Finding My Footing

OK. so it has been a few weeks since we dropped our son off at college and I am slowly but surely finding my footing. It's amazing how much of my time I find myself having these days. My house is always cleaner, there isn't as much laundry or dirty dishes. And not that I minded taking care of those things, it did take up a lot of time. My husband is so supportive. He is like, work, don't work, just be happy. I have been able to talk to him when I am feeling off, like how our house feels a bit cold, and not home like----yet. We need to get things up around our house to make it our home. It's easy in our lifestyle to sometimes get a "squatters" attitude. You know the feeling, "I'm not sure how long we'll be here so why bother?". We have done that before, and really it wasn't the way we should have approached things. It is always better to make your house your home and put things up that make you smile no matter how long your going to be there. I have a lot of reasons to be happy and I am happy, just feeling a bit off my game but I am slowly getting my footing. This past week I was attending training because the SgtMaj is unmarried so he asked me to fill a billet on the Family Readiness Command Team and I accepted. It's a volunteer position but I was going to volunteer regardless so what a great way to be a big part and make a difference than this right! The training was OK, you know how it goes, too much time and could have been shorter but it was just nice to get out, meet some of the other wives and start networking for next year when our guys are forward and I already have people I know here. Next month I am going to sign up for CAX LINKS, which is LINKS training (for the none Marines this is part of our volunteer track training) that is not a classroom traditional links but an actual go out in the field with the Marines and play with all their toys while learning Links! I am so excited, the space is limited but I really hope I get to go. I really do hope to find a job but jobs here are not easy to come by so I will keep looking and until then I will do what I can to stay busy. I am going up to see our son end of September for a family weekend and we are going to a football game, so I am stoked about that..GO ASU! Well until next time folks, hope you enjoy your holiday weekend and all my east coast friends and family, hope you get one day of sunshine...dang Earl.

Mil-Spouse Blog Hop

OK I am joining in..thanks to


I have been reading some of the fantastic blogs and I am joining the parade. How fun.
So here is a little about me;

My name is Heidi and you can find me on line as usmcwife8999. I am a proud wife of an outstanding Marine. I have been around the military my whole life pretty much. My father was a U.S. Marine and he was killed in action in Vietnam when I was an infant. This is him

So as you can see my love of a man in uniform is kind of in my DNA. My sister married a Marine and so did I, imagine that!
My life started out in Philadelphia but the Marine Corps has taken me all over the planet. I met my husband in college, I knew he wanted to be a Marine and believe it or not it kinda put me off at first because I watched my sister go through endless deployments and raising her kids by herself for the most part and wasn't sure I wanted that for myself. But as you all know the heart wants what the heart wants and we ended up together. I love that I knew my husband before he went to boot camp and was part of his whole transition to a Marine. He is a fantastic father and husband and I couldn't be more proud of him as a man. My son, our pride and joy is truly a child of the world. He has lived so many places and it has shaped him into such a wonderful multi-cultural child and has such great adventures from living in Japan, Spain and West Africa. He is on his way to University this fall to ROTC w/Marine Option. It will be fun watching his transition to a Marine as well. My guys





So a little about me, funny how we always end up bragging about our loved ones first..oh well. We are currently in the process of PCS'ing. I started my blog as a way to get my thoughts out on all the major changes happening in our lives. Selling our house (check), moving cross country (soon) and son going off to college (too soon). It has been a wonderfully cathartic. My husbands last deployment (well not last but last to date) was extremely stressful and eye-opening for many reasons I will not go into here but I needed my blog to just vent about everything. I love our life in the Marine Corps community, I wouldn't change any of it. Yes, multiple deployments have been hard but everyone (for the most part) is doing it and we aren't special so we just deal with it. As people say it isn't the quantity of time you spend together but the quality and we are very aware of our time together as being precious. I look forward to the day when my husband is no longer sent away to war, but I will continue to support him every time he does. I have taken time after getting laid off in September of 2008 to finish my degree..and I have finally finished! I am proud of myself but looking forward to getting back to work. I enjoy being home but with my son about to graduate and no more classes on the horizon it is time to go back to the work force. I love to exercise which goes hand in hand with loving to eat...but I don't cook. I mean I don't "cook" fancy, which I may change soon, thinking cooking classes on my horizon. It isn't very Italian of me to not be a good cook.
So that is "us" in a nutshell..you can read my blog and find out more details about me and my family. Oh ya..can't forget our "fur Babies..Shin and Chicks...our dog and cat respectfully. They are also world travelers but still can't seem to get them to the vet without them throwing fits...lol so have a great day everyone and I look forward to reading all about your adventures in this crazy, unique, rewarding Military life we all co-habitat.

Thankful Thursday

Sometimes in life things don't actually go your way, and I get that. For those of you that are interested, as I blogged recently our house is under contract. Well recent events have led us to believe that the contract may be voided due to poor preperation on part of the buyers realtor and inaction by the buyer herself. It is a long and complicated story and I really don't want to bother you all with the details but I can tell you by tomorrow we should hopefully have closure on this one way or the other.
So of course this is really stressing me out but I decided to try to focus on the things that are really good in our life, and there is a lot we are happy about. We have a great kid, he's pulling straight A's in his Senior year, he was picked as an outstanding Senior (20 out of about 200 students) and there seems to be no signs of senioritis setting in. We were able to get the whole G.I. Bill fiasco fixed so all of hubs benefits were indeed transferred over and that took a huge weight off our shoulders.
When we initially entered this contract we entertained the initial request of being out of the house by 1 April (today). In order to do that we would have had to sign a 3 month lease at an apartment where we were going to live until PCS time. I think it was smart to wait, and now because of that decision we really have no financial obilgations incurred from the contract if it were to be voided. We did have the inspections but they were all at the buyers expense and we did spend some money correcting some things but those things would have been identified regardless and now if the contract falls through we will have a much better inspection on next go round.
We are really lucky in so many ways so to spend too much time feeling sorry for ourselves is silly I think it would be better to focus on these great things and we have a lot..we are happy, I have a husband that I love more today than I did over 16 years ago when we decided to really do this life together..as a team and we do it well.
Also, before I go..we have a secret to a very happy life..and that is this;
Only one of us gets to be crazy at a time...
Thanks to all that support us everyday and send good thoughts our way. I will surely let you all know how this all turns out..
stay tuned