Soldier Girl - Army Wife: February 2013

Thursday, February 28, 2013

My grandma

In less than a week, our second little boy will be here. I didn't ever expect that I would be having a child at 31. I figured that I would have had that stage of my life done a few years earlier, but here I am with an almost 18 month old and one on the way. With the back issues I have, this time has been a little bit more of a struggle than the first time around. As I was trying to take it easy this morning, I got to thinking about something... my grandma.

Although she has been gone for quite a while now, I still think of the strength this lady had in her. Standing under 5 foot by the time she was 80, she still had all the spirit you could imagine in someone one fourth her age.

One of the things about her that will never cease to amaze me is the number of children she raised. My dad was the youngest boy of eleven, with one sister younger than him. Grandma had my dad one day after her 40th birthday. I can't imagine having a newborn at 40 or having another one a couple years later, but she did.

She managed to stretch meals to feed this full household. Which I know caused some confusion for my dad when he married my mom. The first time she made meatloaf, he said there was too much meat to it. Over the years, grandma's meatloaf had been more of a bread load to allow for everyone to get enough.

I guess at times when my son is having a bad day or I'm not feeling so well, it helps to think back to the struggles she faced from surviving the Great Depression to raising all those kids and everything in between.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Looking back

Yesterday my husband and I had our five year anniversary. We married after only really knowing each other for a little over three months. When we first were married, I'm sure there were plenty of people that thought we rushed into it. Of course, there were the questions of a pregnancy. The fact was that we had planned on getting married a couple months later, but then orders happened. We were dual military with orders for two different places. He was heading to Germany and I was staying in Fort Hood.

Last night as we were sitting at home watching TV, we had our traditional pizza for dinner and it made me really think of where we have been. In five years, we have lived in three different countries and three different states, plus a number of other temporary duties that have found us in a number of other locations. There has been time spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also France, Italy and Spain. There have been promotions, awards and learning how to understand the MEB process. We have welcomed a little one into the world and are expecting our second in the next couple weeks. We have spent about half the time we have been married apart from each other, but that is just part of the military life.

Looking back, it's amazing to think about everything that we have gone through in such a short period of time. We wouldn't change this journey for anything though, because in it was have found that although some thought we were rushing - we knew what we were doing.