Full circle.....

I am always jealous of people who live as adults

in the same area that they grew up in.

Watching your own kids romp around the same playgrounds,

swim in the same rivers,

attend the same schools,

and frequent the same hang outs

that you did seems like such a wonderful way

to raise a family.

I know the grass is always greener

and those people probably think that my life

of new adventures every few years

and getting to see so many parts of the country

is wildly exciting.

We usually want what we can't have.

Over the years I have grown to embrace and love my life,

but the longing for familiarity never leaves.

I feel like God has heard all of my silent thoughts,

and not so silent ones too.

He has seen how many private tears I have cried over

not being able to raise my kids near family.

He heard and saw it all

and now in his perfect timing,

He is making a way for me to

have the desires of my heart!

I still can't believe it!

We will be renting the beautiful house pictured above

for the next three years!

But that's not all....

God is a very specific God.

His blessings are pre-packaged.

They are personalized down to the very last detail.

This house is located exactly half a mile from

the house I grew up in on Wilson Road!

The same woods that went on for miles behind my house

and provided so many hours of tree fort building and

rope swinging also back up to this house!

I will be able to take my kids on box turtle hunts

and searches for the perfect branch to hang a tire swing from.

We will be able to walk down to the marina

that first sparked my brothers love of fishing.

We can feed the ducks from the same pier

that I skipped down as a pigtailed little girl.

There was one duck in particular that

was the loudest quacker in the bunch.

She was black and white

and just the most vocal bird I've ever heard.

My Dad named her Becky

in honor of my own ability to talk my way

into and out of anything!

I wonder if Becky had loud little ducklings

and gran-ducklings

that are still hanging around?

I can't wait to find out!

And so as we prepare to vacate one home

and build a life in another

I am reminded that I have a God

who loves me

and who has good things stored up for me,

including houses with red walls and

stone fireplaces

backing up to familiar woods

full of magical adventures!

Click Here for the link

to my very personalized gift!

*

Hey mom, did ya see that?

So we've been going to the gym alot lately.

I really love it

and having David do it with me

makes it much more enjoyable.

When one or both of the boys go with us

the workout usually ends with a raquetball game.

On this day it was just David and Michael playing.

I have absolutely no desire to go into that room

and subject myself to a viscious game of dodge the

bouncing blue bruise making bullet ball,

so I watch from a bench in the hallway.

As I sat there, I noticed something.

After every single hit Michael made

he looked back at me and smiled.

Every single one!

And sometimes he'd glance over at me

with a sheepish look on his face

when he missed one.

I let my mind wander to when he was three years old.

"Watch this mom!" he'd yell from the other end of the pool.

He'd get a running start and do a cannon ball right into the deep end.

He was such an adventurous little guy

and I loved watching him accomplish all of his

rambunctious feats.

But, I have to admit,

that "Mom, watch this!" over and over again

during our visits to the pool or park

got pretty tiresome.

I was a busy mom with three little ones to look after

and we usually went to the pool or park with friends

so there was conversation going on.

Lot's of times I'd do the fake watching thing

that all moms do.

He'd shout "Watch this!"

I'd say, OK!"

but quickly go back to what I was doing

when his attention was off of me

and when I heard him resurface,

I'd say, "Great job!"

I don't think I realized then how precious

it was that my kids wanted so badly for me to be in awe of them.

Don't get me wrong,

I was a great mom who loved to have fun with them.

I'd roll on the grass with them,

toss balls, climb trees,

ride bikes, take walks

and build living room tents with them.

I cherished them as much as I knew how,

but I don't know if I really grasped the fleeting preciousness

of it all.

In those days of utter exhaustion sprinkled with

delightful exuberance,

did I really grab hold of all of the ordinary moments?

Did they know how much I enjoyed them

even on the fake watching days?

I sure hope so!

Now that my little dare devil boy is older

there are far fewer

"Hey mom, watch this!" moments.

They do still occur, but now there are more

"Mom I wish you could have been there to see it"

moments, because the natural flow of life

limits our time together.

Funny how something that got to be so annoying

is one of the things that I miss the most

about being a young mom with

three little ones under foot.

So, needless to say,

I was delighted to see that

the little boy in Michael will always want

mom to "watch this".

He still cares what I think about his accomplishments

and failures.

He still looks for the smile on my face

and the shouts of "That was awesome"

when he does something great.

And you know what?

I didn't take my eyes off of him for a minute

during that whole raquetball game!

Love is......

I have been thinking alot lately about what love is.

Because of Valentine's Day everyone seems to have

love on their minds this month.

But I've been thinking beyond

moonlight and roses,

candle light dinners and

boxes of chocolate.

