Ahhh Time is flying

I had hoped to write a weekly post about my daughter but it just hasn’t happened. She’s 7 weeks old we’ve moved to Hawaii and so much more has happened. The only thing I can remember right now is how tired I am. I’m determined to get back to writing. 

But all of you thatbhave no kids or have older kids and get sleep please think of me! Please! There is only so much sleep a 7 week old baby allows you to have when she’s a premie and her doctors won’t let her go more than 3 hours of time before eating again. (Most full term babies have started to sleep longer than 3 hours by now).

Talk soon,

Marena

Cleaning and Organizing Before a Big Move.

So we move in nine months to Hawaii not to mention I’m pregnant. So I’m trying to de-clutter as much as possible over the next months. (Basically the moving people will be here around little biscuits due date. Thank goodness for an awesome mom, mom in law, and more importantly husband). Anyways I’ve found the cleaning is easy. I mean really I’m just doing all the “normal” things right now. But my oh my is the organization harder than I expected. Mainly because my husband has so much video game stuff and stuff in general. It’s hard to decide what to keep and what not to become without him giving me those answers I just don’t know. It doesn’t help he works so much I feel bad and just want to let him rest and not “work” some more. 

So I’ve been going through clothing and kitchen stuff (we have like 100 China dishes and wine glasses that we don’t use from our wedding). I’ve already got two boxes to donate and I’m feeling good. 

I know that I really don’t need to do to much for another few months but it helps me feel relaxed and prepared. Honestly I’ll do more organizing and de cluttering again in January and probably again in the beginning of March (biscuit is due the end of March) when my mother gets out here to help. Then when the movers come the beginning of April (at least I think it’s when they’ll come) I think I’ll be comfortable with them packing what we have. 

Plus maybe we’ll start off in our new home with a little less as we fill it with more baby needs. 

Any tips on packing? Moving? Organization? Military (navy) moves?

This is technically our first pcs as a family. 

Talk soon,

Marena 

Navylife(your region).com

Navylife (your region).com is a great way to get involved with other spouses and families on base. This is the Navy Fleet & Readiness Programs. It’s similar to the MWR. MWR means Moral, Welfare, Recreation. The difference I’ve found is the MWR is more of a ticketing office for places like Sea World and Disney. However, they do also do other things that’s just the biggest thing I look at it doing.

As spring and Easter are coming most every base will be starting their Easter egg hunts and other fun spring activities. Here in San Diego we are doing an even called Spring Fling on March 19th with an Easter egg hunt. Many events on base that are family oriented will have games, crafts, movies, and many other fun family activities.

As my husband and I do not have children yet we chose not to go to the Spring Fling event even though they encouraged families with no children to come out as well. Now truthfully we have more than one reason not to come since it’s also held on my husbands birthday.

Some of the other fun things are meant for non families with children as well. Not to say parents of children can’t come. It’s just meant for the adult rage. I’m getting ready to go to a painting night. Where I will get to have fun meeting others  and learn to paint a specific painting. Plus I get to take it home! And here in a few weeks there is a date night event that my husband and I will be going to.

Here in Sand Diego they have bowling nights, dance classes, 5k run/walks, we even have an air show. This month is also Military kids month so I’ve seen a lot of fun contests for the kids to be involved in.

*Many events will be free or at a reasonable price.

I definitely suggest you take use of the different activities you can do  on base. Especially if you don’t have friends in your area yet. It’s a great way to make friends. Just remember to be your self. Also no one likes a person who uses their spouses ranks to get what they want. That’s his rank he earned not yours. Earn respect the old fashion way. By being nice, friendly, and even by knowing how things work in military life. That may seem strange but if you  know what your talking about and you are nice (not trying to show off) I and others probably appreciate it more. (Sorry that was extra but I felt the need to say it.)

If you live in the South West such as I do in San Diego the website in

navylifesw.com from there you pick your installation.

As for other regions you will just have to replace the SW with your region. Unfortunately I’m not sure of how all the regions are set up.   If I had to guess they would all be simple such as Midwest would be MW, Northwest would be NW, and so on. However , I’m sure there are other regions I wouldn’t be able to think of. Especially if you live in another country outside of the USA.

I found the best way to find out the area you are in if you don’t already is to either ask your spouse. Or the way I found it was by looking at the different signs as you drive off the main gate for base. I was able to fine the website I use to find all the events for base. I already knew the region I was in I just didn’t know how to find the event page. (Did all that make sense? I’m sorry if it was rambled.)

 

Talk soon,

Marena

P.S. I’m sure all military branches have something similar. I suggest finding it and taking use of the different events.

 

Military Wife Tag!

