Unorganized Chaos...

Yup.
That pretty much describes the last month for me.
An oxymoron if you ask me, but this month has proved to be just a mess upon mess upon mess, so oxymorons are allowed in my book.

Where do I start....Well, let's go in order so the anticipation will slowly build up to the purpose behind my blog title.

To begin, let's start on a positive note!

My cousin, Ashleigh, and one of my dear friends I met in college, Kristen, flew out to North Carolina for a vacation. We hit up Myrtle Beach, SC and had a great time. Despite having to work around my crazy busy work schedule, we managed to get some sun, meet some new people, and make some memories. Did a tad bit of shopping, attempted every morning to get a sunrise, laid out and walked around enjoying the sun...Senor Frogs....Hard Rock Cafe.....Boardwalk...Ron Jon.....exactly what we all needed I think.  

We actually left just in time. The last day there we spent the morning laying out on the beach with one of Kristen's friends who's from the area. She texted us later once we left town saying there had been a shark attack on the beach we had been laying out at!!

Shark week def left an impression on us, literally. :)

Now let's start the snowball of crappy stuff.

I was in that car accident a couple weeks ago and although they had my car fixed, they have given me tons of crap. The last of it was when they offered me $150 for loss of value on my car....long story short we are considering our options including suing Nationwide....we'll see how that goes...

Second downer is that I had a falling out with the gym I had been going too. Needless to say I was able to get my membership cancelled without all the fees. Downside is I didn't have a backup gym in place to go to. So since then I have been doing a walk that Steph and I invented almost everyday with Hurley. I clocked it the other day at 1.7 miles, and it's on hills, so go me.

Downer #3, my iPod quit.

Well, then I went to Myrtle Beach again. LOL.

This time with the FRG ladies for the Strong Bonds Deployed Spouses Retreat. It was a weekend long and didn't hit the beach at all, but had a great time getting to know some of my fellow military wives better.

Funny enough, my father in law and his family are TCS'd in Ft. Jackson, SC and met me in Myrtle Beach for lunch so I could meet his daughters.

His name is Pete, a Chaplain Captain in the Army, and he remarried a couple years ago to a Filipino woman he met overseas, named Daisy. They have 2 year old and 7 month old little girls named Alliyah (sp?) and Katherine. They are gorgeous little girls and it was neat to be able to see them.

We don't talk to his dad or his new family much, so the fact that it worked out was really cool. To this day John has never met his new family, he has always been deployed when they've been in the area, so whenever they are around I try my best to meet up with them.

Well here goes stressful moments 4-however many....

Apparently the new trend these days is to get married and then tell everyone about it later.

This first happened with my best friend Dana, who was my college roommate and my maid of honor in my wedding. Although I am still on the mend of how much it sucked not to be able to share that moment with her, we are working past it and hopefully making our friendship stronger in the process.

Little did I know that this was preparing me for it to happen in my own family.

John's middle brother shocked us a couple months ago telling us he was engaged to this girl Brittany. John and I have never met her, so imagine our shock.

Well got another shockeroo when I got a text message from my sister in law that, sure enough, Jerrod was getting married that evening and she had just found out. Sure enough they got married and of course John, his best man, wasn't there....I guess obviously I wasn't either, but the main reason for me blowing up was cause John wasn't there.....

Well, long story short, it's not been a good situation and it's going to take some MAJOR work for some of us to get over all this and get it all sorted out. It's hard for me to not take these actions personally and it really makes John and I feel so disconnected from everyone in their lives...we feel far away from home enough already....moments like this make it seem even further.

It will work itself out. It always does somehow....

John is really the one feeling really hurt.

Maily cause he can't do anything about it. Morale has already been really crappy for the guys and adding this on top has really made him feel far away.

Luckily for me and everyone else in our lives, John is an amazing forgiving person. One of the best I know. It seems no matter how much crap people throw in that man's face he refuses to let it bring him down. I love him for it because it makes me grow as a person.

With him being like that I have gotten the mindset where I refuse, regardless of how John & I feel right now, to let something like this tear any family member's apart.

Downer #......??

Jax ate his third pair of my sandles......Sigh.....Yes, Jax is my cat (he's curled up in my lap all cute while I type this, I will have you know).

Next downer, I accidentally busted our vaccum running over a dog toy.....

Positives out of some of these situations?

I got a new iPod and it's PINK!

I completely disected our vaccum figured out the problem, replaced all the filters, and got it working again. All BY MYSELF!

It also seems these days that either everyone is getting pregnant :) or getting divorced. :(

Obviously not going to name names, but it seems to be going one extreme or another and the divorced ones are ones I never imagined. Some I know better than others, but it still is hard to watch. Especially from a distance. You want to know what's going on with them, but at the same time you don't want to come across nosy or pushy, or in their business..... ya know?

As far as the pregnant part, it's been an awesome thing to watch. Thank you Lord so much for Facebook. LOL.
As much as I hate FB sometimes, it really does allow me to see some of my friends from far away in these joyous events.
Won't lie, it's given me a bit of the baby bug which fortunately for me, John's not here, so no babies. I just go love on my animals some....
John and I were actually proactively planning to expand our family, in the human sort, LOL, here in the next year or so, but plans have changed, as they always do, so here I am getting back on the pill.
From our experience in the Army lifestyle, we have become firm believers that things happen when they are supposed to, so we aren't letting these plans be viewed as negative setbacks....just steps we are making so we can be better suited and set up for when we do start a family.
Our motto is we work now, so we can play later.
So as of right now, we aren't sure what kind of work we are going to be doing, per se, but we just know there will be a couple more years of it. :)
Of course, I am jinxing myself, so there goes nothing...............

After typing all this out it doesn't seem like such chaos....I think it's been more of the emtional of psychological drain than anything. Some of this is stuff that normally wouldn't be a big deal but I am realizing that I need John home more than I have admitted. For fixing vaccums....Lord knows I miss that man dearly, and I don't think I do a very good job of showing it.
I've had my moments, but most the time I keep myself so busy that I don't give myself time to miss him or to get emotional about it.
But when I see him on Skype or get an email, bu heart still skips a beat. :) I do miss him. TONS. Luckily I am surrounded by people that are going through the same thing so we rely on each other for that stability...as much as I don't talk about how his deployment effects me, it really does eat me up inside. There are so many things he and I work so hard for and with the morale being so low over there right now, it kills me. It makes me feel guilty for sitting home all weekend watching movies in my AC with my yummy food, hanging out with our kiddos...
If anyone asks me (and no one really does anymore anyways), I am doing fine and things are good...but inside my heart hurts a little.
Don't get me wrong, things are easier the second time around. I couldn't imagine going through the first deployment here in NC by myself.....I'd have broken a long time ago. Vaccum or not!

I am SOOOO grateful for my job, as tired as it makes me feel sometimes.
I am SOOOO grateful for my military girls and our Tuesday night dinners (this week Texas Roadhouse, Woo Hoo!!) and our random BBQ's or outings.....

Well, this was one of my first weekends since John left where I had TWO days off AND I spent them at home doing absolutely nothing.....I've watched 5 movies total thanks to Netflix (Benjamin Button, Last Song, Edge of Love, Do you hear about the Morgans, and The Pianist), caught up on my trash reality TV, bought some groceries, got my car inspection done, ate sushi, looked for plane tickets, fixed the vaccum, cleaned the kitchen top to bottom, and started "24" season 4....yes I know I watch a lot of TV, but I work a lot on the weekdays, so the weekends I catch up!

August is almost gone, so that means four months down!
November is his rumored mid tour leave, so only 3 more to go! :)