I'm Alive - and KICKING!!!

Hello, everyone! I am sorry I haven't posted in a long time. My hubby saw the blog and felt I needed to cut back on the information flow (he is much more private than I am). With that need for him to have a little more privacy, I needed time to think about how I would share what I wanted to share with giving him the privacy he needed.

With that said, I had almost two weeks of a great visit with a good friend of mine and her baby, Kelsey and Madison! It was wonderful and I will share some photos once I clear it with her. She did a FAB makeover on my drabby hair and gave me some color and a MAJOR CUT! Alexandra got a trim and a thinning of her mane (she needed that so badly).

We hung out and ate some great food and watched "It's Complicated" several times! **GREAT MOVIE and a must see**

I am back in high gear in organizing and getting stuff done around the house. We had our home built from the dirt up, and now we are in maintenance mode (which bites with John being gone and me hating that I feel everything needs to be perfect because he is SO that hubby to come home and obsess about painting needing to be done and whatnot).

The weeks are winding down in preparation for R&R. I am waiting for John to come home, I can't wait to see him and get some time alone with my Lovey. I just can't wait. This is marking the end of a long time living apart from John (4.5 years) and I am so ready for this to pass and then preparation for HOMECOMING!!!

Memorial Day was a little hard to swallow for me this year. With John being in A, I feel my heart hurting my a lot more than the first deployment. Maybe it's because I am older, maybe it's because I have more time as a wife and I hate not knowing about his job or where he is . . . maybe it's just the way it is. I don't know, but it all sucks.

I found this little write up and wanted to share it. Always feeling the need to defend what people think is a want/desire to be pitied, I found myself writing a little at the end of the original article. I refuse to be defined by my husband's job, rank, branch of service. I hate that people feel the need to define my life in those terms, but I also feel bad that they truly don't get "IT" - whatever that means in words.

Here is the original article:

The DifferenceBlabber t' yer mates
T'day upon the hour of 1:06 in the evenin'
The Difference
By Col. Steven A. Arrington (USAF Ret.)

When we consider the price the price the military pay for freedom, we need to remember the spouses. They pay a price, too. The funny thing about it is that most military spouses don't consider themselves different from other husbands and wives. Is there a difference? I think there is.

Other spouses get married and look forward to building equity in a home and putting down family roots. Military spouses get married and know they'll live in base housing or rent their homes. They must carry their roots with them, transplanting them frequently.

Other spouses decorate a home with flair and personality that can last a lifetime. When military spouses decorate their homes, their flair is tempered with the knowledge that no two base houses have the same size windows or same size rooms. Curtains have to be flexible and multiple sets are a plus. Furniture must fit like puzzle pieces.

Other spouses have living rooms that are immaculate and seldom used. Military spouses have immaculate living room/dining room combos. The coffee table got a scratch or two moving from Germany, but it still looks pretty good.

Other spouses say goodbye to their spouse for a business trip and know they won't see them for a week. They are lonely, but can survive. Military spouses say goodbye to their deploying spouse and know they won't see them for months; or for a remote, a year. They are lonely, but will survive.

Other spouses call Maytag when a washer hose blows off and then write a check for the repairman. Military spouses cut the water off and fix it themselves! (GUILTY)

Other spouses are used to saying "hello" to friends they see all the time. Military spouses get used to saying "goodbye" to friends made over the last two years.

Other spouses worry about whether their child will be class president at school next year. Military spouses worry about whether their child will be accepted in yet another new school next year, and whether that school will be the worst in the city...again.

Other spouses can count on spouse participation in special events: birthdays, anniversaries, concerts, football games, graduations, and especially the birth of a child. Military spouses only count on each other, because they realize that the flag has to come first if freedom is to survive. It has to be that way.

Other spouses put up yellow ribbons when the troops are imperiled across the globe and take them down when the troops come home. Military spouses wear yellow ribbons around their hearts - and they never take them off.

Other spouses worry about being late for Mom's Thanksgiving dinner. Military spouses worry about getting back from Japan in time for Dad's funeral.

Other spouses are touched by the television program showing an elderly lady putting a card down in front of a long, black wall that has names on it. The card simply says, "Happy birthday, sweetheart. You would have been 60 today." A military spouse is the lady with the card. And the wall is the Vietnam Memorial.

I would never say military spouses are better or worse than other spouses. But I will say there is a difference. And I will say that our country asks more of military spouses than is asked of other spouses. And I will say, without hesitation, that military spouses pay just as high a price for freedom as do their active-duty husbands and wives. Perhaps the price they pay is even higher. They do what they have to do, bound together not only by blood or friendship, but with a shared spirit whose origin is in the very essence of what love truly is. Dying in service to our country is not nearly as hard as loving someone who has died in service to our country, and having to live without them.

God bless our military spouses for all they freely give. And God bless America.

Here was my addition:

I just wanted to share this for all of the non-military peeps out there. This IS what our life is like. When you ask how we are and we are honest, it comes from a place of pride not pity. DO NOT take pity on us, as we do not take pity on your lack of service or understanding of what it means to dress up in a black dress when you are 9 months pregnant, with a deployed husband and listen to TAPS being played for a fellow wife, baby kicking in your belly and tears fall on your womb when you think of her loss and your newborn and husband who is coming home for R&R soon.

DO NOT pity the loved ones, yes, we chose this life just as you chose whatever life you live, but ours is public, yours is not. Ours is a product of Democracy, a Constitution and Bill of Rights that must be upheld in the most daunting of places when no one is watching or when CNN broadcasts it to you first. We hate the black cars we pass, praying it isn't for us and then feeling guilty when we realize it is for someone. But our family is happy to carry the burden of freedom, because freedom isn't free, but this family - my family - is strong enough to carry it. We do not carry it alone, we have family, and they are our family. Every single man and woman who serve under that flag are brothers and sisters in arms, and we are HouseHold 6, we will stand tall until they come home. We will embrace, cry, laugh, catch up on our lives and then, we will prepare to do it all over again.

HOOAH to my Lovey, Major J C McArthur, and his Army comrades and families who allow me to be a driving force in my husband's life and supportive in his career without making me part of the package deal 100% of his time at work!

OORAH to my USMC families, without you girls I would forget how strong I /amwas and the fact that the corps helped prepare me for the crazy life of an Army Officer's wife , and also how to be a KICK ASS Major's wife, thank you for teaching me that its not ok to pull rank or make others feel inadequate because they are newbies and low on the totem pole - everyone starts this way in life it's not just the military way, always remember that.

AIM HIGH for my AF families, I was raised in this life and loved it, love the people, loved the housing, thanks for allowing me to grow up under the booming sounds of B2 Bombers and after burners in the NorthernLights nights and Missile Silos

Full Speed Ahead fellow Navy families. Without you, my sister probably would have been in the Army and even more miserable than she was in the bowels of a ship working in a vault!

And finally, my NG familes. I cannot forget you all. You are the heart of my life now. You are the way I live and the reason I love where I am in life. I can finally have people relate to the fact that if my husband is deployed to new Orleans after a hurricane or Afghanistan or Iraq, the fear of harm is still there (of course, it's not the same, but it is there) and you remind me that if our men and women can wear a flag and honor it by serving overseas in our country's name, we SURE CAN ROCK IT ON OUR OWN SOIL!!! Let our citizens see what KICK BUTT people we have fighting for us and how they are here for our care also!

Thank you all, we may not all get along all of the time, but that's what families do. They have each other's back even when they want to throw a Thanksgiving Day turkey at one another!