Adventures in moving...Part 2

Graduation for the Husband

Load up and hit the road

drive 9 hours

Check engine light came on

share a hotel room with 3 kids

Husband, in his sleep, pulls my pillow out from under my head and throws it across the room

i kicked him :)

wake up

hotel breakfast

fire car shipment company for contract breech, meaning they are morons who should not be trusted

hired a new company, using my cell phone, husbands iphone, and my laptop.

Only took me 2 hours

drove 9 hours

dinner, baths, Advent

reward for me and husband, a seperate hotel room :)

if you dont laugh you'll cry

adventures in moving...Part 1

Packers came

Household goods loaded on a truck

Moved into a hotel

Cleaned out house

Took kids to children's museum

K broke her arm at said museum

Trip to the ER to get x-rays and a sling

Spent the day icing it and giving meds for swelling and pain

Christmas concert at church Sat night and Sunday morning

Singing cost me my voice for a few days, totally worth it :)

Husband took A to Boston for an eye appt.

I took K to orthopedics to see if we would do a cast or just a sling and immobilize it

Dinner, baths, Advent each night.

So far its been interesting and we haven't even gotten in the car yet....

if you don't laugh, you cry

A home to call my own....

So its been awhile since I wrote on here and for that I am sorry. To make up for it I will make a confession....I am a whiner.

I know you are all gasping in shock at this, I understand your disbelief, but I, Julianne, am a whiner. I whine about my childrens attitudes, I whine about my messy house, I whine about the weather, etc etc on into infinity.

Now I have another confession to make and this one is harder, I don't like change that I can't control. For those who didn't know my family and I have moved to Connecticut for 6 months, yes that's right, 6 months. It was a HUGE change for us and took something like 2 months just to get settled in and find some friends and feel normal again. Now is is almost time for us to pack up and move again. Another change, another city, another school, all of which I have very little control over and I have not handled it with much grace.

I would love to brag that I love moving, I love the change but its not true. The funny part is, I don't have trouble making friends, I don't have trouble finding a church family, I don't struggle with fitting in most places. My kids adjust pretty quickly, they love going to new schools and making friends. My husband likes his job and the responsibilities that come with it. I like having a automatic support group being in the FRG (family readiness group) so why is this so hard?

Why can I not simply smile and nicely follow where my husband leads and the navy sends? Why do I whine and complain? Why can I not remember that each and every time we have moved God has provider far and beyond my needs?

Here is another example of how much I am given. We are moving to Bangor and one of the only real downfalls to being there is the waiting list for base housing. When we got orders there we were told it could be up to a year wait till they would have a house available to us and that meant we would be moving into an apartment for as long as that took. Now there is nothing wrong with living in an apartment, the part that i whined about was that we wouldn't really settle in there. We wouldn't know how long we had there or when we were moving again, more change I cannot control. It has weighed heavy on my mind and heart and my poor husband heard more than his fair share from his crazy wife about how much I hated this, how hard it would be on me, why I hated it.

It is so very unsettling not knowing where you will be living when you move. You have said goodbye to everyone you know, everything familiar and are now going to a place where even a home of your own is not a certainty.

Tonight though hubby got a call from Bangor. They have a house for us if we would like to accept it. This NEVER happens in Bangor. They often won't even speak to you till you are at the base and we will not arrive till Jan. God again has given me exactly what I needed and more. He has given us a home is a good neighborhood with a good school for the kids, its close to work for Luke and has a 2 car garage for him to play in.

So while I go and once again apologize to my hubby and cuddle while we watch Mystery Science Theater (look it up, you will thank me) you can laugh with me. I will laugh because once again I have been a dork and not trusted that the God who loves me will provide all my needs and the same God has proven to me He will even as I whine.

If you don't laugh, you'll cry.

swimming lessons, riding a bike, and other tortures we inflict upon ourselves

Its summer, a time when kids ride bikes, swim in the local pool, jumprope with neighbor kids as you all just chill and unwind from a long school year.

