BIG Announcements!

Almost a month has passed by since I last blogged and there has been a lot to talk about – but I sadly have just not had the time! My days have been filled with

• three extra children in my home M-F for 8 hours a day
• appointments, paperwork, and phone calls
• spending time with my hubby and children
• schoolwork
• housecleaning (or maybe the way it’s been going we should call it damage control)
• laundry
• watching the past seasons of Army Wives online (I recently found out about this show and LOVE it)
• enjoying the warm, sunny weather

At first read, this may not seem like so much that I am too busy to blog, but let me share a bit more with you…

I have two big announcements to share with you. Both are extremely life changing and exciting (and maybe a little scary).

Announcement #1 – My husband is joining the Army!

Are you surprised? This is something that has been in the works for a few months now. We decided that he should go ahead and pursue this dream about 3 or 4 months ago. For a long time I was completely opposed to the idea. I didn’t sign up to be a military wife. There is no way I could ever be strong enough to handle the separation, the worrying, the stress. But after talking about it a LOT for several weeks, and praying, we decided that the military life would be an awesome opportunity for all of us. My husband has always wanted to enlist. He took the asvab when he was 18, but missed the cutoff by a few measly points. Then he had his first child and life took over. But it is something that has always been in the back of his mind. Now is the perfect time (well, almost, but we will get to that in a minute) to make this change. We are struggling financially. We have no retirement or savings. We have no idea how we will pay for the kids to go to college someday. We haven’t had insurance for well over a year now. Life as it now stands has gotten to be pretty frustrating. We need a change. We need the means to provide a better life for our children. We need a little excitement and a change of surroundings.

So we are jumping right in! My husband passed his asvab, passed his physical, and next week signs his initial enlistment contract. Then we will be official. Then it’s time to countdown. He will have 9-10 weeks of basic training to complete, and after graduation, he will then have 6-8 weeks of AIT training for his “job”. It’s actually really great, because through a program called the Army Civilian Acquired Skills Program, he will get to use his experience as a truck driver in the Army. He also gets to start out, not at the bottom rank as most recruits do, but as an E4 (specialist). This means a higher pay grade, and a little more rank to help us through relocating, etc.

Yeah, I said relocating. After hubby finishes his 4 months of training, he will receive orders and be assigned a post to report to. This means that we will all pick up and move somewhere new and exciting! We could end up anywhere in the US that houses an Army post, or even overseas! The best part is, the Army will pay all of our moving costs AND pay each member of our family mileage to move. We could never do something like this on our own and we can’t wait to see where we end up!

Announcement #2 – We are expecting baby #5!!!

I don’t even know what to tell you about this, lol. We are firm believers in allowing God to decide how many children we will have and when we have them. We knew we definitely wanted to have another one, we just weren’t expecting it to happen right NOW. Apparently, God has other plans! I am about 4 weeks pregnant, and although that seems really early to be announcing it to the world, I just can’t help it. I am really excited, and a little scared. I am going to be alone during a big part of this pregnancy, not to mention I will likely be moving my family to another state and starting a new life. But I know the God will never give me more than I can handle, and He must have a lot of faith in me! I go to the Dr. this coming Tuesday, so I can get started on the meds I need to sustain this pregnancy. For those that don’t know my history, I had 6 miscarriages between my 2 pregnancies, and with my now 2yo son, I was on several medications to prevent the same from happening again. I have a Luteal Phase Defect which cause me to miscarry the embryo instead of it implanting properly. To treat this, my previous Dr. prescribed a progesterone supplement and I had no problems sustaining the pregnancy.

The bad part of this is that I have NO choice but to go to the Dr., and we have NO insurance coverage. For this reason, we are in a bit of a hurry to get hubby off to basic and start our benefits as soon as possible. For now, family is paying for my initial visit to the Dr. and thank GOD I have them there to do so! I would be a mess otherwise worrying about this pregnancy.

In light of all this, would you please keep our family in your prayers? There is so much going on right now, some days can be pretty overwhelming! I will do my best to keep you updated on both the pregnancy and the Army process. I hope you are having an awesome summer!

Blessings,