So this may not be an original post by any means but something I’ve always wanted for my page was to talk about my life as a wife to someone in the Military. I’ve found over time that it has been much harder to talk about than I would have imagined. Not for any reason other than I just don’t know what to talk about on a regular basis. However, I saw this tag and decided it would be a fun way for me to start off with talking about my life as a military wife.

Here we go Military Wife Tag!

1. How did you and your spouse meet? The truth is we both have different opinions. I remember him running into me in gym class when I was in 6th grade and he was in 8th grade. But the story we go with is we met from church when he was a freshman and I was in 7th grade. We went to youth group together and became friends between group and different events we went on with the group.
2. How long have you and your spouse been together? We started dating on September 5th, 2009 and we got married September 6th, 2015. So we dated for 6 years and the day after our 6 year anniversary we got married. And as of today we are two days from our 6 month anniversary of being married.
3. Where are you and your spouse originally from? We are both from a little town in lower Michigan. Right now they are being blasted with snow. As kids we moved around but we spent the majority of our life in Coldwater.
4. How did you feel about your husband joining the military? I supported him I still do support him. Don’t get me wrong I was very worried at first especially with worrying about if he joined the Army or Marines. In my opinion I thought they’d be more dangerous. However, in the end he joined the Navy and I find I still worry about him. But for new reasons that I hadn’t thought of before. Truthfully I respect and support my husband in every way and in the end it really wasn’t my decision on what career he wanted in life just as much if he decided to be a garbage man or a lawyer wouldn’t be my choice. If I truly love him I would still love him no matter the career decisions he makes.
5. Where did your husband go to basic training? In Chicago. Do sailors do basic anywhere else?
6. Has your spouse been deployed? Yes he has. He told me even him being stationed out of the country is technically considers a deployment of sorts. Then when you leave base it’s called going underway. He has been underway for as short as 1 day to as long as 4 months. and there have been times I have not talked to him for weeks on end because of an underway.
7. Ever been to his promotion ceremony? I technically haven’t been to a promotion ceremony as the ones he as had he was in Japan and I wasn’t able to be there. However, I have been to his re-enlistment ceremony and I think they are probably pretty close to the same. I will get to be at his next promotion ceremony as we are now married and living in the same place together.
8. How long have you been a military wife? I have only been a military wife for 6 months. I have been a military fiance for 1 year and a military girlfriend for about 3 years.
9. Did he wear his uniform for the wedding? Yes my husband wore his dress whites. He hated (because he doesn’t love wearing his uniform) it but he also said he loved it because it was something I really wanted.
10. How did he propose? On the Michigan State University campus there is a huge rock that everyone paints. On my first birthday my parents stayed up all night and painted it for my birthday. Just shy of 20 years later my mom, sister, best friend, and sisters best friend secretly painted the rock again. Then my  mom said we were all going to get dressed nice and go take pictures. I thought nothing of it since we do this often. As we came around the corner I thought it was so cool but didn’t realize it was for me till Thomas came around the corner and dropped down to his knee and asked me to marry him.
11. Where did you get married? We got married in our hometown and we were the 5th couple to get married in an old opera house.
12. How old were you two when you got married? I was 20 years old. My husband was 22 years old.
13. Where are you and your spouse currently stationed? We are in San Diego, California.
14. Do you live on base? No we decided not to live on base. Technically in San Diego they want everyone to live off base since there isn’t tons of housing available.
15. Do you find your spouse attractive in his uniform? Yes I do. I find him attractive in and out of everything. 😉
16. Do you think military life is more advanced as civilian life? Not really no. I guess it depend on how you look at it. I have been going through military healthcare for the last couple of months and have been pretty frustrated with it. I don’t find the medical itself less advanced but I find Tricare has it’s issues. Honestly this is a hard question and not one I’m able to clearly answer at this moment.
17. Do you like the military benefits as a spouse? I don’t really use any benefits. I’m not sure what those are. I do however love the different activities on base I can go to. Like here in a few days I will be going to a painting class. A class where you come to learn to paint a specific painting and you get to keep it.
18. Do you have many military wife friends? Yes I have a few I’ve made online and I have a few I’ve made from my husbands friends on the ship. However, since I’ve only lived in San Diego a short time I have not made tons of friend.
19. Do you own military wife stuff? I have only owned 1 thing that had to do with military gear and that was a I love my sailor Navy girlfriend. I haven’t ever bought anything else.

 

Here is my military wife tag. I hope you enjoyed it! As time goes on I hope to add to my page about different military experiences I have. I also want to talk about Tricare as I have had to work with it a lot in the last two months.

