently have soldiers over sea's.  Thank you all for your service and for supporting your solider!