What if I told you Not to tell... new blog

Check out my new blog ::::;

http://whatifitoldyounottotell.blogspot.com/


It's where I'll be writing from now on. :)

I can't even title this.

Let me just start this blog with the fact that I may be changing up my blogging style soon. I am not really sure actually, I know that I've been blogging for what seems like the majority of my life (well, since Xanga and we all know how long ago that was, ummm 9th grade?! So 2001-2, so about 10 years.) and I feel like I've always been lacking something. Well today, I have thought about it and I'm going to be creating a new blog, importing all my old blog entries and starting over with the design and all that because... well I want to.

Anyways, maybe part of this happened because of Jenny Lawson. You don't know who Jenny Lawson is???  She is, without a doubt, my new hero. Steve says that I'm obsessed but since I don't know her personally, I'll just have to go with very, very interested in her work, not her. I don't know her, so I'm not a psycho-stalker. You have to know someone in person to be a psycho-stalker. But I digress. What is important is why Jenny Lawson has become a common name my wonderfully accepting husband can recognize.

I just bought "Let's Pretend This Never Happened" by Jenny Lawson. She is the author of that wonderfully funny and weirdly cute blog called the Bloggess. Well, I've only managed to get through the first three chapters so far, because I started reading it outloud to my husband. And now it's become a bonding experience. Kind of like "Look at how fucked up this woman lived and see, I'm not so weird now because there's someone else who thinks the Zombie Apocolypse is no laughing matter. Well, he finds it more off-the-wall funny than relatable like I do, but either way, me reading to him like he was a blind, old man in a retirement home is actually a very beautiful bonding moment. Anyways, the book. I love it. I think it's actually seeping into my head and making me think that my every thought is worth sharing. Like, this morning I tried to pinch my husband's nipple and I did but I pulled and he swore that I would pull it off but I told him they sell replacements online, and the Army doesn't care if he's one nipple short anyways, but again, I digress. Read "Let's Pretend This Never Happened," By Jenny Lawson aka the Bloggess. Super funny and totally going to offend. :)

Anyways, I have become completely obsessed with sharing my every thought with my husband who I'm thinking is now afraid to be alone with me, judging by the fact that while I'm upstairs blogging, he's down in the garage, gaming on his laptop, hiding from me. Not that this is new, actually, it's not new at all. He's always down there when he has time off work, unless I ask him to hang out with me. But still, I think now he's truly worried about my sanity or his safety or perhaps both. I can't be sure.

Also today, I made a discovery: Apparently, my dog likes candy. But not just the candy, the wrappers too. I found this out by discovering a pile of poop with candy wrappers inside of the poop. I'm a little jealous. I can't process wrappers quite so well. I'm not even upset by him stealing my pez or my chocolate. At first I was worried that the chocolate would kill him but then he took a big dump in the side yard, so I knew he'd be fine. I am jealous that while he can have all this candy and the wrappers too, he doesn't seem to gain weight or have a problem with choking or digesting said wrappers. Unfair if you ask me. I know you didn't, that's why I'm sharing!!!


I'm also doing laundry today, because that's what Moms are for, although I think it is kind of pointless. I mean, not the washing or drying of the laundry, that has a point. It becomes clean and wearable again without getting weird looks in public or having people whisper behind your back about how you smell funny or having Child Welfare called on you because your kids are in clothes that have never be washed. Always wash your clothes. That's important. It's the other thing that's pointless.I hate putting away laundry. I know we're all going to wear it again so it seems a waste to fold it and put it away. Especially since I'll pull out half of everything I own in a day to find something to wear and then just leave it there until it gets washed again or I find something I want to wear a few days from the first day I pull it out. And my kids always end up pulling most everything they own out while showing me what they want to wear, which makes me crazy because then I either have to put it away again, or just pretend it got worn and throw it in a laundry basket. I will not admit to what I actually do. 


Anyways, I'm folding laundry and every member of my household has more underwear in this load than I do. Which means, my family wears underwear every day. But I'm curious about other people. I'm curious whether other people wear underwear. I do and I don't. It depends on what I'm wearing. If I wear a skirt or dress, yes, I do. But if I put on a pair of jeans, I don't. I think this is economical. Like you save money washing underwear and also, this means you need less pairs between laundry days. Also, I don't like panty-lines. But it's ok sometimes, like if I'm wearing short-shorts, then I like to say "yes, my jean shorts look like boys underwear but really, I am wearing a real pair underneath." So, this leaves me curious of whether other people wear underwear. And I don't know why this is what I'm curious about today. I guess I just don't care enough to know who you will vote for or if you are eating healthy or if that one little kid your friend knows finally got that marble unstuck from his nose. No, my concern is your underwear wearing cycles.


