Near and Far

I am known for being a top notch worrier. I will worry about pretty much anything. My mom always teased me growing up that the question of "paper or plastic?" at the grocery store would send me over the edge. While it is a bit extreme, she isn't far off. But for some reason, I am not worrying about Ross during this deployment. We were assured about 100 times before Ross's team left, that this was a safe deployment and that there was nothing to worry about. I, being the worrier that I am, am not typically comforted by things like that at all. This time however, it worked. The three month mark of Ross being away from us is approaching in the next couple of weeks. After spending so much time away from each other while Ross was in college, this doesn't seem as unnatural as people would think. We haven't done time apart for this long in about 7 years, but I guess part of life is like riding a bike. Ross and I went right back to our norm of video chatting (diffe...

We have made it 46 days into Ross's deployment and have had no serious issues! A couple bumps here and there, but nothing that has made me feel like curling into the fetal position (yet). Ross has made it to his final destination and is getting settled into things. He is learning the ropes and getting used to the time difference. (He's 10.5 hours ahead of us here in the central time zone.) We have been able to talk so much more than I ever expected to be able to in the first few weeks. We have only had a handful of days that we haven't been able to chat online and I am extremely grateful for that. Technology has really made deployments much different than what people once had to endure. Leading up to Ross leaving I found myself following him around and watching things from an outsiders point of view. I watched him eat, crawl around with Levi, feed Levi, play with Juno, nap, and just be with us. The thing that made my heart ache was watching him put Levi to bed the night h...

Lately I have found myself looking into the future and wondering what life will hold for our family. We have many different factors that will make it an interesting ride for us. I (shamefully) find myself looking around the house we have lived in for 6 short months and thinking that we will be packing it up in roughly 15 months. That is ridiculous to me. We don't even have all our pictures on the walls and I am already subconsciously packing it up and moving it back to Oklahoma. Dumb. I caught myself thinking about pinning things on Pinterest for kid's school parties. Levi is 7 months old! He will not be in school for another 4 years (Yes, I know they will fly by. No need to remind me.) Let me be honest, I probably won't even remember Pinterst in 4 years. I will not pin those wonderful teacher gifts, snacks for class parties, or the other wonderful ideas. If I have to eat these words, I will be very happy though! Most recently I have been thinking about the ever-looming...

It's day 9 of Ross being in Louisiana for some classes. Day 9 of it being Levi, Juno, and I. Day 1, although, of my first experience of "Tropical Force" winds. Being an Oklahoma girl, I have had many windy days. Sing along with me, "...where the wind come sweeping down the plains!" I know wind. Wind is wind, until you are home alone and you do not like to be in a dark house alone. I am aware of how childish it is, but I am not ashamed to admit that I am afraid of the dark. So at the moment, I am terrified of the electricity going out. We are currently having 35+ mph winds with 40+ gusts. The Weather Channel continues to remind me that power outages are "likely". Fools are not calming my nerves, so I turned them off. I love having the power to change the channel. I posted a status on Facebook on Sunday that I would like to elaborate on a bit. I answered a phone call from two of my nephews. Ben was asking me questions about Levi, if he could crawl (he...

It's been close to two months since my last post. Things have been a little hectic since the last post and I'm greatly looking forward to having some calmness. Life with a six month old equals never having calmness EVER again. Ever, ever, ever again... First things first. LEVI'S TESTS CAME BACK NORMAL!!! We had his last blood test and evaluation with the specialist mid-August and everything came back normal. This is such a huge blessing. Unfortunately Levi didn't hear the phone call with the good news, because he didn't instantly understand that he doesn't need to eat every three hours anymore. We are still working on it, but the boy likes to eat! Think about us as our grocery bill is going to be insane in a few years :) Levi, Juno, and I made another trip to Oklahoma the last part of August and stayed through most of September. It was kind of a spur of the moment decision to go back that was made and we left all within a week. We made it back home just in t...

It's going to be a short one. We are preparing for Ross to leave for another month long training period. This training in California is specifically for his upcoming deployment. Deployment is something that has been lingering over us for quite some time now and it seems to be finally happening. But this isn't about Ross's deployment. The past month or so has been pretty rough for the West Point community. Ross has had several friends injured while in Afghanistan recently. They will forever wear the scars of their job/calling, but they will do so proudly I am sure. They will do it because they have lost friends, classmates, teammates, friends by association, in the past few weeks. The names are becoming too familiar. It is all we can do to pray for the injured and their families, mourn the loss of friends, and thank a soldier when you see one. Please keep Ross, his friends, coworkers, and all soldiers in your prayers. This is a hard job and they are doing it willingl...

Yesterday marked an anniversary that shocked, scared, intimidated, thrilled, and surprised us. It is odd how a tiny plastic stick has the power to do all those things in a 3 minute time frame. Crazy tiny stick. I had not been feeling well for a couple weeks, but I also thought it was just the being busy with a new job and summer running around. I had gotten sick a couple times which was very strange because I rarely get sick like that. Again, I didn't give it a ton of thought. It wasn't until late the night of July 31 that it came to me. Headache, dizziness, nausea, crying A LOT, throwing up after every meal, drink of water, cracker I ate, and so on...  Oh my gosh, I'm pregnant. I sat through my sex ed classes in school, I had the talk with my mom, I had friends who had either had babies or were pregnant. I knew where they came from and how to prevent them, but due to some medical issues I was no longer on birth control and God has a sense of humor. This was not our fir...