Hope

The majority of June has been really rough for me. Travis left for his two week military training at the beginning of the month, and depression hit me hard this go around. I became a recluse while he was gone, not leaving the house to even get the mail from the mailbox. The only time I stepped outside was to go to my karate classes in the evenings...Thank heavens for karate! I let myself go, let the house and yard go, and barely took care of the kids. I ate nothing but junk (gaining 10-15 lbs as a result), stayed up way to late watching shows on netflix, didn't do ANY cleaning, resulting in a very stinky house, didn't water or weed my flowerbeds which were my babies before, and stuck the kids in front of movies all day. The ugliness of depression was all around and was abounding. It got so bad that I had suicidal thoughts, freaked me out enough to at least let Travis know how badly I was doing. I hit rock bottom, and couldn't seem to find my way up.

I am very blessed to have amazing people in my life who see me at my worst, and love me anyways. Because of these sweet angels, I made it through the time Travis was away. When Travis got back, everything felt better, at least for the first few days. And then the realization and guilt of how much I neglected EVERYTHING while he was away hit. And although I had my up days, the depression still lingered.

I had a rough day yesterday...I didn't feel like going to church, so I didn't go, and then I beat myself up all day about it. But this morning I woke up feeling a sense of hope! It's a new day, and I have the ability to make it a great day. AND June is over!! Tomorrow is a new month, and I am going to make it a whole lot better than June!

Insomnia

Karsen came upstairs crying around 2:45 a.m., so I got him settled on the floor by our bed, and then climbed back in bed to get some more slumber...it is now 3:15, and I have realized that sleep is eluding me. As I lay in bed, I kept thinking about my blog and how its time to start documenting our life again! I recently read a list of things successful people do, that really caused me to think, and one item on the list was writing in their journal daily. I don't care so much about worldly success, but I do want to be the best version of myself, and I know that journaling is very important. Over the next little while, I plan to go back and document the last two and a half years of our lives, and try once again to blog daily! Wish me luck...here we go!!! But for right now, I'm going to try to get some sleep!!

Kid Talk

Just thought that I'd share a funny little conversation I had with Parker.

Mommy: "Parker, I think you are pretty cute!"

Parker: "No, I'm AWESOME!!"

Mommy: "Oh ok!!"

Parker: "Chloee is cute, I'm Awesome!"

There you have it!!!
I'm glad that he thinks he's awesome!!

True Love

I am SO in love with this little sweetheart!!!!!

It is kind of ironic because I was the least excited during this last pregnancy about having a baby, but now that Karsen is here, he is my favorite baby out of the three. Just to make it clear, he is NOT my favorite child, I love all three equally, but at the newborn stage he has been my favorite for several reasons. He hardly ever cries, he is so snuggly and cute, and overall has just been a really easy baby, so I have been able to enjoy him more, and have been stressed out a lot less!! The fact that I am not breastfeeding is also a big factor, but that is a topic for another post!!

Veteran's Day

I am so grateful for all of the military men and women who put their lives on the line to protect our freedoms and way of life. I am so proud to be an American and love this country that we live in. I am especially grateful for my soldier, for his hard work and dedication. Travis is a great man, and I am so proud of him for his willingness to serve in the military.

So on this Veteran's Day I want to say a big THANK YOU to all of the soldiers out there, including my very own!

Photo Shoot

The other day I did a little photo shoot of Karsen so that I would have a picture of him to hang on the wall. What do you think?

This is my absolute favorite one!! I LOVE it!

This is the one we chose to hang on our wall. Just precious!

Update

I've realized recently that I am not a very good blogger while I'm pregnant for some reason! I have written more blog posts in the past two weeks since I've had Karsen then I did during all of my pregnancy. Anyways, I figured that I'd better write an update on our lives for my own records! For those of you who didn't hear, Travis did NOT get deployed after all! They told them that they would be getting deployed in a year instead, which was very frustrating. We were happy that Travis would be around, but we were not looking forward to the year of anticipation and preparation again. We had accepted the fact that we would be separated for a year and were ready. But there wasn't anything to be done except to accept whatever came!

Well fast forward a couple of months to October 29th, Travis' drill weekend, and we found out that now the plan is that they will be getting deployed in January. Life is crazy I tell ya! So there is a 95% chance that Travis will be leaving in January to go to Fort Hood, TX for a few months of training, and then will be shipped off to Afghanistan in May. We are ok with this news, and are very grateful that Travis could be around for Karsen's birth and the first few months of his life. Leaving in January is much better timing than leaving in September would have been.

On to more exciting news, Travis got promoted with the military!! He is now a Specialist!! I was able to be there when he got promoted to put his rank on his uniform, which was a good experience! They have a little ritual with promotions where the spouse removes the old rank and replaces it with the new rank, and then punches the soldier as hard as they can in the chest! So I got to slug Travis in front of his whole company, which was pretty fun!!! I look forward to future promotions, just so I can punch him again!!! (I am really not as violent or abusive as I may seem! Travis is amazing and doesn't deserve to be hit, but traditions are fun!!)

Well that's what has been going on with our family!