Originally Published April 5, 2018 by MomSoldier
“Life is all about challenges, struggles, goals, failures, and decisions. Decide to be successful. Decide to reach your goals. Decide to change your life. Be a LifeSoldier!”
-LifeSoldier © 2018
How It All Started
As part owner of our small endeavor to motivate and support all walks of life, I want to offer my two cents with a little life experience, and hopefully humor, to chronicle our family’s journey along the way. Here’s a little story of our family’s existence. There are so many great details about how we became an “us,” but I won’t bore you with absolutely everything.Here’s the run-down: My husband, Anthony, and I met in grade school, ages 8ish and 9ish. He didn’t know it at the time, (I did, obviously…ask my best friends.) but we were destined to be a couple. We never “dated” until right after Anthony’s senior year. He then went away to college while I was still in high school. It wasn’t until the latter years of college, and after, that we reconnected over somewhat (or mostly) drunken conversations at the local watering hole. Eventually, our meetings became more regular and in 2008 Anthony professed his love for me…no joke. He might not quite remember that this actually happened, but I do. That’s all that matters.
First Comes Love…
Along the way somewhere Anthony joined the Army, and was living in upstate NY. I was living with my parents and taking a year off from teaching after almost moving to England. (That’s another, somewhat-disturbing-yet-humorous-in-the-end, story.) We were finally a real couple and eventually he popped the question and I said yes…naturally.
Then comes marriage…
All of this time was spent long distance, only seeing one another every couple of months or so, and even longer when Anthony was deployed. When we got married it was March of 2011.
Then comes baby…
We built a cute little house in upstate NY, in 2012, and were expecting our first baby in March of 2013. Through all of this pregnancy Anthony was living in Georgia for work, while I was in NY. I gave birth to our daughter on my own, with support from some lovely nurses at the hospital and a friend (Shout out to Ashley V.!) who was able to make it there right as I began pushing. Anthony was able to be home for a few days and then he headed back down to Georgia for the first 3 months, or so, of our daughter’s life. Long distance again.
And then comes another baby…
A couple years later we were ready to welcome our second bundle of joy and, much to his dismay now that he looks back on it, Anthony was there to cheer me on the whole way through. Childbirth…amIright? So, it’s the summer of 2015 and we have two beautiful children, a great house with awesome neighbor-friends, and we find out we have to move within the next year.
Our Family’s Next Steps
The house goes up for sale, and showing after showing we finally get an offer and sell the house. The kids and I move to Illinois to live with my parents while Anthony goes to Arizona for a 6 month-ish career course. We were pros at this long distance thing by now…kind of. Six months turned into a little over year with some additional courses taking place, but we were looking forward to living together again in the fall of 2017…in Germany.
New Beginnings
Now, here we are in Germany! Finally together, barring the occasional week or two temporary assignments that Anthony has been given since we’ve arrived that I assume will continue throughout our time here. Even though he is the actual “soldier” in our family, I’d like to say that I have “soldiered up” more times than not to take care of our family in his absence. I’m not saying this to make him feel badly, because I know what he is doing is for our family’s future and I greatly respect and admire his sacrifices. However, as the resident MomSoldier here in our household, I feel like I have a unique, and comical (in my humble opinion) perspective on run-of-the-mill daily occurrences, toddler struggles and basic woes of “momming” 24/7.
What We Offer Here
I don’t proclaim to have a perfect writing style, and even if I proofread multiple times I’m sure there will be grammatical errors. I tend to write the way I speak, so there will be commas, semicolons and ellipses galore! Nonetheless, I hope in the coming months, and hopefully years, that I can be of some assistance and refuge to other MomSoldiers our there, even if it’s just for a giggle here and there.
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