On Easter we went to the Nashville Zoo and I took the two older boys into DinoTrek!  I wasn’t sure if it would be worth it since it cost $3 each to get in.  After hearing my oldest say it was the coolest thing ever I think it was worth it.

It was pretty cool how they had the Dinosaurs set up with sign that told you where their bones were found.  Then they had a place the kids could dig for bones in the sand.  Perfect for my Dino kids!

I was thinking this morning how thankful I am for Facebook.  I know some people have problems with Facebook but I never really have had any and it has really been a good thing the last few years.  Especially since we are a Military family and don’t live anywhere near our family and long time friends.  We also move often or our friends move often.  Facebook has helped me keep in touch.

Now if someone is a close friend and moves away it is much more likely that we will talk on the phone or write emails to each other.  I have one friend whom I text with all day long.  If I suddenly didn’t have access to Facebook anymore I would still be in touch with those people.

But what about everyone else?

What about the other Moms I met at my son’s first preschool or friends I went through deployments with or people I have met at Bible study or a playgroup?  People that touched me in one way or another.  I simply would not be able to keep in touch with all of these people.  Facebook makes it possible.  I can see pictures of their new baby.  I can hear stories of their children growing up.  We can discuss the latest movie or book or play a round of Words with Friends.

I think for me it makes the whole saying goodbye part of Military life a little easier.

Have you been able to keep in touch with people after you or they move away?  What is the easiest way for you to do that?

I am feeling pretty good about the future today. I am not sure what it is. I was reading Shannon’s blog and she made some good points about things not always working out the way we want them to work out. She is so right! I might have ideas about how I want things to work out and I might have control over some of those things but I don’t have control over everything and I need to let that go. There really is no point to worrying about things you have no control over, especially when even if they aren’t working out the way you think they should, they still tend to work out.

This morning I am feeling pretty good about the future. Whatever happens as far as the Army goes is out of my control. I can’t do anything about it so I really just need to roll with it. In the end it will all work out. I just have to believe that.

Once I take away that current stress I feel better. I feel lighter. I feel happier. I just hope I can remember to not worry about it anymore. Whatever is going to be, will be.

Summer vacation starts tomorrow and as of right now I am pretty excited about it. My oldest will be going into 1st grade and my #2 will be going into Kindergarten. I can’t believe they will both be school age kids. But this summer I hope to spend a lot of quality time with them since in the fall things will be different. I have to balance this with getting some work done which is going to be a challenge. Unlike last summer, my husband will be home other than a few weeks of field time. This will be nice. We will have the weekends to spend as a family in the summer heat.

Our California trip is officially booked and I am very excited about it. I find myself thinking about it when I should be thinking about the rest of May and June here in Tennessee. It has been too long since we have taken a real family vacation. It has been even longer since we have gone to California together. It is going to be great!

I hope you are all having a great Monday too!

Fort Campbell has a neat little fishing stream down by Gate 10.  We have been there a handful of times and always have a lot of fun.  These are from when we went in April and had a bbq with our friends.

Dear Directv,

I know you are upset that we cancelled our service with you. We would have done it sooner but you have contracts and for some silly reason I signed a two-year one back in 2010. It isn’t that I don’t like tv, I like it a lot actually. But quite honestly, we don’t want to pay for it anymore. We love Netflix. Sorry, Netflix has our heart and has for years. We get the DVDs and have instant. Netflix has almost any DVD we could want and we can usually find something good to watch on the instant version. We pay a lot less for this than we do for you. We know that you offer new tv shows, sports and the news. We know this. I usually get my news online. Very rarely will I sit and watch it on tv. It has been two months since we cancelled with you. We are very happy with this new arrangement. If I want to watch a new show I have to do it online but lets face it, I am more likely to be on my computer anyway. Your DVR service is nice but quite honestly I felt like I had to watch my shows ASAP or something bad would happen. Not sure why I always felt like that but I did. So now we are a Netflix only family and it works for us. I still get to watch my TV shows even though they are older. They are new to me though and that is what matters.

So after reading all this, can you please stop sending me, “We miss you” emails. You don’t miss me. You miss our money. And please, don’t call us about it either. If we decide we want your service again, we will contact you. Although we might just call Dish or Comcast. Who knows? And I can tell you it won’t be anytime soon.

Thanks so much!