But that's all I have to say for now....




Oh wait, it's not. I have something else. 


I bought the world's best 99 cent kindle book:::::::


"Bedtime Stories for Children You Hate"... I might cry from being so excited to read these to my husband as we go to sleep... I may also read these to my kids when they are bad or make me crazy... (Ok, mostly kidding about reading them to my children, I hate when they have nightmares. I have to get up and make them feel better and then I'm just sooo tired the next day so I better skip reading these to them and just focus on giving my husband nightmares. He can comfort himself, or if not, at least I don't have to get up.)


Ok, that's it. This is what makes me happy and I'm going to work on the new blog design and post the link sometime soon... When I get to it. I've been busy. Life is a busy busy thing. Also I hope that none of my husband's future commanders read my blog, otherwise, I think the might be concerned that my husband is living with a lunatic. I'm not crazy. As Sheldon says, My mother had me tested. 

I'm feeling better with a Devils win!!!

If you don't know this about me, you should know I'm a hockey fan. Like a huge one. My team: New Jersey Devils! Yes, I am a proud member of the Devil Army and I am a huge fan (maybe even bigger than of the team itself) of Martin Brodeur, the goalie of the Devils. Well, tonight my team is in the playoffs against our biggest rivals the Philadelphia Floaters (Flyers, I really hate them). And we won!!!! It was a huge win too! 4 to 1 and an awesome win. All 4 points were earned in the 3rd period and it was epic. I can't say this enough, but Hockey is my favorite sport of all time, only followed by Soccer and Football. Then Baseball. But Hockey, well... there's nothing like it. The fierceness, the endurance, the strength, the talent... Hockey is a game where you'll see some of the most aggressive action in the world and the most fights on the Ice and then you'll see the best teamwork and the most graceful actions by men that you wouldn't consider graceful anywhere else. And Martin Brodeur, well he's the best goalie in History. Seriously, 3 Stanley Cups, 2 Olympic Gold Medals and countless broken records under his belt. Plus he's one of the few players who made a career out of ONE team. I am an adoring fan and wish with all my heart I could see him play. A part of me is hoping that it'll be St. Louis vs Devils just so I can go to a game here. I really hope so.

Anyways, I'm stoked about the win, but I'm also excited because for the first time in almost a week, I'm feeling better. I'm not sure how it happened. I think it's just things felt so bad that there was no where to go but up. So I went forward and one thing led to another and everything came together to make me feel better. Steve wanted to go out to dinner tonight and got a call from the Library. Guess who left his ID card in a computer? Yep, my husband! Haha. So I had to drive him on Post to grab it. And then we left the coupons for dinner at home so we drove by the Hub (German restaurant here that I love!) and it was closed and as we were looking for a place, I saw a steak house and we decided to stop. My God, the food was great! Colton's is what the place was called and we had a great dinner. And we had fun. It's been a lot of down time lately that having actual fun kind of surprised me, but we did. And I'm glad. We needed it.

So all in all, a Devil's win and a great night with my family made for an amazing evening here. and I'm happy. I just hope tomorrow holds the same minus the hockey part because I don't care who wins tomorrow's games. Devils play on Thursday. :)

Much love. 

Pictures of my family

I love this man... always and forever. With my whole heart. 

my beautiful babies.

Cheese!!!!

SMILES :) 

Just a random rambling post

In the quiet of the night, I feel the most at peace. 

Not a sound, not even a whisper of anyone else awake... 

Sometimes that's when I feel the most alive, in the dead of the night.

I just spent the whole night doing things that I wasn't able to get done yesterday (It's 330 on Tuesday Morning). But beyond doing what needed to be done, I took a bath in this milk bath stuff I got today (and it felt oh-so-good to sit in the tub with steaming hot water, candles burning and a good book in my hand). I also cleaned my pores for the 2nd time this week (I'm really trying to make my skin stay youthful longer now) and then braided my hair so it won't get into a mess after I finally close my eyes. I also managed to fill out all the paperwork needed for the Army...

