The Place I Have Always Belonged

Today …. a long year after my last post.

I sit in a place in my life that I have been waiting to hit. The point where I have always dreamed of being. The place I have planned for, talked about and waited what feels like a million life times for.

You know that dream you have for yourself. The one you have dreamt of since you where a little kid?

Like the center of an amazing melting center of your favorite candy bar.
The moment you get the item you have worked so very hard for.
When you get your very first car and freedom you have waited so long for.

Today is that day for me and let me just tell you know that it is the most amazing breath taking time of my life. I couldn't have ever in my life dreamed it would ever be this great.

See I am not like most people or at least not  like most of the people I know or have known.

My biggest dream wasn't some big fancy job. It wasn't a huge house ( Though I will admit I need a larger one than I have most days. ) or a big fancy car/suv/truck. I have always wanted and dreamed of this life.

A crazy, never ending happiness kind of life. The life that I use to day dream about and knew with out a doubt that it was the life I wanted. The life I have always known would be mine one day and oh let me just tell you I could not wait.

Let me just tell you that it is way more amazing than I ever though it could or would be truly.

I am a MOMMY of 4 amazing crazy kids officially!!

I know …. I know …. I am a huge stereotype in many ways when it comes to Military life.

I am a stay at home mom , I have 4 kids so a huge family and to some it may appear like I just keep " popping out " more kids. I am not in the best shape of my life and I pretty much always have yoga pants, a messy bun and a top with baby spit up on it. ( but only while at home or at least that's the lie I tell myself most days. )

However for me, this is it! This is the life I have always dreamed of and it couldn't be any better. My hubby has a job he seems to love, we are learning to set a new path as a family of 6. The kinks are still being worked out but I am honestly loving my life! It is everything I wanted as a child.

It was a long hard pregnancy and the birth of our final baby. Was not what we planned nor was her time after but it has been such a blessing to all be together. ( I will make another post later this week about her birth and the days after. )

Let me just tell y'all as moms we all know when our family is complete and that feeling is hard to explain. I know it's different for everyone but for me I just know I have the life I have always wanted. I have known since I was 12 that I wanted to have 4 kids. ( two boys and two girls ) I wanted to have them close in age but God and secondary infertility had other plans.

I love being a mom to these 4 kids. I cant believe that this is my life and I am so very very blessed to live the life I do. It isn't easy at times and I know its going to be harder when my hubby. Goes off to training, the field and schools that I am sure will come sooner than I would want. However I am happier than I have ever been and I know that Army life doesn't stop just because I have four kids to care for. I know that my hubby and I can handle anything life or the Military has instore for our family.

It still feels like I am dreaming and I honestly am scared that I will wake up at any moment.
It could be the lack of sleep mixed with coffee that has me so excited about being a mommy of four.
But HEY! if it works for me right now than I say pour me another cup and lets do this mommy thing!

This is the place I have always belonged and it feels AMAZING!! To be living the life that I have at this very special moment in my life!

So here's to the sleepless nights, the crazy four kids running amuck. The Military wife life that we all know is never ending stress most of the time. The many many cups of coffee past present and the ones that have yet to be brewed. This life might be crazy but it's all mine!

Looking Back At Where I Was

3 years .... that is how long it has has taken me to see just how much my life has changed.

It doesn't feel like it has been almost 3 years already but sure enough we are about to hit that point.
3 years of  marriage is right around the corner and holy cow how things have changed in that amount of time.

1. Dealing with a hardship tour right after we got married.
2. Custody battle with people who only wanted our kids for the money.
3. Our First Year of marriage pretty much totally apart.
4. Giving up the chance to pcs to another country due to the on going custody battle. Only to find out     we could have gone.
5. PCSing only days after my husband returned state side.
6. Moving to a whole new state far away from the East Cost I have always known and loved.
7. The struggle of secondary infertility which I never thought I would deal with in my life time.
8. The loss of babies once I was able to get pregnant.
9. Moving to a 3rd state with in 1 year.
10. Getting pregnant and being on bed rest with our youngest.
11. Having our little boy born 6 weeks early after a long and difficult pregnancy.
12. Surviving the NICU life and not being able to hold him after my c section.