Any of you military spouses out there come say hi! I love meeting new people! Heck even if you are not a military spouse I still would love for you to stop by and say Hi!

 

Talk soon,

Marena

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To Work or Not Work?

This is a question I’ve been asking not only myself but my husband on a constant basis over the last few weeks. 

We’ve been in San Diego 2 months and I still don’t have a job. Not because I don’t want to but because California is strict on their medical field requirements. 

I am a nationally certified phlebotomist and you’d think that would be enough. No state requires you to be certified they just want proof you passed the class. I on the other hand wanted to be at a higher standard so I got nationally certified. However, California and New York are two states unlike the rest. They don’t care if you’re nationally certified. They want you to be state certified specifically for their state. I find this to be ridiculous if I’m already nationally certifide why should I then get state certified for a state I may not be in very long. 

I just spent tons of money for the class and my national certificate that I don’t want to then she’ll out tons of money for a state my husband and I don’t want to stay in our whole life. Let alone the fact he’s in the military and we not even be here longer than a year. Not only do I pay for the certification California wants you to spend roughly 400$ to take a 4 day class before you can even take the certification exam. So this means I put my medical career on the hold. 

All that’s fine I’m okay with waiting till we move agin. So people might ask why not get a different job. Like Lifeguarding or being a waitress both things I am qualified to do. My answer is I’ve been a lifeguard for 10 or so years and I’m tired of it. As for being a waitress it was one of those been there done that never going back kind of jobs. 

So then came the question of do I really need to work. We are gone in 8 months roughly do I need to work for that time frame? The answe from my husband was no you don’t need to work nor do you ever have to if you don’t want to.

That bothered me. I never have to work? So I’d turn into THAT military wife that never works. Now don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with military wives staying at home. I’ve just always thought if they were staying home it’s because they had children. Not because they just didn’t have to or want to work. 

So after a long decision process and talking with my husband I decided I would look into babysitting with care.com on an occasional basis. This way I can bring in extra money to put into our save every once in a while and I can get out of the house. This also helps me feel like I’m needed as more than a cleaning person or cook. It makes me feel like I’m contributing to our finances even if it’s only a little. 

I also decided I wanted to find a place to volunteer with children so if you know of good places in San Diego with children let me know!
Now this is just our plan for California living. Every new location means a new plan of action. 

Talk soon,

Marena 

New Concept

So recently I have ordered a few things online furniture wise. What I wasn’t expecting was to have to put it together. I figures things like a table or dresser sure you would put that together. But a couch or love seat? Or even a box spring? My husband had a good laugh at this. I truly have never ordered things like this online so I wasn’t expecting something like this.

So here I am setting up my furniture. It’s a good learning experience to say the least. 🙂

Thank goodness for husbands who know what they are doing. 🙂

 

My favorite moment is to think of how my face had to look as these strange sized boxes showed up to my door.

 

Have any of you had funny moment like this?

Talk soon,

Marena

P.s. I think it’ll make it easier with moving for the military if it comes apart. Easier to travel.

Baby Time? Right Time? Compromise Time?

Getting pregnant seems to be a common conversation with my husband and I lately. I’m 21 and he is almost 23. We’ve been married for 4 months but we’ve been together for 6 years and 4 months. So we know we have tons of time before we really need to talk seriously about having a baby. That is if we look in the scope of we’re young and have time. Or the scope of it’s nice to be married a while without children.

Something we both agree on is we want to married a year to 3 years before we start trying to grow our family with a baby. We both agree we’d like to spend time married just being us. Not to mention we’ve never lived long term together. I may have been with him for 4 years while he was in the military but we’ve also never lived in a different state as our family together just us. So this gives us time to really learn how our lives will be.

Then come the compromises. How do two people compromise over when to have a baby? It was something that weighed heavy on me at first. I was sure there would be no way we’d both get what we want out of it. I’m truly not sure what made me think this. Thomas and I have spent years together and boy have we both compromised a lot. Sure some were simple probably unimportant and some were big and even life changing. Once I truly thought about this I realized we’d work it out perfectly. That we did.

We decided to spend 1 full month (I was back home with family as my mom had surgery) not either of us bringing up a baby. While this month passed we needed to think of all the things we want when it comes to having a baby. We then needed to think of the other person. What do we think the other person would want out of having a baby. From there we each needed to come up with a compromise we find reasonable. By reasonable I mean one where both partners would be happy. After all that was said and done we would share our thoughts, feelings, and our compromise. The biggest key was to really listen to what the other wanted. From there we would look at both compromises and find one final compromise we could both agree on.

For us It turned out perfectly. Where one persons compromise ended the other started. It made me feel like tying up shoes. Laces overlap themselves and come together into one cohesive knot.

