Motivational Monday

  I've decided that I need to be more proactive when it comes to this thing that I call a blog. Not very many people read my blog, but apparently those that do, really enjoy it. To make things a little easier on me, I'm going to start doing day related themes. Seeing as, yet again, it's Monday, I'll start here. Today is being deemed, "Motivational Monday!" *cue confetti cannons!* I know every so often we all have days where we need a little push. A push to get us up and moving or a push to just help us through the day. Whatever that push may be, I want to help be that motivation, because let's face it... if anyone needs a kick in the ass 90% of the time... it's me.
  Today I need the motivation to just be the bigger person and brush it off. I tend to have a hard time with this lately. With B. being gone, it seems like I'm always on edge. The second somebody does something to me that I'd never do to them in return, I automatically go into "Amazon woman eat their heart on a silver platter" mode. I need to not do that. I need the will power and understanding to say, "Amanda, not every body is you. Not every body values their friends the way you do. Bring it down. They will learn." I need to step back and see that people are human and they do make mistakes, but I also wonder where the line of "mistake" is exactly drawn at? Either way. My motivation for the day comes from a simple saying, "The first to apologize is the bravest. The first to forgive is the strongest. And the first to forget, is the happiest."
  I want to be that happy. I want to be able to just let it go. Let it be. Let it float away and away from me, because ain't nobody got time for that! I'm too entirely blessed with so much more happiness than I am burdened with such petty high school drama that unfortunately surrounds me and even more unfortunately, always will. Maybe it's me, maybe I have a sign somewhere that begs to be followed with nonsense, but that's fine. Today I am certain that I will rise about it all and over come and see a better tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow I won't be as confident, but I'm going to write this Motivational Monday down as a win.

Wordless Wednesday

C. Bitchler

Ash Ketchum
(Also, this was my New Years kiss this year)

She's "Allgood"
(this also happened to be new years, but 3 years ago haha)

Every storm runs out of rain

People that I do need and that need me too.

Wordless Wednesday

Before my workout (super cute obvi) My NEWEST Cricut creation (how friendly is my freaking door!?)
The best Pandora station there is (2000's Hip Hop... get it right get it tight) and
 Me after I got it right and got it...tight-ish.

Tonight.

  Tonight I miss you and I can't shake it. Most nights I can. I can tell myself that the day has passed and it's one day closer to you or that we're almost half way to being together again. Not tonight, no... not tonight. Tonight I can't help but miss your smile. Your smile that infects my entire being. Your smile that, even after almost 4 years of seeing it, still gives me that fluttery "I can't believe he's mine" feeling. Tonight I miss your hands. Your hands that can change my entire mood with a single brush of my skin. Your hands that hold mine and make me feel at ease. Tonight I miss your laugh. Your laugh that fills our entire house with happiness. Your laugh that usually comes at awful awkward times, but still manages to make me laugh as well. Tonight I miss your voice. Your voice that soothes me and calms me even when I'm at my worst. Tonight I miss you being here. I miss your hug and your touch and your kiss and just the energy you bring into my life. Tonight I miss every single thing that I love most about you, because sometimes, Skype just isn't enough. Sometimes, you just need to feel it and really feel it to feel okay. Tonight is not a good night. It's a bad one. Tonight is the kind of night that all military wives have every once in a while and that's okay. It's okay to have nights like tonight, because it's nights like tonight, when I miss you so much it hurts, that remind me why I fell in love with you in the first place. It's these little quirks and traits of yours that make waiting for you so hard and yet so worth it at the same time. 

How lucky I am to have somebody to miss so much. 

I was bred for this....wasn't I?

  It's funny how a saying can take on a whole new meaning, once it means something to you. "You'll never know how strong you are, until being strong is your only option." As of lately I've discovered that I'm goddamn Super Woman.  Since Bryce has left, I'm starting to realize and appreciate everything that he does with and for me, but more than anything I'm gaining a new appreciation for what I do every single day. It amuses me how frazzled I get during the day, because at one point in time I was THAT wife that watched other husbands leave and thought to myself and some times openly on Facebook, "Man, I wish that bitch would suck it up and stop whining, she knew what she was getting in to." False. F A L S E! You have no idea what you're in for with a deployment, until you're going through one, add kids to the mix and it's borderline hell. Add 2+ kids that aren't yours 6 days a week and I'm pretty sure people will start classifying you as a bat shit crazy lady. That's where I'm at now. Yes, he only left last week. YES, I am still adjusting. YES, I know I do my fair share of complaining about how hard it is, but it's mainly because for whatever reason, I expect more of myself.

