I have been a total slacker!!

I feel like a total slacker as far as my blog goes lately! I havent posted anything worth reading and no pictures what so ever for a good bit! Now in my defense in the last two weeks I have hit my sixth month of pregnancy with baby number four. I have sent my soldier off for his second deployment, this time to Iraq AND I traveled from one coast to the other with my three kids, the cat and my mother!! Hahhaha ok now I dont feel like such a slacker!!
Things here this past week have been pretty good. We all miss Daddy terribly and that can cause some tantrums, and not just from the kids! We are trying our best to settle in to a house hold that isnt ours, into a single room shared between me and all three kids. But to be honest its not been as bad as I expected!! We have done this before. So I had a fairly good idea of what to expect. Although there have been some rough days and my patience is no where near its normal, things really are going well.
We move into our own apartment the 31st of this month and I hope to post lots of pictures of the new place and us getting settled back into a routine and into homeschool for the year.Between the 26th of August and the 29th of September all three of my rug rats have a birthday so we will also have lots of birthday photo's to post as well.

On the road

As of Monday the kids and grandma and I will be on the road heading for Ohio. Its a fairly long drive, about four days. I am not looking forward to the long trip but will be happy to be settled in Ohio for a few months =-}

One last cookout

We got together last night with all our friends here at Fort Lewis for one last cook out before all the guys start shipping out. My guy is one of the first to go. With him our friend Jason (pictured beside me) and Hoffman (pictures front and center of course) are heading out the begining of August. Our friends Chad (pictured back row with his daughter on his shoulders) and Steven (pictured next to Chad) are heading out late September/early October.
Its been so great to meet all these awesome people while we have been here at Fort Lewis. They really are our substitute family here and we love every Crazy one!

Family

We are back in Washington now and trying to get everything ready for our deployment/move. We had so much fun hanging out with our family and are looking forward to being able to be there with them for the year =-}

VACATION

Well I probably wont post again anytime in the next week or two. We are in Ohio on vacation and having an awesome time visiting with all our family!! We are doing camp outs, and art projects, photo shoots and swimming. The kids (and adults for that matter) are having a great time!
This week we are also going to look in to some apartments for when the kids and I move back next month. This is bitter sweet for me. I love the thought of being here with my family for a year and the kids being able to be with there Cousins and Aunts and Uncles and Grandparents BUT still I would give pretty much anything to stay in Washington with my hubby if that were an option. Unfortunately that is not an option. My DH will be half a world away. This will be our second time going thru a deployment as a family. His first to Iraq. I am so incredibly proud of my husband for doing what he does. For protecting us and our rights as well as the rights of others. When I think of my husband I think about Captain Moroni and the title of liberty. It said
" In memory of our God,our religion,and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children."
That is why my husband does what he does. When we talk about our lives in the military those are the things that come up.
When we talk about being apart for a year we get all sorts of reactions. Anything from "Wow that must be hard." to "I would never do that!" It IS hard and honestly you probably couldnt do it! But this is the path that God has put our family on. We have known that since day one, since the day we decided to talk to the recruiter and because we are doing what we know the Lord has directed us to do He blesses us and strengthens our family and gets us thru those long seperations.
We never intended to move away from our little hometown and we never intended on going active duty Army. When my husband was laid off from his job several years back we started praying and he started searching for a new job. Then one day I was sitting in my living room and the idea came to me. Why not just go active duty. At that point my Justin was a reservist. When I brought this up to justin he was shocked, I had always been very adament that this was my home and this was where I would stay. But from that moment we started praying about going active and it just was right. Beyond any doubt we both knew that this was the path the Lord was leading us too. Despite our fears and despite our familys shock and upset we couldnt deny it was the way Heavenly Father was leading us. I cry about it now when I think about it because from the day we made the decision to do what Heavenly Father asked us to do we have been blessed beyond anything I could have ever imagined! Heavenly Father is SO good to us!
Wow I hadnt planned on going into all of THAT in this post! But there you are! =-}

Simplifying life

Today at church we had a lesson that really hit home with me. It was on simplifying our lives. I guess it isn't something I had thought about recently. A lot of the stress in our lives we create ourselves. During the lesson we were told about a man who lived by himself in a cabin for two years. After that time he said he had determined that we have four basic needs. Now I don't know about you, but when I start listing my "needs" my list is way longer than four things! I "need" my cell phone, Internet, cable TV, extra money to eat out, you get the picture!
Well the things on this mans list were food, shelter, clothes and fuel(spiritual fuel is what he focused on). We had a really good discussion about each one of these things and really I think it just helps you put into perspective your own idea's about needs and wants and priorities. For quite a while getting out of debt was very high on our priority list. We had ran up credit cards and gotten loans and most of it was unnecessary. We wanted to pay off our debts so we could start living more within our means and more frugally. We finally paid off our debts, every last penny! We did for a while live fairly frugally. But it really hasn't been a permanent or long term thing. We still have no debt, except for a car loan we unexpectedly had to get BUT frugal living has not been our motto. We tend to spend a bit more than we need/should on non-essentials and "fun" stuff. Now there isn't anything wrong with having a bit of fun EXCEPT when it prevents you from doing other more important things like establishing a savings or working on gathering food storage which our current spending habits have done.
I love that the Lord is patient with me. I have heard the message of frugality, living within our means and simplifying my life to what really matters time and time again. But like my four year old who is told at least 5 times a day not to harass his brother , I don't always get the message the first time or the second for that matter!

thanks Sis

Do you love the new look of my blog? I do! Its all thanks to my sister and her skill with a computer! hehe. Thanks for the new layout Tristan!