The list just goes on and on yet here we all are standing here together. Happy, stronger than ever and ready to move on to the next phase in our lives.

It didn't seem like we have come that far but we did. We have made it through tornado's and storms that I never thought we would ever go through. We fought to stay together and grow our family.

To think that 3 years ago I was just a gypsy girl sitting in an a crappy apartment with my best friend and crazy kids chatting about what the future would hold for us. I was controlled by my family and my ex husbands family. I had no real control or say over my own life. I wasn't able to be the mom or friend that I wanted to be. I honestly thought that living in campers and tents and any where else I had lived in the past. Was going to be the hardest time of my life but let me tell you I was wrong. All of the hard things I went through lead me to where I am right now. Every failed relationship was showing me what I didn't want in my life. Every tear I cried was making me tougher for my future life. All the years I was a single mom was making sure I could handle the house and kids. On my own because my husband would be working often. Every thing has brought me and my children to this life that we live now.

 I never in my life would have thought that I would find the man of my dreams. Fall madly in love and that we would be where we are today. I never thought I would have this kind of happiness but here I am every day living a life that I am so blessed to have.

I honestly thought my best friend would still be living with us or maybe she would be in love and married with a baby of her own by this point in our lives. She helped me raise my older two for most of their lives. She is going to make an amazing mother and wife one day. I will forever hold out hope for her to fall in love and be happy. I could wish nothing more for her than true happiness and a family.

Chatting with her the other day brought all of this up to me, it reminded me just how much my life has changed. I don't know what life has in store for our future but I know that it will be amazing. So when your having a hard day. Just sit back and think about how far you have actually come in life. Think about where you were and where you are now and what it had taken for you to get there.

Could someone have told me that back then, umm NO. Not a chance that I would have listened to them but I see it every single day of my life. I see the changes coming to the lives of my friends. I see their struggle bringing the to wonderful places in life. I know that the hardships are not over for me and my family. Deployments happy, hardships happen but ya know what life is amazing and beautiful. Just keep your head up and know where you want to be in and life. Faith and hard work will always get you where you need to be, even if it is not where you thought you would end up.

Because life behind these gates ....  is always an adventure!

Always, Steph

To The Army Wife I Wronged

Dear Hurt Military Spouse, 

        I know it has been a long time sense I have really talked to you. That the last time I half ass attempted it was well in all honestly it was just lies. I was not sorry for how I treated you in any way. I did not feel as if I had truly done anything wrong at that time. I felt that I was in the right as I had just been trying to live my own life. I thought that the dead beat I was with was someone that there could be a future with. Thus I needed to make him happy above all others. I know now how really wrong I was back then. I never thought I would be saying these words as I hadn't thought of you in so long. 

      Yet here I sit understanding more than ever the pain I caused you. The way I threw you off to the side as if you were not worth being a true friend to. I am truly sorry for my actions back then and I wish that I could have a do over. I wish I could go back in time and we could just shake it off and go back to being friends. I had no idea what you were going through at that time and how hard it really is to be a Army Wife. I thought you were just trying to keep me from being friends with anyone else or having a relationship of my own. 

        I know now that I will never get the chance to say I am sorry and fix that broken friendship. However I wish to stop everyone from making the same mistake I made. Being a new Army wife or a Military wife at all if hard. It means that you need to make friends every where you go. Even if you have the best friends in the world " back home"  or at the last duty station you were at. You still need to move forwards and make more friends where ever this crazy life takes you. I failed to be a good friend but there were many reasons why that was. It was not because I am a bad friend or because I simply didn't not care. It was just that I felt like I was less than you. I felt like I didn't have money to blow or time as I had wanted to make sure. That my house was clean, and dishes were done. That there was something to eat and that everything was as it should be. That is what I felt was most important at that time. 

      I wish that I could go back in time and ask you what was going on in your life. What it was like to be a Military Spouse and why you seemed to always want people around you all the time. Maybe then I would have known more about this life and what I was getting into the day after my wedding day. However sadly we can not change the past. All I can do is hope that with this very public letter someone will not make the same mistake. I hope that someone will learn to ask what is going one. To be there for a new wife even if we think we know what is going on in her life. To put our selves out there and try to make some new friends even if we are scared to death. 