What is love lived out in

the daily trenches of a life?

Here are my thoughts and experiences of real love....

Love is flipping the clothes from the washer to the dryer
before you go to work every morning.

Love is letting me sit in the coziest corner of the couch
and letting me have most of the pillows.

Love is hanging and re-hanging a picture
on the wall of our new home and
being patient while I make up my mind.

Love is having picnics with me on spring days
when I know you don't really care for picnics.




Love is telling me I'm the most beautiful girl in the world
when I'm nine months pregnant
and we are sitting on a beach full of tanned,
creatively altered models, millionaires and movie stars in Malibu.

Love is bringing home just the right amount of chocolate
when you know I'm having a bad day.

Love is letting me have a red couch
when you want a brown one.

Love is watching football

with our sons

and jumping up and down and high fiving

after every good play.

Love is letting me keep the window cracked at night
to let the cool air in,
when I know that you hate getting into an icy cold bed.

Love is coaching our kids sports teams.

Love is holding the umbrella over me
when I know you are getting soaked.

Love is living a life of integrity
so that I can be secure in your faithfulness
to me and our family.

Love is getting up in the middle of the night to check out
a noise that only I heard.

Love is dropping everything anytime to come to my rescue.

Love is kicking butt at work so that you can provide
for our family well enough to allow me to
stay home with our babies.

Love is valuing a scrubbed bathtub, a mopped floor
or a carefully planned meal
and making me feel like I accomplished big things.

Love is showing mercy to our kids when
they really deserve wrath.

Love is filling up the gas tank for me
so I don't have to.

Love is enjoying a brunette

when I know you really love blondes.

Love is always choosing your family over your career.

Love is calling me a few times during the day

everyday

just to check on me and tell me that you love me.

Love is lunch dates on a regular Tuesday for no special reason.

Love is kissing me in public when I know

that's not your thing.

Love is honoring our daughter's decision to

remain pure until marriage

by replacing the cheap purity ring she bought for herself

with a real diamond ring.

Love is playing round after round

of a wii game with our son

just because he really wants to.

Love is letting me go out with the girls

and acting interested in the recap when I get home.

Love is watching chick flicks

and holding my hand during the

sappy parts.

Love is letting me hold the popcorn at the movie theater.

Love is driving slow in the rain or snow when you know I'm scared.

Love is making a special trip to pick up

tissues with lotion in them, orange juice,

cough drops and other comforts

when you know I'm feeling sick.

Love is forgiving me when I hurt you.

Love is jumping through hoops and

cutting through paperwork to fly home early from a long deployment

so that I could go be with my mom

when she needed me.

Love is meeting in the airport for 30 minutes that afternoon

as you were coming home from a five month deployment

and I was flying out

and assuring me that this was the perfect homecoming

and that our kids would be well cared for

while I was comforting my mom.

Love is not only opening our home to my grandmother

for an extended visit,

but sitting with her for hours on the back deck

listening to her stories and making her feel so special.

Love is coming with me to volunteer in our daughter's

classroom on your day off.

Love is making me feel gorgeous

when I'm tanned and toned,

when I'm having a bad hair and skin day,

when I've got last nights make-up on and tangled hair,

when I'm all dolled up for a night out,

when my jeans are too tight,

when my face is swollen beyond recognition,

when my hands are in dish water,

when I'm holding our newborn,

when I'm feeling less than confident,

or when I'm on top of the world.

Love is going through the Build-a-Bear routine,

including kissing the little heart and making a wish,

when we made a special bear for our little girl.

Love is taking care of me

and the kids and the house

when my doctor's orders had me elevating my ankle

for 8 weeks.

Love is having tea parties with a little girl

when I was still healing.

Love is putting so much energy into me

and my needs during my recovery

when all of the attention should have been on

you and your commissioning ceremony.

Love is choosing restaurants that you know I like.

Love is writing me love letters from the Persian Gulf,

from under the sea,

from across America,

and from secret places that I will never know about.

Love is not only buying that expensive bracelet,

but not making me feel horrible for losing it

11 months later

and still trusting me enough to

buy me more shiney bobbles.

Love is still being visibly in awe during intimate moments

even after 19 years.

Love is giving me the center brownie.

Love is letting me sleep in

when I know you are tired too.

Love is picking up a java chip from starbucks

for me, even when it's out of your way.

Love is laughing and saying,

"I love you sooooo much!" when I'm absent minded

or do something quirky.

Love is loving my friends and family

and being kind to them.

Love is spending time with our kids

and making them feel like the blessings they are.

Love is telling me that I'm a good mom

when I collapse in tears over

my feelings of inadequacy.