Our compromises ended with this.

I want to be in the states to have our baby. I have a heart condition (non life threatening) but with my husband being in the Navy I didn’t want to risk being in an unfamiliar country. Without my family for support. My theory is if Thomas can’t be there meaning his ship is out of port I’ll be prepared enough to either be comfortable until my mom flies in or even better have her with me early. This way I’m not alone or at least not alone long. My husband wants to do special training for his job and that could require him to be out of the country. But most importantly he need to be able to move wherever the training is. The way we will know this is he is up for the training in October we will find out between March and April where we will be come October.

Our compromise works so well because in February we will start looking for new stations as Thomas is up for a new location in October. From there we agreed to put the US locations his training is being offered. Being the position he is in now he feels he has a very high chance at staying in the states (so the worry of being out of the country is less but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be there.) Then leading to it we both get what we want for us to be in the states, for him to get his training, and for us to wait at minimum a year before having our children.

Then we do have to think of the what if he has to be stationed out of the country. We both agreed 1 year is only the minimum. So we will go to a station where he will be required to be there for only a year or 2. and in the last few month of being there we’d start trying to have a baby. Then as time gets closer to coming back to the states I’ll either not be pregnant yet or in the beginning stages of pregnancy. So in turn this still meets my requirement of being in the states to have our baby.

So our 1-3 year plan really works for us.

I know I probably blabbed on way to much. If any of you stuck to the end I’d love to know if you and your partner, husband, wife, or fiance made compromises like this I’d love to hear. I always find I have enjoyed learning and some of the best ways to do so are by hearing what others have done in the same situation. Or even to hear what someone would do when they hit the same situation.

 

Talk soon,

Marena

Best and Worst Advice on Moving

Can you imagine anyone would give bad advice? Well trust me some do.

I was talking the other day to a lady about how I’m moving from Michigan to California to join my husband at the base he is stationed at me. she told me and I’ll use exact words “That is so great! I love moving it’s so easy.” I stopped short because so far moving has NOT been easy so I’m trying to figure out how in the world she thinks it’s easy. I ask and had to laugh by her answer because after she said it I understand why she thinks moving is so splendid. She told me she hires someone to pack here whole house and move it. I finally realized she A. has much more money than I realized B. I wish I could afford that and C. she is a tad nuts.

Of course if I had the money to hire someone I would. But I definitely don’t have that kind of cash hanging around. Plus I’m too OCD to let someone pack my stuff. And too grossed out thinking they’d see me unmentionables.

So that is my worst advice because it is it truly is. Most people don’t rely on others to pack. However I do know lots of people trust the help to do the actual moving part. And if done right it isn’t usually that expensive.

The best moving advise I was ever given is to pack by room and not to move to a new room till I’m done with the first. Then when the room is done write the room name on the box then leave in that room till it’s time to pack the moving van. The other advice that goes along with this is to pack like things in a box. So basically be very organized.

For me this works very well. But the only way it works is if I make sure all things are taken care of and the whole place is very clean.

Alright guys and gals I’m moving in the next few months. I’m trying to slowly send my things to the new place. My husband is there before me since it’s where he is stationed. What are some of your tips on moving?

Talk soon,

Marena

Finally a Mrs.

That’s right I’m a Mrs. I’m married!
I’M MARRIED!

How cool is that? Well let me tell you, it’s amazing. However, leading up to the momentous day it became more and more stressful and lots more exciting.

My nerves really never got the best of me and I didn’t rely cry.

But I did gain a great bid family, much more love, and a husband worth many lifetimes.

The day was amazing. Everything worked out so well. We got married at Tibbits Opera House in Coldwater, Michigan our home town. The theme was set in the 40’s and man did it fit me and my style. And it complimented Thomas very well.

And a great reception at The Eagles to follow.

Leading to the wedding a was so stressed what I envisioned wouldn’t come true but it sure did. I also made it through dishes breaking, a maid of honor asking if I really wanted her to be the maid of honor, losing a belt for my dress and lots and lots of sore feet.

I found so many people are in mine and Thomas’ life that really and truly care and that has been a great experience!

I can’t wait for more time so I can wrote a munch longer post and share many more memories of the beautiful night!

Talk soon,
Marena

Ahhh There it goes again!

I totally got busy and skipped blogging again.
Well at least my busy life and stress gets to go down now. I’m officially married! And we’re about to go on a mini honeymoon to do military dependant papers on Thomas’ base.

So I’m hoping to start up blogging again. Especially with my challenge I was supposed to start a few weeks ago. 🙂

Talk soon,
Marena