Your previous customer!

18 months!  I can’t get over it!  It seems like he was born just a few months ago.  18 months is huge though!  It is a big milestone.  It is that point when a child becomes a total toddler.  When you start to see the little boy emerge and see the baby slowly start to get left behind.  I think because he is my last baby it feels like he shouldn’t be 18 months.  It feels like when the other two were 18 months they were older.

He is doing so much!  Trying to keep up with his brothers, saying new words and learning new things.  I really do love this age!  It is a lot of fun to watch them grow and start using new words and see how they are trying to figure out their world.

He has been my little buddy since his brothers were in school but now that it is summer, well it will be summer break in 4 days, things will be a little different around here.  Then in the fall he will really be my little buddy as both brothers will be in school full-time.  What will be great about this is that I will be able to find things for him to do and he won’t just be the little baby brother just along for the ride.

Today my little boy graduated from preschool. He is going to start Kindergarten in the fall and I am feeling a little emotional about it. It isn’t that I can’t let him go, it is that I think about how quickly the last 5.5 years went and how he is going to be starting official school soon.

Years go by so quickly, I know it will be 2025 before we know it. 2025 is when he is supposed to graduate from high school! His brother will graduate a year before him. What will life be like for us then? I think about it sometimes. If Ben decides to go career he will be close to hitting his 20 year mark. He might only have a year left! I would hope that I would be making a full-time income from home by that time. That is my dream. I am not sure where we will live. I am not sure if he will graduate from the high school we live by right now. It could be in a different state or even country.

I hope that when it is 2025 I can look back on his childhood and know he had a good one. That he will learn what he needs to and he will be able to have a pretty normal life. Well as normal of a life as a Military child can have. I worry about him and the middle school years. They are hard for any kid but to add Asperger’s on top of it, make me terrified that he will hate those years. I pray that he can make friends at every place we may live. Friends that understand him and want to be around him. I am thankful he has two brothers that will always be his friends.

We were worried about him and his preschool graduation. Even talked about skipping it. But he went and he did wonderful. I was so proud of him. He therapy has really been helping him. The other night he and his brother got into a little bit of a fight. After cooling down a bit he went up to his brother and told him sorry without being asked to do so. I thought that was huge!

I am excited about Kindergarten! I am nervous about Kindergarten! I am worried about kindergarten! I know that when we work with him on his behaviors, he learns how he should be acting in certain situations. I know it is hard for him. He has bad days and it is hard to watch. I want so badly to fully understand him but I don’t think I ever really will. He is already starting to read a little bit which is awesome! He knows pretty much what you need to know before you start Kindergarten. His big struggles next year will be social.  It might be a hard year, it might be really wonderful.  I guess we just have to wait and see how it goes.

Anyone else getting ready to send a child to kindergarten in the fall? Do you have any worries about it?

1. We had a great Mother’s Day. It was the first one Ben has been home for since 2006!  That is the Army for you.  Anyway, we went to church and then drove to Opry Mills. I love that place! I wanted to eat somewhere fun and Disneyland like. Don’t laugh but it has been three years since I have been to Disneyland and I am having withdrawals. Anyway, I knew we would have to wait a long time so we walked around the mall. We bought cupcakes and Legos and then had a late lunch. It was a great day just being with my boys, doing something fun and different from the norm.

2. I am craving the beach. I had a dream about it. I was in the water, playing in the waves, body surfing. I miss that. Sad it isn’t really apart of my life anymore. It was for my first 18 years as we lived about 20-30 minutes from the beach. I gave it up when I moved away from my parents house but sometimes I really hate that I left the beach. Maybe we can get stationed near a beach someday. Maybe we will have to wait until after the Army to live near one again. Maybe we never will and will just take vacations to the beach.

3. Waiting on my first order of Velata. I have been out of chocolate for a few days now and miss it. I have my first party in a few weeks.

4. My son graduates from preschool this week. I am praying he will do well in the ceremony. You just never know with him. I might have cried a little during the Kindergarten round-up we had last week.

5. My 7.5 year old had his first singing performance ever last week. He was really into it which was great.

6. Baby J is such a toddler now. He wants to play with his brother’s toys all the time. At least he is pretty good about putting things in his mouth but his brother’s don’t always like the attention their toys get.

7. Is it summer yet? I am ready to start sleeping in, going to the pool and splash park, spending more time outside and having more bbqs.