        Sometimes being a Military Wife is harder than I thought it would be. Sometimes we just need to suck it up and be a friend to someone who needs one even if she will not admit she needs one. 
Help is something that we all need but few of us are brave enough to ask for it. 



                                            Never Ending Lost Girl, 
                                                        Mrs.M



                 

Information Every Wife Needs To Know!

            There are so many things to learn and I honestly can not get enough of the information. I am so an information junkie and I know it! 
However I hope that my being an information junkie will help those of you out there who don't stay online learning as much as you can about this life while your man is sleeping because you cant for the life of you sleep at night for some reason! lol  ( link to the page is at the bottom of this post )


           Military Marriage: 10 Things You Might Not Know

1. Military couples put duty first -- not their marriages. 
While common marriage advice holds that a person should place his or her marriage above all else, military spouses often don't. Living with this reality often requires a lot of patience, said Alison Perkins, who serves as the editor of a military spouse resource website,SaluteToSpouses.com. "In a military marriage, duty is first; everything else second,” said Perkins, who lives in Honolulu with her husband, an active-duty soldier in the Army, and their four children.
2. Military wives are not as likely to cheat as their deployed husbands.
A misconception about military marriage is that it frequently involves infidelity, according to Perkins. "People sometimes assume that lots of military wives cheat when their husbands deploy," she said. "I don't doubt that it happens. But in my experience, it isn’t as common as military husbands having an affair with a female soldier while overseas." 
"I know many couples that divorced as a result of a relationship that began in the war zone," Perkins said. "It is a huge, unaddressed issue that can cause significant stress for military spouses."
"There would be rumors about military wives hanging out at the clubs while their husbands were in the field," said Sgt. First Class Kent Phyfe. "Being a career soldier, I can say that ... while not unheard of, it does not happen very much at all." 
"The military is a cross section of our society, and just as in civilian communities, there are always promiscuous men and women," hd said. "The type of work soldiers deal with tend to attract partners that have similar attractions to duty, honor and commitment," added Phyfe, who served in the Army from 1980 to 1996 and now works with VetDogs, an organization that provides guide, service and therapy dogs to members of military with a disability.
3. Military spouses can lose their sense of self, since their partners' career of service often takes precedence over theirs. 
Laura DiSilverio spent 20 years in the Air Force. Her daughter was not yet 2 and she was pregnant with her second child when she found out that she would be stationed in England. The entire family picked up and moved abroad and her husband became a stay-at-home dad. “I had a squadron command that was very demanding, so [Tom] took up the slack at home," recalled DiSilverio, who has been married 19 years to her husband, an Air Force reservist.
"It was very challenging for him to take on that role with virtually no support system in a foreign country," she said. "A lot of military spouses have trouble with their sense of identity, especially when the kids get older. It's especially hard on men who are socialized to get such a large part of their sense of self from their careers." 
But, just because the career of a military spouse takes precedence at one point, that doesn't mean it always will. "Marriage is about sacrifice, about one person's job taking precedence right now, with the understanding that the other spouse’s needs will take precedence in the future," DiSilverio said. When she retired in 2004, she and her husband switched roles and she became the stay-at-home parent. 
"My husband sacrificed his career goals for most of the years that I was on active duty, with the understanding that I would retire," she said. Now, DiSilverio writes mystery novels and parents her kids full time. “Spying was easier,” she said. Her ninth novel is scheduled to come out in June.
4. Military spouses can have a harder time finding work than their partners who served. 
Marie Ruediger, from San Diego, Calif., said that she has been seeking employment since March 2011 but has not had a single interview. Even though she expects to earn her master's degree this year, employers seem to be more interested in speaking about job opportunities to her husband, who retired from the Navy in 2010.
"Whenever folks learn that I am the wife of a military veteran, they always ask for my husband to be the person that they hire," she said. "It's ironic because my husband does not want to be the primary breadwinner now; he wants to go to school to get his bachelor's degree. We had even agreed that I should be the primary breadwinner [now that he's retired] because I have the academic background.”
5. Military couples can't plan anything in advance -- not even their kids' birthday parties -- which can continually test their marriages. 
“Before I could plan my son's fifth birthday party next month, my husband had to put a request in to make sure he would not be put on duty that weekend and miss it,” Perkins said. Her husband's schedule is set only a month in advance and it's very hard for him to change it. “Any day that you absolutely need to have off, you should request a leave day," she said. "You cannot make plans until it is approved."
"And even then they can withdraw your leave if they need you to work, regardless of what you have planned," Perkins said. "It can be very frustrating."
Perkins believes that she's learned a thing or two about resilience from being a military spouse. "Ever try moving 4,000 miles with three kids, a very pregnant wife and a large dog with only six weeks' notice?" she asked. “That alone could make or break you as a couple. Now, try doing it a half a dozen times or more over the course of a marriage. You either learn to work together or you break apart trying.” 

