2/365

Nothing like a little indoor window frost to welcome you to the North Country!

Project 365 Kickoff

So I have a confession to make:

Most years I see New Year's resolutions as pointless. In my way of thinking I was sitting down at least monthly or weekly to evaluate my life and my goals and was making goals at that frequency. 

It has been a good long while since I have sat and done that. 

So this year I see New Year's resolutions as a chance to recommit myself to self improvement and I am making a few resolutions. 

1. To keep a journal every day 
1. If I blog about my day that counts, otherwise I am using my favorite journal and want to fill it up by the end of the year. Then I will have an excuse to buy a new journal. I love journals! 
2. To improve my photography skills
1. Project 365 
2. Online class in January
3. Possibly take online course through the Art Institute online... that one's still a maybe 
3. To improve my relationships 
1. Not miss sending birthday wishes to a single family member (parents and siblings, I wish I were organized enough for cousins and everything. Maybe after I master sending them to parents and siblings:) )

With all that said, this is where I will be posting my photos for Project 365. I am excited to see if I can improve my skills with shooting manually and doing minor editing. 

So here is the first photo of the year, my gorgeous smiley daughter playing with her Christmas dolly. She has just started cheesing it up for photos and I am loving it!! 

I used Gimp (a free editing software) for this photo. It's still a little over my head, but hopefully this will help me get better at it! 

Growing Pains

The last little while for our family has been extremely busy and full of change. We have moved from one side of the US to the other and we didn't have housing when we got here. Once we finally found housing it has been an adventure to get unpacked and settled. Throughout all of it I have been having some growing pains. I am learning the reality of my roles as a wife and mother. It is a good reality. It is a blessed life. But sometimes I still have growing pains when I have to learn more about the realities of what I am called to do in my position.

Today I was blog hopping and I ran across a wonderful article that reminded me of how wonderful it is to be a mother. I try so hard to enjoy every minute of my life, and in all honesty I think that I do pretty well. If it makes any sense at all, that's why I sometimes get growing pains, because I love being with my daughter, I love serving my husband and I don't understand why I should be having a hard time with loneliness or tiredness when I am living the life of my dreams. 

As I was reading through the article Motherhood- The Highest Service of Order I was filled with a love and an understanding about my position. It is no different than many other women that have gone before me. It's just not quite as publicized in the news or media. And I realized today that maybe that's the thing, maybe I need to be more actively searching to surround myself with a community (online or otherwise) of women who know what I am going through. 

Not only that, but there is this wonderful online community of mothers who are not only in my position of being a stay at home mother and wife and so I can relate to them in that aspect, but they also have my same beliefs. What a wonderful thing to be able to connect with what someone is saying because you too are grateful for a Savior who has died for each and everyone of us. What a blessing to have guidance from a loving Heavenly Father by prophets and apostles that are here on the earth. They truly have words that speak to exactly what I need to hear in my times of need. 

I am so grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ in my life. It truly is what I draw from during hard times in my life and for that I am forever grateful.

In my blog hopping another thing that was comforting to me today was a link to this video:

I hope that by sharing these things at least one other person can be comforted like I was. The Lord knows us and he knows our trials and he sends angels to guard and comfort us. How blessed are we!!

Click it up a Notch July Contest

I have decided to try to learn photography. My hubby got me a fabulous camera for Christmas and I have been dabbling here and there, but I finally am trying my hand at shooting manually and I love the results SO much more! 

This was one of my favorite pictures that I took in July.  It was for graduation pictures for my younger sister.

Newton's Law Of Stay at Home Mothering

An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

So, this morning I had an "ah-ha" moment. One of those "ah-ha" moments that you are sure that every other parent knows, but you finally found out how to put it in words. 

 It was 9:00 and I had already: done two loads of laundry, vacuumed, fed the baby, played with the baby, entertained the baby, put the baby down for a nap, unloaded and loaded the dishwasher, wiped down the table and counters, spot cleaned the carpet, exercised for an hour and was starting to take a shower when I stopped and thought, "holy crap this is an unusually productive day."  

 The background on this is that the last little bit I have been struggling with finding a purpose. Now I hate even putting that into words because I love being a mother. I love playing with my baby girl and teaching her and seeing her progress. But I cannot live my life revolving around my kids. I mean I could, but I don't want to lose myself in that endeavor. I personally enjoy parenting so much more when I have a good break from it to be able to better myself. So I have been struggling with days that I just can't seem to get the umph to get anything done. I mean, why clean the house, I am in the army, not near family so no one is going to see it. (I'll  tell you why, I become a monster - I mean totally frustrated and  on edge when my house isn't clean) Why organize because we are moving in a month anyways what's the point. I really was just in a funk. I would try to be productive in the morning but I would wake up at the same time as Kaela and I would watch her play, feed her breakfast and wait to get anything done until she was down for her morning nap. But then when her nap rolled around all I really wanted to do was eat breakfast and watch a show or relax after having chased her around. 

This morning I woke up and just started cleaning and made to do lists and let Kaela play around like she would have done otherwise and took moments to play and laugh with her. That's when I realized..... An object (me a mother) in motion (waking up and starting to do wife and personal things) stays in motion (I don't have any problems getting too exhausted to get a good amount of things done.)

This really sounds like it might be oh so common sense, but it was my "ah-ha" moment so don't make fun! Plus, if I write it down it will help me next time I get the "need-proof-that-I-am-progressing- mothering-blues"

You Are Okay!

