It never gets easy

Well it is officially here, the deployment that is.  This hit the news yesterday so I can now officially say that the Ike to deploy is here.  The ship is going out for a long time this time around.  We are hoping/praying that Jay's hard copy orders, he has the verbal ones, will be sending him home before Christmas.  He could come home any time between Oct. and Jan. of next year.  I just don't want to go through another Christmas without him again.  The one time was bad enough for me.  It is already hard on both him and I that he's missing the kids (both Kaden and Annabelle) first day of school, Annabelle's birthday and Catlin's first birthday.  Not to mention all of the holidays between now and then.  We this weekend and Monday before we say bye.  Jay got the unfortunate luck of having his last duty day be the very day before they deploy.  So farewells are never easy, and this one seems just that much harder. 

Deployment #4 here we go...

Settling in

It has been a crazy few months since my last post.  Moving was crazy, especially since Jay was literally home long enough to move us into the house before being gone out to sea once again.  Yeah the packing and unpacking was done all by me all while taking care of the kids, getting Kaden set up in his new school and adjusting to the large amount of space we now have.  Jay's been home for a few weeks now and it has been a non-stop whirlwind of house projects.  We got most of the main floor painted and it looks fantastic.  Sadly the rest will have to wait until next year when Jay is FINALLY on shore duty.  6 years of sea duty is almost over and neither one of us can wait.  So here is a little preview of what we've been up to:

Our den- the quiet area of the house

My in laws came out for a visit and with their help we got our 2 raspberry bushes, 2 blackberry bushes, honey crisp apple tree and peach tree all planted.

The peach tree

Honey Crisp Apple tree

My kitchen!

We're slowly getting things done, and the way we want them to look.  It was a huge help having my in laws here for a visit (that will be a later post) and we got so much accomplished while they were here.

Moving!

We are moving!!  And no it's not because of orders this time.  We bought a house, and the timing of it all was almost perfect.  For those who are not in this area, a few months back the local news started covering a nasty story about military housing in the area.  Mold.  And for once the issues of the families were being taken seriously.  You see, housing is contracted out and unfortunately the contractors could really care less at how well they maintain these places.  Or they didn't until the news got ahold of what the families, ours included, deal with.  A lot of the housing in this area have issues with mold, and it isn't just a little mold either.  It is a lot of mold.  To give you a good example, this is exactly what we've been dealing with since about 2 months after we moved in.

The kids bathroom toliet clogs easily.  This resulted in the toliet cloging and then flooding the bathroom every month or so.  We'd call maintence to come fix it and I'd express my concerns about mold only to be told "We'll worry about that after you move out."  This very issue comes up all the time with this bathroom.  Well with how bad it floods the wall in our kitchen would leak from the celing (bathroom is right above it) causing our kitchen wall to now be turing a green color.  Nothing was really getting resolved with this issue until both housing and the navy had to be forced to thanks to the news story.  We had a mold inspection done in Jan. and BAM we have a very bad issue of mold.  We don't know how bad it is, only that we have mold.

While we've been waiting to hear what was going to happen with our mold inspection and the results of the tests they sent out Jay felt we should start to look for a house.  So we started that process and while Jay was out to sea for a underway recently I went house hunting and found a great nice house for us.  We put in an offer and it was accepted.  We I did the home inspection and all of the paperwork before Jay returned last week.  We move in next weekend.  It is exciting/terrifying to be doing this but while all of this has been going on we are learning just why Jay felt we needed to do this.  Last week about 5 contractors and the manager of our local housing area came by to do a walk through on exactly what will be done to fix the damage caused by the mold.  Yeah if we were staying here we'd have been forced to move into a hotel for who knows how long while they work on the repairs.  The mold is that bad.  Granted I could have told them that months years ago, but they just didn't care.  This move is a good thing for us. 

I'll be moving out of a drama filled neighborhood where I'm basically an outcast because I am not like my neighbors.  I don't really fit in, especially since we're the only ones who are religious at all, which only makes things worse for me with the ladies.  We know this is the right thing for us to do, even though we don't fully understand the why.  So here is to moving into our very first home.  It's a bit of a fixer upper, but we'll turn that around in no time at all.  Or at least we'll do what we can before Jay deploys this summer.  Yeah, round 4 of the deployments is coming up too.  So here is to our new house:

PTS...not an issue

This week has been interesting to say the least.  Jay found out that he didn't even have to do PTS this time.  He has so much time left on his contract that he didn't have to do it, but he did because that is what he was told to do.  For him it was just a formality.  I'm so glad we don't have to worry about that any more.  It is a massive stress on those who go through it.

