Near and Far

The move is happening. Right now. We have strangers in our home, packing and rearranging beautiful brown cardboard boxes, all around. It is an odd feeling, looking at the boxes and hoping that the belongings inside of said box make the journey to our new (although, yet to be determined) home in once piece. This is our second PCS move in three years. We have moved from three different addresses in those three years though. This one has been the least stressful, easiest thus far, and the snowiest of them all. Ross and I realized on Monday, a mere four days ago, that we should attempt to prepare for the move. Luckily, we haven't been around much in the last few weeks, so the house wasn't a complete wreck. We will really learn how well we prepared when we unpack in a few weeks. That is, if we figure out our housing situation. We are not sure how long we will be at Fort Sill. Could be six months, could be 5-6 years. We do not know if we will be moving in the Oklahoma August heat...

This blog is difficult for me. I enjoy it. I work on it. I hate it. It regularly defeats me. I have started 8 entries since the last public post, but they all won the patience battle. Instead of trying to make something more interesting than it really is, here is what life has given us lately. The last entry was written on day 78 of the deployment. We are currently winding down day 230. We have been back at Fort Drum for a bit over 3 weeks. Fall has hit quickly here in the North Country and is reminding me of how beautiful this area truly is. This will be our third and possibly last autumn here in New York, and I would be lying if I said that I was happy to see it go. In return for our surprise 8" snow falls, we receive those amazing postcard picture falls. Tree lines full of the most vibrant reds, oranges, gold, yellow, and dabs of green that you can only appreciate when you see in person. I am soaking it up daily while running errands (aka wasting time) and seeing the ever cha...

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...