I am sure by now you have heard of the Time article going around the internet. Tons of bloggers have blogged about it already. The front cover of time shows a mother breastfeeding her four-year-old child with a caption that says, “Are You Mom Enough?” Now I haven’t read the article but it sure is offending a lot of people. From my understanding the article is about Attachment Parenting and Mommy wars.

Before I became a mom I did temp work. I usually sat, answered phones, did some data entry and was able to read when I didn’t have anything to do. I started reading a lot about mothering, children, parenting and childbirth. I started feel very drawn to Attachment Parenting. I loved the idea of it. It seemed to fit my personality very well. I had a ton of ideas of how I was going to raise my children. I felt very strongly about them and wasn’t going to parent any other way. I joined online forums with other people

who were parenting that way. Then in September 2004, I gave birth to my first son. That was when reality hit! You can plan, you can say you are going to do x, y and z but when a baby comes, you parent. You do what is best for your child. You do what is best for your family and sometimes that doesn’t fit in a parenting camp.  I took some time away from those online forums and books and started figuring how the best way to parent my son.

Here I was a new mom trying to figure it all out. I wanted to be that Attachment Parent. And I was in some ways. With all three boys we co-slept until about 4-5 months. It was a sweet time in my life and I will always cherish the memories of that time. It was also the only way I made it through the first few months. I breastfed all three of them too. One for 17 months, one for 9 and one for 7. I wanted to breastfeed all of them for about 18 months. That was always my personal comfort level. It didn’t happen. Life happened instead. And although my ideal was 18 months, I am still happy with how long I did breastfeed them.

I never felt comfortable letting a baby CIO. I never wanted that to be apart of my parenting and I was able to stick to that. All three of my boys starting sleeping through the night by about 9 months of age. That worked for us.

I had slings and different carriers I wore some of the time. I usually didn’t wear them at home, just when we were out. Baby J probably got worn the most because I literally needed two free hands with the other two.

I have had two natural births and 1 epidural birth. If I gave birth again I would probably go naturally. I love my stroller! Love it. It’s funny because before I had my oldest I thought I would wear him in a sling all the time and barely use it, but you know what? I loved it from the beginning.

I vaccinate my children.

I used cloth with #2 but haven’t been able to get into it with #3.

So now here I am, a mother of 7.5 years and I don’t have a parenting title anymore. I could say that I lean towards Attachment parenting but I really don’t like parenting labels. I have friends who parent similar to me and friends who don’t. As my children get older, the baby stuff becomes less and less important. I have my views and beliefs, other people have theirs. I have my ideals and then I have my reality. As a newly pregnant woman reading all about pregnancy I never in a million years thought I would be going through any step of this without my husband right by my side. I never pictured long nights alone. But that was what my reality was and I had to adjust. And I think with any mom, you have to adjust. Some of the things you say before parenthood stick and others don’t.

And when it comes down to it, I may have ways of parenting that I think are best but most Mothers out there are doing what they think is best too. And most children are going to turn out alright.

I just want to be the best mom I can be to my three boys and not worry what all the other mothers are doing.

 The three pictures in this post are all of my boys right around 18 months of age  

It is time for the The 2012 Military Spouse Appreciation Day Blog Hop! This is an exciting Blog hop for Military Spouses that takes place on Military Spouse Appreciation Day hosted by Riding the Roller Coaster and Household 6 Diva. The hop starts tomorrow at 12pm EST time!

Welcome to Soldier’s Wife, Crazy Life. I am Julie, 33 married to Ben, 36 for almost 10 years now. My husband has been in the Army 8.5 years total and I have been an Army wife for 6.5. We have three little boys, 7, 5 and 1. Our 5 year old was diagnosed with Asperger’s in January so that has been our latest challenge. We have been through three deployments and have lived at three duty stations so far. Schweinfurt, Germany, Grafenwoher, Germany and now Ft. Campbell.

I consider myself a WAHM as I am an Independent Scentsy Director, I blog and do a few other random things to earn money from home. I feel like my life is pretty crazy but that is the way it is these days.

Ben and I are both originally from California and plan to take a trip there this summer. I can’t wait!

Besides blogging and social media I love to take pictures, read a lot of books and have fun with my friends and family.

I hope to get to know some new bloggers during this hop