Written in my last post, my husband is to deploy early next year to Afghanistan for 14 months. Over one year of my life, my husband's life, and my daughter's life will be spent with one third of our family "across the pond" as they say.

But amazingly enough, I am currently at ease with this. I hold in good faith that God will keep my husband safe and that our family will thrive even if my husband is deployed. We will survive and we will become stronger. I will have the support of our families. I will have the support of God. I will have the support of my husband no matter how far away from me he is. And the same goes for my husband.

But this at ease feeling I have makes me feel guilty that my reaction is not stronger. That instead of feeling sorry for myself or my daughter or my husband, I am thankful that my husband is going to deploy and get to do something he has wanted to do for over 8 years now. I am thankful that in his own mind his military service will not be in vain. That he will not regret his service and that he will get what he wants out of his military service. (My husband joined the military in 2002 to deploy and have the military pay for his school, deploying was the most important.)

But I digress, I feel horrible for be so at ease. I feel as if it means that I do not love my husband. That I do not love our family. That I do not cherish our time together. I feel like I should feel more depressed. That I should feel more apprehensive. That I should feel more horrible about this.

Am I wrong to feel the way I do?

And disclaimer: I am sure that I will feel more apprehensive about this deployment as it gets closer to my husbands leaving, but right now I am at ease.

(Or maybe it hasn't sunk in yet. Maybe that is it?)

Deployment 1.0

So I know I do not post much on here, but I think I might start doing so more often, but this post is special. This post is all about me venting about something MAJOR and how my life is very likely to change TREMENDOUSLY come February.

As you may or may not know, my husband is in the United States Marine Corps. He is a wonderful and wonderfully handsome Marine if I do say so myself. He is a Marine that has been enlisted for over four years and thankfully has never been deployed. This means, other than before we were married (and when I went to boot camp and AIT for 4.5 months in early 2008) we have never been apart. And no sea has ever separated us. No international calling card has ever been required. I praise God everyday for that.

Recently in light of our indebtedness we have discussed re-enlistment. This option came with the impending doom that yes I would actually go through a deployment. But I prayed that I would not. I prayed that my husband would be a constant physical part of our family and get to watch his daughter grow in a time when they change the most. Unfortunately, God has other plans for our family.

My husband is most likely deploying sometime early next year to Afghanistan. FOR 14 MONTHS! (let me say a "normal" Marine Corps deployment is 7 months.) He will leave mere months after his only child, Maggie, turns 1 and not see her for more than 3 weeks until after she her second birthday. He will be granted R&R leave during his deployment for no more than 3 weeks.

This deployment is pretty much optional. If my husband did not want to go so badly he could choose to not re-enlist and therefore be ineligible for the deployment (he gets out in the middle of the deployment which is not allowed). So my husband is basically volunteering to leave his family for over a year. I am not mad at him because I know that this is important to him, to "serve" his country this way, but makes the 14 month deployment harder to swallow. Much harder to swallow.

He will hopefully be in a "secure" job doing administrative duties while deployed but this is not certain yet. We should know in the next two weeks or so exactly what is going on. But it is not his job that worries me, it is the separation that will take place between himself and his daughter that I worry about most. He will most likely miss the early stages of talking, potty training, and much more toddler exploration.

I have already decided though that if my husband does in fact deploy, I am moving home to Florida to be with my parents. They will be able to help raise my daughter for those 14 months, and allow my husband and I to focus on paying off debt much quicker than we had hoped. Leaving almost (consumer) debt free by the time he returns. My parents live in a 4 bedroom house so both my daughter and I will have our "own" rooms. My niece will also be graduating during this time frame leaving the house one less occupant lighter (she is joining a branch of service, she doesn't know which one yet).

This move will not only help my husband and I, but it will financially help my parents as well. We have already discussed the possibility and how I can pay "rent" to them. I will be buying all of the groceries for the family of 4 or 5 (depending on if it before my niece graduates or after), leaving their check books $600-700 dollars heavier each month, which is huge to my parents who are struggling to keep their heads above water. This works out because it will be my only "homely" expense.

And did I mention that although my husband is about to leave for 14 months, upon his arrival we will be close to being debt free. This is huge for me and would not be so understanding of this deployment if this fact were not so. Being debt free or almost debt free will mainly depend on if I am able to find gainful part time employment while living in Florida or not. I hope that I am because all of my friends that have gone through deployments have said that the time went faster when they worked than when it did not.