On a more interesting front, sea duty has returned to normal.  The ship is apparently fixed, darn it.  They left the other day to once again begin the underways that will lead up to a deployment later this year.  That is something I'm honestly not looking forward to.  Granted we wont be doing the full deployment, only until late December early Janurary, but still Jay will miss a lot of things.  Jay will miss both girls birthdays, Catlin's first birthday no less.  He'll very possibly miss Catlin's first steps not to mention very possibly her first Christmas.  That will be hard on both of us, I just know it.  I just have to keep reminding myself that this will be our last deployment for 3 years. 

Starting this week Jay will be looking at orders for shore duty.  He knows exactly what he wants to do and we're praying he'll get those orders.  He wants to be an instructor, it will be good for his career and it's something he actually has an interest in.  If he gets the orders he wants we wont have to move, which I don't want to do at all.  I like it here. 

Navy=Stress

Life is busy around here.  I've finally gotten fully back on my feet and am becoming the wife/mom I haven't been in well over 6 months, especially since Catlin is 3 months old and the 3 months before that I was on bed rest.  The house has finally gotten clean again and even more so after doing a major re-arranging of our living room to make it more open.  Catlin is now sleeping 8-10 hours at night and how wonderful all of that is.  Kaden recently took a genus test to see just how smart he is.  Only a few select kids in his class were even offered the chance to take this test so it is quite exciting.  Annabelle is in speech 2 times a week and we can already see a difference in her vocabulary.  Catlin is now 3 months old and the teething is already beginning.  She drools all the time, but is mostly happy.  She smiles, laughs, coos and is trying so hard to sit up.

Then there is Jay.  To say he is stressed is basically the understatement of the century right now.  He is in his last week of school for a while.  He started up 8 weeks ago and thanks to his ship this will be the only class he takes until shore duty, unless the ship stays broken (which I'm beyond praying for at this moment).  His schedule went from being about 8-9 hours on the ship (unless it was a duty day) to now he is gone for 11-12 hours a day.  He is lucky if he gets more than one meal a week and that meal is usally dinner as he walks in the door from work.  As a result of the change in work hours he virtually has no time/energy to even do the one class he is in.  Thank heavens this is the last week of it.  He is getting ready to put in for shore duty orders, we're hoping/praying he gets orders for here so we don't have to move, and as this all is happening he gets told he has to do PTS (Preform To Serve)- not cool.

PTS is one of 2 ways the navy is currently determining who stays in and who is kicked out and unfortunately you can be a steller sailor and still be denied and booted.  We had no clue he would have to put in PTS paperwork for selecting orders until his first class dropped it in his lap 13 days AFTER he should have put it in.  Yeah that sent his stress level through the roof.  He spent days scrambling around the ship and here at home to put it all together for submitting it.  He has 3 chances to be approved or we get kicked out of the navy.  We're hoping that it is approved, but we also are fully aware that the opposite can happen.  We've seen too many good, hard working Sailors be kicked out recently all due to PTS.  I wish we knew what was going to happen, but unfortunately we don't.  Jay is sitting here 7 classes away from his Bachelors and wants to do 20 years with the navy and it is all up in the air.  At this point all we can do is trust in the Lord and know that no matter what happens it is for the best, it just doesn't make the waiting game any easier.

Baby Blessing weekend

Two weeks ago we had one crazy weekend.  My family flew into town for Catlin's baby blessing which was good since if they hadn't then there would have been no family at such a specail event.  My dad decided since we were seriously over due for a big family photo (about 8 years over due) that we needed to that while they were out here for the visit.  Friday night we did just that.  The photos turned out great and considering that we had a slightly cranky 2 month old on our hands I'm quite pleased with what we got.

The whole family

 Grandparents and the grandkids



 Aunt Becca with her nieces and nephew

 A new family photo of us

Then that Sunday we had Catlin's baby blessing.  I really wish we'd had more family there, especially with sending out an e-mail to invite family in the area to come, but sadly we didn't.  It was still special and she did good for the entire time.

 My Kids

 Catlin's blessing dress

2011 in review

The last while of 2011 was quite a whirlwind for us.  Adjusting to having Catlin has been a struggle of sorts.  She does great at night, but her days can be well a pain.  Jay's been back to work and that also became an adjustment after having him home so much.  The kids love their little sister and are such great helpers.  Catlin has already had 2 head colds and that would be thanks to the older siblings. 

Christmas was wonderful.  We spent time as a family and just had a wonderful day together.  I got sick Christmas night and spent the rest of the year sick.  Luckily I'm feeling better and no one else is sick.  Jay is now on leave and we're making the most of it.  Good bye to 2011 and hello to 2012.