Love is not saying anything on those days

when you come home from work

and I'm still in my PJ's.

Love is taking me in your arms and telling me I'm beautiful

on those PJ all day days.

Love is ordering a dessert to share that you know I love

but that you don't particularly like.

Love is telling me how much you love

watching my ponytail swing back and forth

when I'm on the eliptical and you are

riding the excercise bike behind me.

Love is making me feel like I'm gorgeous

in a room full of chiseled,

athletic bodies at the gym.

Love is scooping up one of our daughters

and dancing around the living room with her.

Love is a thousand little things that you do

for me and our family everyday.

Love is my indescribably beautiful life

with you!

PTSD, it's not just for battlefields.

So, last month, I was diagnosed with PTSD.

I am not one to go in and discuss my feelings with a doctor

as demostrated when I waited 7 months to tell my doctor

that I was feeling a little "blue" after I had Brendell in 2003.

Feelings like that had been foreign to me up until that point.

But there was no denying the change.

Almost immediately after my c-section I felt different.

For seven months I felt different.

I kept thinking that it was my fault that I was not myself

so it took alot for me to go to my doctor.

I was not the lay in bed kind of depressed,

but I was having irrational fears about my new baby

and feeling completely inadequate.

I felt like everyone was judging me and

that they secretly thought that I was a horrible person.

This was the total opposite of my normal personality,

so at the prompting of my husband, I went to our assigned doctor on base.

She diagnosed me with post pardom depression

and put me on Zoloft.

I gained 15 pounds in 6 weeks and begged her to change my meds.

She switched me to Effexor claiming that it generally did not cause weight gain.

I put on 30 more pounds over the next four months

and was basically emotionally numb.

I went through the motions of motherhood,

but I felt very little.

I decided I'd rather be paranoid then a fat zombie,

so I weaned myself off of Effexor

and my hormones eventually worked themselves out.

By the time Bren was two and a half,

things were back to normal for me.

The weight, however, has stuck around give or take 10 pounds.

So, you can see why I was so reluctant this time

to tell my doctor what I have been dealing with over the past 6 months.

But, my symptoms were getting more and more bothersome,

so I really had no other choice than to have that

"please tell me I'm not crazy" conversation again.

I always thought PTSD was just for soldiers who had experienced

horrible things on the battlefield,

but the truth is that trauma (any trauma) is damaging in many ways.

Near death experiences change you,

and not always in the "I almost died, so now I'm going to go do amazing things

with my second chance" kind of ways.

Sometimes it makes you question your ability to protect yourself

and those for whom you are responsible.

Sometimes it makes you feel guilty for having exposed your loved ones

to such an event.

Sometimes it makes you feel like it was your fault for not

being able to avoid the trauma.

Sometimes when you don't heal back exactly how you were

it makes you feel both angry at your lack of control

and horrible for not being thankful that you healed at all.

I have been reliving my tubing accident more often than I'd like to

when I close my eyes to go to sleep

or when I catch myself zoning out in the middle of the day.

I have irrational fears about things I'm usually not afraid of.

We almost brought Bren with us that day and she would have been

on my raft with me.

That thought consumes too much of my time

and it's irrational to get so worked up over something that did not happen.

The fear I experience is strong enough to cause tightening in my chest,

difficulty breathing and restless sleep.

My usual "roll with the punches" attitude has been replaced

by someone who can't handle stress very well

and who flies off the handle more often.

I'm just not me.

Luckily, I have an awesome doctor now

who really listens to me and we decide together on a course of treatment.

She knew that I would absolutely not take anything

that made me feel like a zombie or put a single pound on me,

so we researched together something that had a low chance of doing either.

I'm taking Wellbutrin and so far I've lost 13 pounds

and I haven't felt that tightening in my chest in weeks.

I'm so relieved that I don't have to trade extra pounds and

emotional numbness for my sanity.

I'm also relieved to know that everything I was feeling

has a name and a solution

and it wasn't just that I was too weak to handle the trauma

or too selfish to be thankful that I am alive.

I'm still getting used to the medicine in my system

and I'm working on becoming more like me again.

It took alot for me to blog about this.

I don't like to broadcast my weaknesses.

Many of my closest friends don't even know what has been going on.

I don't like to stir up concern for me.

I'd rather comfort than be comforted,

and I like to be perceived as someone who

is strong and can be counted on

not someone who needs help.

I am energized by encouraging and being there for others,

but it is so hard for me to be that person who needs strength

from other people.

So, I hid everything, put on a smile

and pretended as best as I could,

but I wanted you to know why I've been so sporadic with my posting

over the last 6 months.

Sometimes I just couldn't get outside of my own head enough

to post anything relevant or interesting.