Ah, the Army. What a pain in the ass it was today. (Let me say this before I begin my ... bitch fest::: I love the Army. I love the Military. I'm so proud to be an Army wife and to be the daughter of a true American Hero and I am so honored to be among the 2% of the population that deals with this life every day, all day but sometimes, it can get on your nerves.) Steve had to go for his SRP and do a few other in-processing things. First, we stopped by Tricare and registered (finally got the SSN thing worked out, for the longest time my care was still under my father's instead of my husband's and now it's finally fixed). Then we went to lunch before he went back for his finance briefing and while he did that I went to the commissary (grocery shopping time, which went very well). Well, he texts me and says it'll take a few hours, so I start to head off post, only to have him call me and ask me to turn around, that he'll be done in five or ten minutes. Well twenty minutes later, I call him and ask him what's up. He tells me he's doing his SRP and that I should go drop the groceries off (I was in the parking lot waiting for him), so I go home (and almost got killed by some dumbass driver who decided the road was a great place to stop and reverse when I was right behind him, I avoided being hit by less than 2 feet, not comforting.) So I drop off all the refrigerated and freezer stuff because he tells me "Hearing test then done." So I rush and then he calls me while I'm on my way back to post. "It'll take a little while longer." By this time it's already been 2 hours or so. So the kids and I head to the PX just to see what's for sale. I ended up getting two books and some gummy candies from Germany (Haribo rocks!!) and he texts me "Almost done" So I tell him ok, let me pay, I'll head over and pick you up. This is at 1600. I drive over and park and say I'm waiting and he texts me and says almost done again. So I wait. A half hour later, he is actually done and walks out of the building. His excuse was that they didn't tell him it'd take so long but I had already assumed it would. So I guess my aggravation today was mixed between the Army's in-processing and his constant "Almost done" thing.

Anyways, I finally make it home and unload the rest of the groceries, send him out for sushi and around 1945 the kids are in jammies and head to bed. So I washed the bath tub and soaked for a while before showering and when I got out. I felt so much better, less stressed. Then I chilled for a bit before I started cleaning randomly. The kitchen is spotless again. Papers that we needed filled out are filled out completely except the parts I don't know with post-its on each page so he knows what I need him to do before turning it in.

And at 330, I finally got ready for bed. I guess this post was kind of pointless but it's the middle of the night and I ramble then. Much love.

Great song

Great song:::

Sometimes, it just takes a song you listened to once a long time ago to remember that it's what you were looking for all along.

Great song, btw. Better than Ezra~ Overcome.

Life is

I don't have anything to say except this quote by Mother Teresa:

“Life is an opportunity, benefit from it. Life is beauty, admire it. 

  Life is a dream, realize it. Life is a challenge, meet it. 

Life is a duty, complete it. Life is a game, play it. 

Life is a promise, fulfill it. Life is sorrow, overcome it. 

Life is a song, sing it. Life is a struggle, accept it. 

Life is a tragedy, confront it. Life is an adventure, dare it. 

Life is luck, make it. Life is too precious, do not destroy it. 

Life is life, fight for it.”

Remember that when you are struggling. I came across it today and I couldn't help but be struck, yet again, by those words. Life is unimaginable... Embrace it. 

Find myself

I sometimes think your past needs to visit you every so often just so you can remember who you used to be, why you were that way, what you wanted then and how different it all is to who you are now, why you are you now, and what you want now.

Lately, I've been remembering a lot, from my time in Germany to now and the memories, they don't fade quietly into the background like we all seem to think they should but rather sit in the back of your mind, biding their time to when a song or a food or a moment allows them to come rushing back. It starts with one but eventually they all come flooding back. From the time you were picked up for that first date with that first guy you really liked and the song on the radio captures that moment and whenever you hear it, you are back in that car with that boy and no matter how many times you hear it, it will always represent that boy. Or when you eat a meal at a restaurant, one you'd eaten so many times without realizing what it meant and then you remember the days where you sat with your Dad in some restaurant somewhere eating and talking and you just fall apart because you miss him. Or when you smell the fresh cut grass and you are back to being seventeen, laying on the lawn of a castle in some foreign country with the guy you love holding you as you talk about a future moment. When a breeze hits you the right way and you're a few years older and wiser than you were at seventeen but still a fool with your heart and you remember that guy that you were friends with first and then messed it all up by being in a relationship... and you can't help but remember the friendship and miss that because even though the relationship sucked, the friendship was good.