Unless you live at my house. Todays adventure in parenting involved swimming lessons for my two oldest, K and A. Now I knew going into these lessons that K was not at all thrilled with the idea. I was prepared to deal with some whining and moaning and dragging of feet while we were trying to get out the door. I was not however, prepared for the knock down, drag out, kicking and screaming fit she threw while in the middle of her class. All of the sudden there she was yelling at her instructor who had the gall to suggest K try the kick board while the teacher held her up. I was mortified. I hurried over to calm her down and talk to her because that will normally work. Not so much today. I tried telling her she could do this, that the teacher was there to keep her safe, that all 7 year olds know how to swim. I tried telling her that if she truly wanted to be a Jedi Knight( a WHOLE other story) she would have to be able to swim, I tried threatening her with never going to a the pool to play again and nothing worked. K ended up sitting against the wall while her class finished its lesson and A finished her class across the pool.

Now here is the question. Why does she need to learn to swim? Whats the big deal if she never does? Will she be that much less of a grown up if she never learns? What will she gain if she suffers through this? If I suffer through this?

I think what this battle comes down to, is that K needs to learn to swim because right now she thinks she can't. She thinks she will fail even before she tries and I worry about that mind set. She is scared of something she thinks will destroy her if she has to face it and I worry about that too. I don't want K to ever be afraid to try something simply because she might fail. I don't want her living in fear of something she THINKS she can't face. I want her to have a strong enough belief in herself so the next time something is hard and scary she can look back and say "hey wait, I faced this before and did something I thought I couldn't do. This is nothing I can't handle." I want her to learn to trust me when I tell her she is good enough, she is strong enough, she is brave, and she can do anything.

So next week we will go back to swimming lessons and try again. I will be going with a different mind set though. I believe in my child and know that she can swim. My job next week is to let her find that out on her own.

If you don't laugh, you'll cry.

Moving day

So tomorrow is day 1 of our pack out. For my non-military friends that is when the military send a moving company and they pack you up and move you out, hence the name. We are moving in shifts this time. Tomorrow is called unaccompanied baggage. Since we are moving across an ocean we are allowed to send supplies before us so we have dishes and bedding while we wait the 8 weeks it takes to get the rest of our furniture. Only for us, its not 8 weeks but 6 months before we will see our household goods again. We decided that unpacking an entire house for a 6 month tour and then packing it again would drive me to drink. ( more than I do now anyway) I have spent the last couple of weeks deciding what we could live without and what was a necessity.

I have learned a couple of things since I started. First, my kids are pretty resilient. They have sorted toys, books and clothes and planned for an exciting trip and a new adventure. Second, we have a whole lot of crap. I thought I was pretty good at keeping the clutter down and not being a pack rat, I was wrong. I have taken out 7 bags of trash and my back porch is covered with things that are going to the ladies garage sale. When did that happen? Where did this desire to store build? Third, I am not a nice person when you make me deal with change. During this move I have been picking fights with my husband, not sleeping, tearful. I used to think that I handled anything life threw at me with a good attitude, that I would handle it with grace and understanding. I can hear you laughing by the way. I have had to apologize to my husband more than once about my attitude and been humbled on a daily basis that my kids have handled this in a more adult manner than I have.

I now need to laugh at myself, to remember that I can choose my attitude, that I am only as moody as i choose to be. I need to love on my husband and kids and enjoy my time here before its gone. So lets choose laughter and live aloha

today i feel, you know it doesn't matter...

it's true. It really doesn't. What matters is what I choose to do with it. I feel sad, frustrated, angry, agitated, wound-up. I feel misunderstood, un-grateful, torn, heart broken. I have chosen to be mean, bitter, ugly. I have chosen to yell at my children, sneer at my husband, ignore my friends phone calls all to indulge my own self pity. Yes my feeling are valid, yes there is nothing wrong with having them, there is however something very wrong about what I do with them. My feelings do not give me license to treat the people that love me with anything less then all the love and grace they have shown me. And the grace and love my Savior has given me defiantly means that I have no room to whine and moan.

So I choose to once again remember the words of a women who loved me no matter what. I will choose laughter.