And as I reread this post, I find that I am talking about this deployment in a tone happier or more optimistic than I feel in my heart. I guess that although there are upsides to the deployment, the idea that I will be apart from my husband while he is in a war zone scars me to depths of my soul and I cannot imagine the heartbreak I will feel showing my husband pictures and videos of our daughter growing. And I will carry a burden that will be to make sure that my daughter does not forget her father in the time that he is gone. I am already scouring message boards and deployment websites for ways to keep him an integrated part of our life even with a sea separating our family.

No one can imagine the pain that goes through someone's heart and mind when they find out news such as this, unless one has been there before. And I have not been here before and so my heart and my soul and my mind ache trying to fathom 14 months without my husband, without the father of our child, without my companion.

I am scared. And I already feel isolated and alone.

Admiration

So I absolutely adore Beth Anne over at The Heir to Blair (please go read, she is HILARIOUS! and honest. and down-to-earth.) Well recently she launched a page on her blog that is dedicated to a charity, specifically The Ronald McDonald House. If you don't know what the Ronald McDonald House is, please know that it is a home that the families of pediatric patients can stay out while their children are undergoing treatment.

This charity hits home. Why? Because when I was two months old my family was invited to stay in a Ronald McDonald House while I under went pediatric neurological surgery to correct a birth defect. Because I was born with a birth defect. I was born with a whole in my skull in the middle of my forehead that could have lead to serious complications. In 1987 when my parents where invited, they could have stayed in the house for $20 a night. They would have access to the kitchen, that was stocked with food. Breakfast was provided. They had in house laundry room. It was to be a low-cost housing alternatively that make the families feel more at home while the people dearest to them fight for their lives, undergo surgeries, physical therapies, et cetera.

So I admire Beth Anne for what she is speaking about and I am excited to see where this leads. I AM EXCITED!

today.

Today was a good day overall.

1. I scored a copy of P90X for $40. SCORE!! (Hopefully going to start tomorrow, if I ever get tired enough to go to sleep.)

2. Maggie ate a chicken nugget for dinner.

3. I won $20 to buy organic baby food for Maggie at ecomom.com from Jessica Loves To Save Money. (Go check out ecomom.com- it is a really cool site!)

4. I made an over $300 payment to Scott's credit card today! It is so exciting. This time next month we hope to have his balance down below $2000. We are super excited, we are actually seeing progress on our "getting debt free" journey. I cannot wait to see all of our balances at $0.

5. (This happened yesterday, but whatever.) We found out our rent is not going to go up for our next lease period and so we do not need to move.

I do ask this though. Please pray that one of the many job applications I have put in recently will lead to a job. I am really in the need of a job, especially come October and would love to get one of the ones I have applied for recently. And please pray that if a job does not come of these applications, that God helps us find a way to provide after I lose my school income.

I hope that everyone is having a wonderful day and has awesome plans for the 4th of July. I will be spending it with friends. I can't wait for the long weekend.

I also started my second to last class today. 10 WEEKS LEFT!!! 10 WEEKS LEFT!!! 10 WEEKS LEFT!!!

And I am a worry wart

So I worry- a lot! I stress and stress and stress about EVERYTHING, to the point that sometimes it interferes with my life. And my husband knows this. Right now, the main contributor of stress is well, money. And the ever approaching day that Scott gets out of the Marine Corps, which means a loss of income, health care, dental insurance- EVERYTHING. And without going into too much detail, being a military family comes with sacrifices, such as living away from the area you ultimately want to settle down in. Because of this, and lack of money, and the indebtedness, it is hard to just up and travel to job interviews to find a job somewhere you might actually want to live voluntarily. And so we looked for other options.

Our options were:

1) Me go active duty.

2) Me find a job.

3) Me commission and hope to find a full time reserve position.

4) Me find a job.

Scott re-enlisting was never an option. Until Sunday, when he brought up the idea. I was like "Whoa, what?" Because this has always been a closed subject. SCOTT WAS NOT GOING TO RE-ENLIST! That was just how it was for the better part of the last three years. But after research and discussion and prayer and thought and discussion, Scott is *hopefully* going to be laterally transferring (changing) jobs and re-enlisted for another 4 years in the Marine Corps.

But what changed our minds you ask. (Right? You did ask that?)