So I've been remembering moments of my life. Moments that matter and made so much of my life matter and brought me to this moment in time. I don't regret a single mistake or bad decision because at least I put myself out there. At least, I tried to find things that mattered and tried to find a life that made sense, even if it turned out badly and even if the choices of my past didn't work out the way I'd hoped because I found a better life. I found my life. I just need to find myself again.

Sometimes, the past is still in your life. Like that ex boyfriend who became more of a friend to you than most of your so-called friends back in the day. Like a girl you barely spoke to in high school but who suddenly transformed into one of your best friends. Like the pictures of people you don't even remember their names but sit in a small box that for some reason you can't bare to throw away. Sometimes, the past helps you remember who you were and reminds you how you got to where you are now. So you reach out to someone you haven't talked to in a while and you try to make peace, only to have that door slammed in your face with an insult to go with it and you get sad for a while but you remember that  you were reaching out for yourself and they aren't ready and probably never will be ready for that "forgive and forget" moment you read about in books. Sometimes, the person you never wanted to hear from again reaches out to you and you must make that choice: do you forgive them and forget the past and make new memories or do you cling to the hurt and the bad memories because for some reason letting go of something negative like that is hard and seems almost impossible to imagine that any good could come out of it. Well, I've done both those sometimes this week with members of my past. I reached out to someone who slammed the door on me and let me know that he wasn't interested without actually speaking to me and I've let someone in that I had bad feelings about for a long time based on mutual idiocy of youth. I don't regret reaching out and I don't regret forgiving, it means that I've grown into someone who deserves the life I have now.

I love my life now, married to a wonderful man who loves me and needs me in his life and puts up with my annoying quirks and lets me be myself, even if sometimes, I'm not entirely sure who that is yet, with two wonderful children who love me and make me so crazy happy, I want to burst sometimes. But sometimes, you just have to remember and remember that before you were a mother and a wife, you were a person of your own caliber, with your own identity and your own meaning to it all. And I've started to realize that I miss me. 

Yes, I love being a mother. My kids mean more than anything to me. I would do anything for them, I've done everything for them. I've sacrificed so much of myself to let them have the best I could offer and I did it without question because they are my children. I love when they wrap their little arms around me and say four little words that fill my heart with so much love that it breaks: "I love you, Mommy."

And I love being a wife to my husband. He's my best friend and is the most wonderful man with the most beautiful qualities a person can possess: humility, strength, dignity, courage, honor, honesty, love.  He makes us his first priority and does something with his life that I couldn't imagine having more worth. He's also one of the smartest people I've ever known (Takes his last Final before his Master's degree sometime over next week). He makes me laugh, which for me is the number one quality a man can have because I get stuck in my own head so much, he can actually take me out of it. And I will continue to make sacrifices for him too, because he'll make sacrifices for our Country and that's what our life together will always have in it: a duty to each other and our Country. He's a Soldier and I'm his wife and we will stick together throughout any sacrifice that is needed, even if we are separated by distance of body, our hearts are connected always. And I will always be proud to be his wife, because of who I was so lucky to marry.

It's just that sometimes, I miss myself. I miss knowing what I liked to do when I was alone, which I haven't been in so long with two kids and a husband. I miss hanging out with friends and talking about things that range from the stupid to the real. I miss going to a small little record store and finding an album that I'd never even heard of and listening to it as I explored a new place and saw different things. I miss spending time looking at the stars after a night of partying with friends alone on my balcony. I miss who I was when I was with friends and could just be me, Leah, a girl who didn't have labels.

I don't regret becoming a mother, but lately, the reminders of the past have reminded me that I need to find out who I am aside from mother and wife. I'm not willing to give up either of those two things, but I want me again. I need to take time for my art and for my music and for me. I need to discover who I am now. And all I know about myself these days is that I am a damn good mother and a damn good wife and those always come first but when you put so many things in front of yourself, where do you fit in?

I don't want to sound like I'm complaining, which is what I'm sure I sound like, but I know others go through this too and I just wonder how they managed to find themselves after they got lost in the wife and mother roles. How did they find out who they were outside of their families?

How do you find yourself when you'd forgotten you for so long that you've forgotten everything about yourself? 

New friends

Ok, I know I've been super sparatic at updating my blog, but this time I have something awesome to say. I have made a new friend. She's pretty awesome and kind of has a similar life as me. She grew up as a Military brat (Marines, not AF Spec Ops but still badass). Her husband is a Captain in the same course as mine, he was also in the Cav like mine before becoming an officer, like mine. We both want to be apart of a flash mob (which actually got us talking lol) and we have the same similar complaints about Army life while both being super proud and happy to be part of the Army life. To think, I've waited my whole life for someone like her!! haha!

