The Explanation

WELCOME!!!! And thank you for checking out my blog, it fills me with joy to be spreading God's word and love through my life.

 This is my first post of a new blog, and my 4th try to keep a blog going, I am apparently easily distracted. :)  But as 2014 starts I motivated to get back to tracking my kids lives, like I did years ago, and start sharing how the Lord has moved me and continues to move my life.

To start...hummmm....I am a stay at home mom of two (hopefully more one day) crazy, loving, brilliant kids.  We are an Army family, my husband has served for 11 years with 3 deployments and 5 different duty stations.  I was an Army brat, with my dad serving 18 years, I joined the Army reserves myself right out of high school where I meet my solider husband.  My life has never completely been separate from the military. Which is why I wanted to include that aspect heavily in this blog, I know the Army, ups and downs and would not be who I am without it.  I want to support other military wives,husbands, children, service members and any one whose lives have been changed due to the military.

Peace is Coming, my husband found this in a chaplains office in Iraq, moves me to tears.

Now the other major aspect of this blog is Christ.  I have always known who God was, but did not feel a true relationship with Him until March 20, 2011 when He pulled my heart to Himself and never let go. Now I feel the joy and peace of knowing Him and trusting Him in every aspect of my life.  I am a sinner and will never claim to be an expert or never be wrong in what the Lord wants or says, but I have given my heart to Him and strive to do His will.  Here I will share my struggles to understand and serve God, what moves me, what fills me and how I depend on the grace and love of God as I deal with the challenges of military life and parenting.

Don't stop reading now, I have more!!

Those crazy, loving and brilliant kids I mentioned, yep those are the ones who pictures dominate this blog and voices dominate my house.

"Monkey" is 5 years old, due to turn 6 on Saint Patrick's day this year.  He is very loving and needing of love, he loves cuddles and cares for others, hugging every person he meets no matter what.  He was diagnosed ADHD last year after we saw symptoms and sought help. He is literally never ever still.  At the beginning of 2013 when we moved to a new state and started a new Pre K at the local public school we noticed the things we knew he had learned start to disappear.  We made the decision then to remove him from public school and home-school him.  He has thrived at home and I have LOVED watching him learn and spending this time with him.  Next month he will start a 1st grade curriculum.  His favorite subject is science! He loves dinosaurs and animals and learning every fact about them that he can. He never stops asking questions and questions your answers until ever detail has been hammered out.

"Cupcake" is my beautiful 3.5 year old rascal! It is amazing how you can feel like you are raising two children the same way and they turn out so different.  She is spirited and stubborn.  She is a good girl, but does everything on her own terms in her own time.  Her favorite game is "playing Mommy" where she takes my purse and tries to use each item in it like I would, I have lost a LOT of make up this way. She also loves babies and turns any toy, including her brothers giant dinosaurs, into a baby so she can care for it. My little cupcake is beautiful and she knows it, using that sweet smile to distract from her stealing of candy or stubborn refusal to poop on the darn potty.  We don't do much schooling with her yet, though she watches every lesson her brother gets and wants to be included.  This year we will start an official Pre K program and I can't wait to watch her absorb it up.

Homeschooling is for the crazy, yep! As a military family we move every three years at least, for us it has been more often then that.  Monkey had to leave a completely amazing Pre K program half way through the year and entered into a horrible one.  This is the chance we take and if we want to live in on post housing, inside the military community, we have little choice in what school the kids will attend.  It keeps a sense of stability in a unstable world to do school at home, they don't have to worry about standardized testing or new schools every few years...  I have many reasons and I could get defensive and rant, but honestly my biggest reason for teaching the kids myself is that I love spending time with them and keeping them close to me.  I feel our family growing closer and the kids becoming life long friends.

Wait there is more.....

Crafting, my obsession and addiction.  There is not a day that I am not trying to knit, sew, or hot glue something for some reason I think it very important, usually it is not :).  I try to bring in a little money with a small Etsy store selling weighted blankets (for use in treating ADHD and autism), knit hats and other random stuff.  I just feel so fulfilled seeing a pile of fabric or yarn become a usable item. I even knit the kids Halloween costumes this year, it did not save us money :)

So in short what you will find here is
Christ stuff
Military stuff
Kid stuff
Homeschooling stuff
Craft stuff

That is me and I am so excited to share this year with you, I hope you stick it out and learn to read through my dyslexic mistakes :)