6. The logistical aspects of being a military spouse can be a welcome distraction from the fact that your spouse could die at any moment.
DiSilverio compares the fear of her husband getting hurt -- or worse -- in the field to a constant headache, "always lurking, keeping you a bit more on edge than you would normally be." When her husband was deployed to Iraq, her daughters were 3 and 5 and she was working as a deputy group commander. 
"I almost welcomed the logistical difficulties of keeping our lives running, of coordinating day care and school and job and activities because it kept my mind occupied so I didn’t dwell on the danger [my husband] Tom might be in," DiSilverio said.
Phyfe said that because the stakes of service are so high, military marriages require a certain degree of strength, which he said can ultimately help keep military couples together. "[We] deal with life and death daily so the fear that has to be overcome is something that creates a friendship and love like no other," he said. 
7. Homecomings might be happy, but they aren’t easy on either spouse. 
Many people think that coming home is the best part, Phyfe said. While the reunion is great, he said that his wife "readily admits" that the process of him reintegrating back into their family life is one of the hardest parts about being a military couple. 
"While I was away 'doing Army things,' my wife had to be the wife/husband/mother/father all rolled into one and handled all of the other daily chores. When I came home, I wanted to jump in and take back those roles that I felt were mine," he says. "My wife did not want to go through the process of releasing those duties only to be thrust back into them again at a moment’s notice. This strain of that coming and going is amplified in a military family."
8. The military is culturally progressive when it comes to marriage. 
While the military as an institution might be perceived as being overly traditional -- even closed-minded -- when it comes to marriage, Ruediger believes that the military made her interracial relationship possible. She is an Asian-Pacific Islander, while her husband is white. The military gave her husband exposure to different ethnic backgrounds, she said. 
"My paternal grandfather was in the U.S. Army, my older brother was in the U.S. Navy, and I grew up on Guam, U.S.A., which is very diverse," Ruediger said. "So my parents were more accepting of our marriage compared to my husband’s rural Missouri relatives, who have not been as tolerant because their community is primarily white." 
9. Married service members can't share details of their work with their spouses, which can be frustrating to both partners.
When most spouses come home, they swap stories about their days. Military spouses can't let each other in on some of the biggest details about their jobs. "One of the hardest things is not being allowed access to what your spouse really does," DiSilverio said.
"I was an intelligence officer doing highly classified work, and I couldn't talk about it with my husband, kids or friends. They couldn’t visit my office, except maybe for a Christmas party, and so felt distanced from what I did every day." Most civilian spouses can relate to what their wives and husbands do each day when they hold familiar jobs -- like teacher, lawyer or accountant, she said. "Not so with the spouse who flies an F-22 or serves as a C-130 loadmaster."
10. For military spouses, respect for their partner's service can make the time apart more bearable. 
"People assume that deployments, weird work schedules and frequent moves put too much stress on marriages," DiSilverio said. "Those things do stress marriages, but military couples seem to have coping mechanisms or realistic expectations or something that enable them to weather the separations and anxiety." 
This hardiness might have something to do with the pride that spouses feel for their partners’ willingness to serve and the deep sense of respect this fosters.
"It's uplifting to know your spouse is serving the nation, defending this country, not just chasing the almighty dollar," she said. “My husband is retiring from the reserves this summer after 30 years, and thinking about his passion for the military and the sacrifices he’s made -- career-wise and family-wise -- to serve his country can bring me to tears. He's the best person I know."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/26/military-marriage-10-thin_n_1537543.html