Hopefully, most of this is behind me now

and I can look forward to much brighter days ahead.

More Like Crush

Watching your children turn into adults takes a huge amount of faith.

I mean huge!

No one tells you how to do it.

Those who have been there can help you prepare

by telling you their stories,

but they can't tell you how.

I think it's because

they don't really know how they got through it themselves.

I know how to protect and nurture a newborn.

I know how to guard a two year old from his own self.

I know how to teach a child the morals and values of our faith.

I even know how to enjoy the tween and middle teen years.

but I do not know how to confidently watch an 18 year old

run head strong into obvious mistakes,

without trying to cushion his fall.

I am learning though.

I am becoming increasingly aware that

to learn and grow, sometimes you have to

fall flat on your face.

Alot of us came to the places we are today

because we got up from that fall

wiser and more aware of how to survive in this world.

But still.....

watching it is easily the hardest thing I have ever done.

It's the letting him fall part that I find so difficult.

He's a great kid with awesome potential,

and I know that his stubborness is going to serve him well someday

if he learns to channel it in the right direction.

I know in my heart of hearts that he's going to be ok.

It's just going to be quite a ride getting there!

This clip from Finding Nemo has a nice little lesson in it for me.

Right now my "squirt" is struggling outside of the current.

Like Marlin,

I want to go grab him by the hand and pull him back to safety.

But, Crush is confident that his little guy will find his way back.

He's sure that all of the things Squirt has learned

up until now will kick in and Squirt will

know how to get back into the current on his own.

I think that the confidence that Crush has empowers Squirt.

Squirt's excitement and joy at conquering something difficult

would never have happend if Crush had gone to rescue him.

The joy is in the struggle!

So, at this stage in my life,

I am trying to be less like Marlin and more like Crush!

I can't wait for the day my struggling swimmer

bursts out of the deep and into the current

shouting, "Did you see that?! Did you see what I did?!"

I'm sure his dad and I will say what we already know about him

"You so totally rock, dude!!"

Because he does.

Flexibility

So a few days ago,

I put on my facebook status

a few lines of a converstaion

I had with Brendell.

She had been looking through a book

with pictures of snakes and worms in it.

She asked her dad,

"What is the most flexible thing in the world?"

Knowing she was looking at books with animals in it,

David said, "Probably a worm."

I laughed and said,

"Bren, the most flexible thing

in the whole wide world

is a Navy wife!"

I am a mentor in a group called COMPASS.

We mentor young navy wives

and provide information, resources, friendship

and "been there" stories for those

just beginning to navigate this crazy life.

One of our visual aids is a stretchy figurine of popeye.

We'll hold him and bend his legs back,

twist his arms around and contort him

into impossible positions

to emphasize the fact that we always need to

keep an open mind, an open heart,

and an openess to change.

Flexibility.

It's the number one quality

that gets us through

with the maximum amount of sanity.

This week I am popeye.

I am bending and contorting my plans.

About 10 days ago talk began about us transfering early.

There are several reasons for this and

there are lots of pros and cons to

going ahead with it.

David's career may or may not be affected by it.

We'll have to wait and see what happens over the next few years.

He will have to work a little harder to make up for

what he didn't get here,

but he's no stranger to hard work

and I think he really enjoys the challenge of beating the odds

and coming out on top.

He's done it on numerous occassions

so I have much faith that he can do it again.

Given the stresses in our family,

moving,

although it might be the harder road career wise,

is the only choice David felt right about making.

I respect him so much for choosing family

over chasing the dollar.

I am so proud of how far my husband

has come since enlisting

as a baby faced seaman.

He's now a commissioned officer

with so many honors and accomplishments.

He has done well....more than well

in his naval career

and while this choice certainly doesn't end his chances

of continuing to make rank,

it does present some new challenges.

We weighed all of this when making our choice

and family tipped the scales.

After coming off of 10 years of sea duty,

his presence in our home over the next three years

is going to be invaluable as our sons transition

into adult manhood.

The fact that we were given this choice

at this time in our lives is such a gift.

And so,

my flexibility comes into play again

as we speed up our time table

and prepare to make another cross country move in the

very near future!

We still don't have an exact move date,

but we do have a destination.

David will be working at the

Office of Naval Intelligence

in Suitland, MD.

So, Bren,

like I said before,

I bet I can out stretch a silly old worm any day!

365 project #11

Bren and her friends last night

waiting for a cooking class.

They had so much fun!

365 project #10

Five days of rain.

I miss my view!

365 project #9

This is what happens when

you send teenage boys

out to the store to

pick up a gallon of milk!

the steps....

For those that asked to see the steps in the

previous blog post story....

here ya go!