Seriously though, to finally find a friend who can relate to almost everything is pretty fantastic. Don't get me wrong, I love my friends. Meg and Liz are crazy awesome. Megan and I can talk about everything and it doesn't ever get weird (and by everything I mean all that girl stuff and guy stuff and random stuff) and Liz and I talk about so much, but can we relate to everything? No. Can we expect anyone else to relate to who you are as a person? No but having someone come super close is pretty awesome, you have to admit.

Let's call her "Bee". Bee is very cool and very fun it seems. What excites me most is that we'll both be in the FRG together (and we both hate the Virtual one). Our husbands will be in class together and we will finally have a wife in the same unit as ourselves who doesn't give a crap about rank or ... let's call it Officer Wife politics (or as I've affectionately referred to it in the past "Petty Army Wives"). The best part is: we're going to have dinner together next week and meet in person.

See, I added this group on Facebook (or as I call it in my phone and to people in my daily life: Crackbook)  dedicated to the Army Wives here to make friends or at the very least find out what's what about this new post and after saying I wanted to have a playdate (which I did... yesterday, I guess since it's after midnight here) I added a bunch of wives. Anyways, tonight I was watching Greek (go ahead, laugh, I enjoy cheesy things like that), I saw a flash mob in a dance contest and started youtubing and went on Crackbook saying that I wanted to do one. Well, after a couple hours, Bee told me she knew someone who did them and that we should talk. One thing led to another and we started agreeing with pretty much everything the other said about this and that ranging from everything to hating the rank-pulling wives and the wives who belittle brats because we obviously "don't know anything." It was awesome to talk to someone. Then Bee asked me to be her bff saying "I'm going to be cheesy and ask you to be my bff." Of course I said yes, because HELLO, SHE'S AWESOME! And we arranged to have dinner next week, exchanged numbers and plan on doing dinner next week.

I really am excited by this. I mean, it's been so long since I met someone that I can really be friends with. Don't get me wrong, I still love the girls I met at Fort Polk, but I wasn't really close to any of them, even though I wanted to be. But here, I have an opportunity to build a really good friendship, hopefully a lifetime friend, which these days, let's face it, is a pretty rare thing.

So I am happy and I'm excited and I can't wait to have dinner with Bee. I can't wait to find out what this place will hold next.

Much Love.

My new life

Well. I'm here. And it's been a while since I blogged but so much has been happening that I've either been too busy or too tired to sit down and post something. We got here almost two and a half weeks ago and tomorrow will have had our house two weeks. I got my stuff on a Friday and by the next Friday (last week) I had unpacked everything and managed to make the new place a home. I am enjoying it here so far, although, let's be honest, most of that has to do with the fact that up until today (and even for most of today) I have had my husband with me.

PCSing is hard because of the stress and the not knowing anyone, so today I held a playdate. I met 5 local wives who brought their kids, mostly girls. My kids had a blast playing with the girls (all the girls were 3 to 5 and the only boy was an eleven month old baby, who I enjoyed holding very much). And I got to meet some pretty awesome ladies. I really hope I can see them again and build a solid group of friends here.

I know alot of people move with the military and end up leaving half their stuff in boxes for weeks, even months, but I can't do that. I literally started unpacking the day my stuff arrived and by the end of the following week, I'd finished everything from unpacking to putting things away the way I like them to hanging up all the pictures and art that I enjoy seeing. I have a need to have my life put back together each time. I've moved so often in my life that having chaos is not something I can handle when enough things are uncertain. The only thing that was lost: my wii. Yep, the movers stole that. Or rather, they claimed they lost it... but I don't believe that.

In other news, I am not pregnant. I found out today that after another month of trying that my hope of having a baby inside me has to wait still. It's so hard wanting something so badly and not being able to have it yet. Steve says he'll go and get checked to see if he's the problem and if it'll help us to do anything different. I just so badly want our baby and I'm ready for our baby... Anyways, it's just another month of trying. I can handle that.

Other than that, the kids are both happy. They have a playroom here and love it. In fact, I'll upload some pictures of our house at the end of this post. It's a really nice house. Also, Beau and Luna are doing good too. Luna is in heat so that's annoying but she's been inside since she got here because I knew it would happen soon.

Anyways, I'm getting ready to put dinner together and relax. Much love.