As the title suggests, I feel like I was almost bred for this. All I've known my entire life is the military. This IS my normal. I get a lot of, "Oh well your dad is a Marine (OOH RAH!) (almost 20 years) (something else I want to include that's relevant) You're used to this right?" No. No, I'm not. Wanna know why? Of course you do. In the almost 20 years that my dad has been enlisted, he's never deployed. That's pretty much unheard of, but that's my dad for you. I went into this marriage with the delusional pretense that I would be just as lucky as my mom was. What I obviously over looked is I might as well have been born on Friday the 13th, under a ladder, while a black cat walked in front of my mother's vagina and I shatter a mirror or 12 on the way out. What I'm getting at is, I'm not used to this, BUT I am GETTING used to it. It's all a matter or getting in the swing of just being you again and while I miss Bryce very much and the first two days were very hard, I'm pretty proud of myself so far. I can only imagine how awesome I'm going to feel about 6 months down the road. I just wish I'd let myself just take all of this in and not feel bad for being generally sad about the whole thing. I find myself being really hard on me and saying, "Are you seriously STILL crying about this? It's been a week... get over it!!" Needless to say, I have some seriously talking that I need to do with me, because that bitch, is not being nice. She's being kind of a bully and NOBODY LIKE A BULLY AMANDA! Sheesh.

 So far I've just a mile long list of things/goals I'd like to accomplish while he's off saving Africa from Kony (no he's not really doing that, but I find it amusing... deal with it). I'm planning on making a game out of saving as much money as I can to help fund our Disneyland/Wizarding World of Harry Potter trip for when he's home. Not to mention we're still very much planning on hitting up Mexico too. OW OW! I'd also like to lose like.... 15 poundsish, because who doesn't want to give their husband a super model to come home to!? Other than those, really it's just fixing little things around the house and finding things to keep myself as busy as humanly possible so that at the end of the day I have no time to dwell on him not being here and I can just pass out. Right now being consumed in bow making it helping, you wouldn't believe the amount of bows I've had to make every night! When they say (who the hell are "THEY" exactly and how do they know all this stuff?) there's no business like bow business, they were right!!! I'm also working on some pretty freaking bitchin' deployment blocks to help Lily Pops count down, once I finish those bad boys, you can bet your sweet blog reading asses I'll having a million pictures up. THEN on top of all of that, I only have one spot left open in my daycare. Talk about freaking busy! How anyone wants any more than two kids is beyond me. Those of you with more, you have me convinced you're either a saint or a nut. . . or a nutty saint?I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with that one haha.

  I will say that I'm overwhelmed with the amount of support and love and kind words that have came my way since Bryce left and even before. I really am so lucky to live in a community of such supportive and genuine military wives that want nothing more that to let me know that no matter what I need, even if it's just to cry, they're there to listen and to help and to offer me words of encouragement and advice. It's amazing. That doesn't even include everyone that isn't affiliated with the military that has offered to help and just be there. I think I cried more from being so happy to see how awesome my support system is, than I did when Bryce left. My heart is feeling super happy because of it and it's a feeling that is so welcomed in my life at this point in time.
  Well that's all for this time y'all! We're going to the pumpkin patch soon, so be ready for that! Not to mention, since it's fall and all, I s'pose it's time to make ANOTHER fall bucket list! Thanks for reading and thank you to everyone that has supported me through everything that has went on this past year, you cannot begin to imagine how important to me your kind words and well wishes really are, I don't and never will take them for granted. You're awesome.

-Amanda

Words of truth. 