DEBT changed our minds. And after researching we found out that job Scott wants to re-enlist as carries a bonus of $44,000 (that's more than we make in a year!!). Can we say good-bye debt? Can we say have everything paid off within 18 months of today? Without having to scrape our budget tooth and nail to pinch every penny and "save" every single dollar? So our plan now goes as this:

Scott re-enlist into the Marine Corps. Scott goes to MOS school, Scott graduates, and the Marine Corps deposits about $30,000 into our bank account. We pay off Scott's credit card (if not already paid off), we pay off my motorcycle, we pay off Scott's motorcycle, and we pay off most of my loan (oh and we buy a new bed WITH bed frame, a pistol, and Scott concealed and carry license). We sell my bike. We pay off my loan and we continue making payments on what is left, my car. In February or March 2011, we should receive a pretty hefty tax refund check. We use it to finish paying off debt, as much as we can (because then we will move on to student loans). And we will pay as much on those as we can until they are paid off. We then move to baby step #3 and get 3-6 months expenses in the bank (or about $12,000). And then we move on. So please tell me, I think we will be out of debt and have an emergency fund in place by the end of next year.

Our main reason for doing this. So that when Scott's EAS date comes around again, we will have no debt, money in the bank, and less stress about looking and landing jobs. And by then I should have my MBA as well, making job hunting hopefully even easier.

Oh did I mention this also means we can have another free baby (medical bill wise), free health insurance, cheap dental insurance, and a steady paycheck. The peace of mind is worth the 4 extra years to us. And so we commence Operation: Re-Enlist. Please pray that he gets the job that he wants. The paperwork is already flowing.

Wow- an update

So to start this post, I want to show you something cute, at least I think so.

"Look ma, NO hands."

Just as long as she doesn't do that while riding her bike, I think I'll be okay.

And then, something beautiful (I hope). This is me at my niece's junior year Military Ball. She is in NJROTC now in high school, the same NJROTC program I was in, and I wanted to be a part of a special night for her by going while visiting in Florida. And so I did. The handsome man beside me is Retired Lt Colonel Nardo, a man I am proud to look up to. He has such a sweet soul, and even though I have known him almost 10 years now (EEK, did I say that??) this is the first picture I have ever gotten with him. But now he will be someone I can point to and talk about graciously to my grandkids (grandkids, what? I JUST had a baby!).

I know it has been a while since I wrote. A long while actually, but I am going to try to get back into it. The thing is though, once I returned from Florida, I started summer school. Which means I am taking Pre-Calculus and I absolutely loathe it, but have somehow formed a very attached relationship with my book (aka studying). I am also continuing my accelerated classes at the University of Phoenix and taking another class at the community college. Add on top of my studies the search for a job, and potentially a new house to rent AND a seven month old and it makes for one busy Momma.
But on the flip side at least I am doing well in all of my classes, I might have a C in one of the three, but I am okay with that. And I have less than 80 days until I turn in my last assignment as an undergraduate student!!! HOW FLIPPIN' EXCITING IS THAT?!?!?! (It makes me want to jump for joy! It's only taken me five years to complete.) Which by the way, I am going to save my money from now until September and I am going to buy myself a Nook as my graduation present, sounds blissful doesn't it?

We did find that Magaroni likes swimming, if you have a well heated pool and a floating device shaped like a turtle! Because on Father's Day, Scott, Maggie and I lathered on the sunscreen and donned our swimsuits and headed to the pool. AND NO TEARS!!! It was great the 20 minutes we were in before there was thunder and the pool was closed for the rest of the day. But now we know we can go swimming with the babe. And I think we might try and make it a weekly thing (as long as I do not have drill) until September when they close the pools again (who has ever heard of closing a pool in Coastal NC in SEPTEMBER?). Thank goodness a friend of ours also has a pool that we can use as well.

And when it comes to exercising, well I haven't. I have been so tired lately and it has been so hot that it is just so hard to even get off the couch (not really, I do play with my child) that exercising seems way out of the picture. But I am back up to 170 pounds and NEED to start doing something SOON!!! So I think I will spend tomorrow hydrating, because I didn't today, and run Saturday morning. Sound like a plan? It does to me too. Anyone want to join me. ANYONE???? I may also get my husband to go to the gym with me at some point to show me how to use some weight machines, because well I do have a child care pass to use at the gym and I need to get my money's worth out of it.

But I think that is enough updating for now. And hopefully I get better at this- again. If I do, I think I might even have someone design the blog for me (and possibly switch back to wordpress, because I like how you add photos better).

Maggie loves to eat

And Plum Organics are her favorite type of baby food (other than what I make myself). And I would love to win the contest over at

Plus the whole site is WONDERFUL!