New Perspective

One year ago today, i was in San Diego California... with butterflies in my tummy, and shaking legs... it was warm outside, and i had a paper with a rundown of how the day was going to go. HOWEVER i had 2 BIG families all looking to ME to usher them around. i was kind of in charge of the day, and it added ALOT of extra stress... looking back, i would have organized it all a little differently...

About 1pm... i got to hug my husband for the first time in 3 months. i got to talk to him, for the first time in 3 months. i WOULD have gotten to kiss him for the first time in 3 months... however let's just say i got a little overly excited and smashed my forehead into his lip.. and it was fat and bloody :) so i didn't get my kiss until i said goodbye to him (which SUCKED!!) if you want to read my post about that day you can do so HERE

A ton of stuff happened since he graduated. if you've followed my blog at least somewhat that you pretty much know.

but here i am... I am now the wife of a deployed Marine, since we have been married i've always worked full time, and for the first time... i'm not. i know ALOT of the wives have judged me because i am a housewife, and i don't have kids... i've been told MULTIPLE times that i "don't do anything" and that if i get up early (which i do... everyday!) it's totally by choice so i don't have a right to complain if i am tired in the middle of the day. i don't fight back when this is said, cause i honestly DON'T care what these girls think of mine and my husbands "way of life" but JUST to give you a little perspective... here is how i spend my days when Riley is HOME

Depending on what time he has to be to work

• Get up about 10 minutes before Riley(if he doesn't wrap his arms around me and beg me to just snuggle until he has to get up)
• Find him socks, underwear, and either a clean set of cammi's or his green shorts and green shirt depending on what they are working out in that day.
• Find him something small to eat before he goes to PT(work out) 
• drive him to formation(driving in the morning puts him in a less than ideal mood for the rest of the day)
• Drive home and get breakfast started (i refuse to have a microwave in my house, so it's usually eggs, or pancakes or turnovers)
• throw dirty clothes in the washing machine (but don't start it yet)
• Go pick up Rye from PT
• While Rye showers, i find him a new set of Cammi's, socks and underwear
• put his dirty ones in the washing machine and start it.
• depending on how much time he has, sometimes i will sit and eat with him, other times he has to eat in the car when i take him back to work. 
• come home after taking him back, clean up after breakfast, pick up around the house. 
• shower
• figure out what will be for lunch.
• Get lunch started
• Pick up Rye for lunch
• Drop Rye off after lunch
• Clean up after lunch, decide what to make for dinner (go to the store to get anything we need) 
• Wait for Rye to get off work (sometimes i go to the gym during this period if he thinks i'll have enough time before he's off)
• Get Rye from work, he then goes for a run, while i start dinner. he plays with Dee while i finish dinner.
• We sit and eat together, i clean up after dinner, we usually take Deezul for a walk and then we watch a movie or tv in bed.

now that i'm not working, Riley does NOT have to do housework... thats pretty much my only job. the only thing i do ask is for him to take out the trash (which he's usually pretty good about)... so ya, you may say i don't do much... i don't answer phones or file paper work, or make sandwiches for people... instead, my ENTIRE day is devoted to my husband. you may think that sounds odd but here's my way of thinking.

Before when i WAS working, we would get off work from a 8-9 hour day, we'd head home while pretty much trying to "one up" each other on who had the worst day.. Now i am just here to listen fully to his day, the life of a boot is a hard one... once he gets back from this deployment things should get easier for him, as he'll no long be the total bottom of the food chain. When he first joined, his recruiter talked to me alot about how much his first year up until his deployment was going to suck. that he was going to hate his life, and if i didn't handle it correctly it would be extremely difficult on our marriage, he kinda told me what his wife had learned... and normally i get kind of irritated when people give me marriage advice, but the advice he gave me was AMAZING, and has done WONDERS on our marriage, bringing it from great to AMAZING! pretty much he told me that Rye was going to need me to just BE THERE when he got home, to let him complain about all of his higher ups, and NOT be surprised when his opinions of people changed drastically and rapidly. I needed to make home a place where he could NOT think about work and just focus on something non-military.

this year has been so good for our marriage, we've dealt with trials that i never expected when we got married all those years ago. however we've learned that when we're upset with something... to find a common enemy, INSTEAD of taking it out on each other. he's learned that just because one of his higher ups is harassing him and making him miserable, does NOT make it ok to be snappy with me.

so now i spend most of my days working on packages for Riley and "my boys" i'll blog a little later with a few "Crappy Sav Tutorials!" because i'm pretty much the LAST person to take crafting advice from :)

Here's to one year out of bootcamp :)