Here is another subject that I had been thinking about a lot lately when I ran across this article. It's hard being a new mom. I mean to start with, we are female which means that one of our innate characteristics is that we will compare ourselves with every other mother who has ever lived. Correction, we will unfairly compare other's best talents with our worst or vice versa.

Why do we do that?

I have to admit, I have had issues with that. To clear things up, this blog is primarily for my benefit. If I make specific suggestions on how to run a house or parent children it is mainly for me to remember with future children what worked for me. Please do not feel like I am saying that is the only way that cleaning or mothering or anything else can or should be done. If there is anything that I have learned with becoming a mother it's this: there are a billion right ways to raise a happy healthy child. There are so many great ideas and great ways to parent. Just do what you know best and what works best for you and your child(ren). That is my main goal. To find what works best for me. 

I loved this article because I am the sort of person who loves to listen to people. I love to hear what worked for other people as they started out becoming parents. I am happy to accept advice. The problem with that is that at times I take other people's advice as doctrine. As though if I am not doing exactly what they did I am 100% wrong. (I loved math, there was always a wrong answer and a right answer. I could get 100% of the problems right if I just found that right answer) In fact, the other day I lamented to Russ that there were parenting choices that other parents had made with such and such kid and I had tried and they didn't work with our daughter. He sweetly reminded me, "Kaela isn't him, just because that worked for them doesn't mean it will work for you."

I tell you what, parenting is so much fun. Those moments, I mean those fleeting ones that you prepare for and then they fly by. Like you spend all this time to make dinner so that you have a few moments to smile with your family and start into your baby's eyes and just enjoy who they are. The times they do things like pee all over the bathroom floor while waiting for a bath and you should be so annoyed but all you can do is laugh because it's not like they meant to. Those moments are what parenting is about. Yeah there are things that is hard about parenting, but I feel like I make it infinitely harder when I worry about what other people do that I am not doing.

Here's the thing: I am a good parent. I am still constantly learning, but I am so much more confident at being a mom then I was even just a few months ago. The biggest thing is that I am doing my best. Just like any other parent in the world. That's what matters, just do your best.  

I'm in the Army now

So I have read a few blog posts lately that rang so true to life as an Army wife that I just had to unload my thoughts here.

First I read this one and I agreed with parts of it and understood that since we are only in training there are parts of it that I fundamentally cannot understand until I have really "experienced" the Army. I am constantly amazed at the strength of the women that I am surrounded by. A woman with four children who was induced with the fourth so the husband could be there for the birth before he was deployed. Women who have traveled the world with children and husband in tow to be a support system -- arguably the main support system -- for a husband whom she loves very much. Women who deal with sick or injured children with no husband. Women who are very much capable to run a house 100% on their own because they have done it before and will do it again when the next deployment comes. All of these amazing examples of strength are surrounding me and all of the sudden I turn around and realize that I am one of them. I am an Army spouse. There is nothing different I do in life then any other person in my situation would do, it's just the life we have chosen and we have chosen to love it. I didn't choose to move across country 37 weeks pregnant with my first child. It happened and I lived through it. Who in this world doesn't have a story?! No one.

I have a mother-in-law who has 5 children and moved 11 times in the first 11 years of her marriage. I have a mother who had a child who requires care 24/7 for the past 23 years. Really, can I just say it: Women are amazing!

I guess the kicker that made me start to think about my situation was the other day when I booked tickets and had a blonde moment and didn't double check the day so I will be coming home the day of my wedding anniversary. I am going home for a wedding, but due to army training my husband can't come with me. The timing of the wedding means that he will miss the first birthday of our daughter. I cried when I realized I made a simple mistake to miss part of our anniversary when there will be other important days he will have no option to be a part of due to deployments. I had a moment of trying to figure out who I could pass the blame onto until I talked to my husband. He told me, "that's perfect, you didn't want to travel on the Sabbath anyway. Besides I wouldn't be able to get out of work that day so we wouldn't be able to do anything till the evening anyway." He is such a strength through this whole Army experience! 


I talked to a good friend today about deployments and she opened my eyes to what I need to be prepared for during deployments. She said the hardest thing for her was that you have to realize that emotionally your relationship with your husband cannot stay the same. You can't unload your problems to someone who is fighting for our country without distracting them and making them worry about home. You have to find people to be that emotional "go-to" person. In thinking about it more it made me realize how grateful I am for the knowledge that Russ and I will be together forever. If I didn't know that there was more to life after this I could not have allowed my family to join the Army. 


I guess the two things that the "ticket fiasco of 2012" has taught me is that 1) my priorities have just been strengthened - I need to find every way possible to celebrate and be with my husband and children whenever possible because that will not always be a possibility. And 2) My new frame of mind (I may have to remind myself at times) is that the times when we are able to be together for birthdays and holidays and anniversaries are the blessings, not necessarily the norm. My husband handled it all so well that it made me realize if I didn't change my frame of mind I would only make it harder on myself. 


I love the Army life. Where else would I meet so many amazing people and have such wonderful experiences. I guess because the friendships are so deep and the life is really so good it has to be balanced with a little struggles and pain in there somewhere. But the ironic thing is when we struggle we will have those good Army wife friends that have been there that we can turn to and in turn we will just strengthen those lasting friendships. Which in turn makes it harder to be stationed somewhere new, but a new location is just more opportunities for friends. It really is such a good life!!