Sunday Funday

Hello blog readers! It's Sunday, which is typically the day I plan out the daycare activities for the week and today is no different. This won't be very long, because it's a Harry Potter weekend on ABC family and I have a lot of rearranging to do, BUT I may or may not have went a little daycare shopping crazy today. I keep seeing awesome sensory bag tutorials on pinterest (color you surprised? nope, you're totally aware of my obsession) and I decided Emory and Nevaeh needed to be the proud baby owners of one of their very own. It's a very very very fantastic sensory tool especially for little babies. The basic gist of the bag is to give them different textures to feel while making it pretty and squishy. All you have to do to make your own is grab a gallon freezer bag, two bottles of hair gel (I mixed clear and blue because it gave it some color), whatever knick knacks you want to add to it for texture and some duct tape to give it a little color. Make sure the knick knacks that you use aren't sharp though, because it could possibly rip the bag and who wants to deal with that goopy gooey mess? Not I, that's who. Just throw all of it into the gallon bag and duct tape around the edges and you have yourself a super awesome, super entertaining sensory bag!! CAN I GET A WOOT!?! Thank you. I basically just grabbed whatever I could find in at the dollar tree and I really like the way it turned out and so does Emmy Mae. I mean, honestly, I think I like to squish it around as much as she does. I'm sure that

Check out those super awesome bouncy balls!!

surprises nobody though, right? Another awesome daycare discovery of mine is a play plastic mirror that my girls just SUPER love. I lay it on the floor and I swear that they don't leave that spot for an hour. They either means I'm awesome for figuring it out or they're really vain. I might be leaning more towards vain, because let's face it... they are my kids. It's a super great recognition tool for Emory and Nevaeh as far as learning their faces and features. I'm super proud of my level of awesome daycare providerness lately. I seriously super love this job and I think it's setting me up to succeed at potentially homeschooling Emory and Lily when the time comes. Speaking of which, guess who is going to preschool come fall!? LILY!! On Friday we're going to sign her up and pay the semester fee and then I'm gonna sit in my living room in my rocking chair in an old robe, eating ice cream and crying because my little Lily isn't so little any more. It seems like I go in circles with that one, eh? I guess I'm never going to accept that she's getting bigger. She'll be 30 years old with a family of her own and I'll still be trying to hold her hand to cross the road or something insane like that.
  What with her being a big kid and not, today we made the leap into the world of responsibility and bought her a chore chart. I had to sit her down and explain to her that the whole family relies on each other to function like a well oiled machine and even though she's little, she has to be a part of the team now and set an example for her little sister. She was SO excited about it. We picked out her chores together and she's even completed two of them already. Mind you, they're things we do every single day together anyways, but you gotta start somewhere right? Right. I think we're going to set up some kind of reward system with her as well. We were thinking a nickel for each chore and then using that money to teach her the responsibility of not only saving money, but donating to help others as well. It's never too early to start her off right and hopefully that will rub off on to Emory as well.

MOM! WHO IS THAT BABY!?!

Alright blogger world, it is time for me to get my activities all together for tomorrow. I have PCS care to do for the cutest little 3 year old ever and I wanna have some fun while I have more than just Lily. Hello finger and sponge painting!! Wish me lucky and pray for my patience. Goodnight and have an excellent Monday y'all.

-Amanda

Almost wordless Wednesday

HAPPY 4th Y'ALL!! (I couldn't do the 4th in white, so we're changing America's colors to red, black and blue. Keepin' it classy. no big deal.)


Two things. I found this picture of this person that couldn't possibly be me, because check that sweet stache... oh and that sweet hair. NOPE NO WAY THAT'S ME!.... or is it.... DUN DUN DUN!

All I know is that's one good lookin' bro dude in those Besty Johnson specs. Hanging out in that SWEET craft closet with that hot pink kitty cat. I'd totes hit that. . . Looks like that person dyed their hair black too!! OW OW!! Man I wish I were that cool. . . . I'm so lame. ALSO! My MO FRUCKIN SWEET ASS HARRY POTTER SHIRT SHIPPED TODAY!!! AHHHHHH!!! I srsly cannot wait to have my hands and body all over that thing. 

So beyond cool right? Fuckin' a right it is! Alright, that's all for ALMOST wordless Wednesday. Be safe and GOD BLESS 'MERICA!!!! and your heart, god bless that too ya heathens.  

Runnin shit since 1776