Moving Day....Again....

So today is moving day, again!  Plus side, we are not doing the actual packing and transporting, just the unpacking (well, mostly me doing this since Gerry is back to work again), down side, we have one more move ahead of us.  In February Gerry starts his terminal leave from the military for his retirement and we are then headed to Montana.  We have decided to make this our permanent home for our life after military life.  So what am I doing today, sitting on the computer trying to keep myself distracted and busy while Two Guys and a Truck pack us up and then move us to our new house on post.  They are renovating our housing area so we are being moved again.  The good thing to this is that our new house is brand new inside and we have a privacy fence (wood one, no chain link) with grass both front and back, which means less weeds and no more dirt, dirt, dirt.  Legend will no longer be tracking in a mess for us to keep up with on our floors, yay!  Plus, our new home has new wood floors, new appliances, new paint and four bedrooms (why we need that much, I have no clue, but it will help us because we are not unpacking everything so one room will be storage, we are just unpacking what we really need over the next five months).  The fun that these poor guys have had today was some rain (it actually came down hard for about ten minutes before quitting), a very upset and whinny dog (Legend is in puppy jail, lol, upstairs for the time being, then he will be brought downstairs and the baby gates will be put up to keep him in the living room while they pack up the bedrooms upstairs and the bathroom, poor thing just wants to play and RUN).  This move is changing our ward, something we are accepting reluctantly, we love our ward that we are in and that we started in, but know that change is right around the corner, so yes, accepting.  We look forward to making new friends, but still keeping our old ones. We have made so many here.  Change is hard sometimes, but at the same time a good thing, and it can be hard to see the good thing.  (and on a side note: Legend is now free to roam the living room, he is happily sniffing away, lol).  We will see how much of a good thing this will be for us, but we will miss our ward family that we have made in the Flat Rock Ward.

This is what Puppy Jail looks like:

Let me explain why I do this to my beloved but rotten puppy.  We have to leave the front door open for the movers, but due to this, Legend would just love to take off and run.  He loves to run and does not stop and thinks it is a game and has even ran into the street and almost been hit by a car.  So to prevent him from running off when we have to leave the front door open, I bought baby gates to put up and keep him from getting to the front door and get out.  He may not like it, but it works.  Silly puppy, but I love him too much to have him picked up by the Animal Control Officer or to be hit by a car because of his love to run when he can get out.  (we even have to put locks on our chain link gate so that he cannot open it, smart dog, but wow, crazy!)

I Am A Mormon...

Today in Relief Society and Priest Hood in a joint meeting we were encouraged to put together a profile on Mormon.org.  I have added a couple of things to my blog.  I make it no secret that I am a member of  The Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints.  It was something that I was not active in a long time ago (well five years go to be exact), but after my son and my husband were baptized, I became active and gained a testimony. Since then, I have been sealed to my husband in the Atlanta, GA Temple.  I do not know how many people read my blog, I really do not care, to be honest, this is for myself, my son and whatever other children we may have and their children and so on.  But for those that do read, I Am A Mormon and very proud of my faith and love my faith and my Savior and my Heavenly Father.  I know that the gospel is true.  I hope this stirs someone somewhere to go to Mormon.org and learn more.  There are some very large misconceptions about the Mormon Faith out there.  The website was designed to answer questions about our faith by everyday members. It is a great web site.  You can even speak with our missionaries directly online if you have questions or ask for a free Book of Mormon or Bible.  Knowing that I have an Eternal Family is the greatest comfort that I have in my life.  That I will see my family again is amazing, this was all done by our Father in Heaven, part of our Heavenly Fathers mission was to (Pearl Of Great Price Chapter 1 verse 39): For behold this is my work and my glory- to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.  Our Savior came here to help fulfill that mission.  It was all for the work and the glory of our Heavenly Father.  What a selfless man he was, he loves us so much that he gave his life and suffered for our sins that we might be able to have eternal life.  But there is more, so much more.  So please, if you want to know more, go to Mormon.org, or you can click on I Believe or My Faith, either will take you to Mormon.org and you can learn more.

Life Is Hard, But Worth It...

So the last five years have been hard ones for our large family.  I have four sisters, two older and two younger, and four brothers, all older.  All four of my brothers are married and have children, and one of my older sisters is married.  I have been through two very difficult deployments, one of my brothers is Navy and was deployed at the same time as my husband.  It was a first for his family to go through a year long deployment, they were used to six month stints on ship.  One of our deployments was 15 months and the other 12 months.  Dean missed daddy and really struggled, I just wanted him home safe.  I understood why he was doing what he was doing.  More than I think than most of my friends did when their husbands left (well outside of the church).  During that time I missed my sister get married (my husband just came home and I talked to her about it, we agreed I needed to be with him).  That was hard for me, my brother-in-law is fantastic and you could see the love that he had for my sister.  Not even a year later, she passed away from cancer, barely missing their anniversary by 10 days, her birthday by four days.  It rocked my large little family to the core.  We all miss her dearly.  Shortly after that, my mother's health (who had been battling her own cancer for around 13 years) started to get worse.  She was a breast cancer survivor on top of the other cancer she was fighting.  My mother was a fighter.  She made it another two years, and missed her birthday by 20 days.  This was another blow to our large little family.  Our mother was the core to our family with our dad, they were married for almost 50 years, and their faith and love for each other and the church is so strong.  We are an eternal family because of them.  We grew up with the greatest example of love and trust in our home.  We never doubted our parents love for each other, what a comfort that is and was as children.  I know that is what I strive to show my son in my marriage today, trust and love and faith in the gospel.  To top it all off, we are still trying to stabilize Dean.  He still struggles at home.  School is going well.  He is getting good grades and has friends now.  At times that is a tad shaky but the ones that he does have that are close, they are boulders in his life.  Unmoving and constant.  He took grandma passing really hard.  He is very close to my parents.  They were there for us in a huge way after my divorce from my first husband.  My dad babysat to ease my finances, which allowed for a different relationship with him than they had with their other grandchildren.  My dad might deny it, but I have witnesses, lol, to this change.  He is special to them, especially my dad.  Losing grandma upset Dean in a big way.  I have yet to see him really deal with it, which worries me.  With my sister, he cried more.  I hope to see some emotions soon, or I will be more worried.

So you might be asking, what is with the title.  Yes, life is hard, but it is worth it.  There is a quote in my church that has our Savior attached to it: "I never said it would be easy, I only said it would be worth it".  So yes while life is hard, it is always worth it to Endure to the End.  I want to be an eternal family, to see my grandma, my mother, the grandparents that I have never met, all of them, my sister.  I love them all and strive to do my best to be a good person and follow the gospel the way my Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, my Savior, want me to.  That alone, with the knowledge of what follows with the Second Coming is what makes this life worth it.  While my heart aches for those I have lost, which includes the loss of my grandmother in 1997, I know that I will see them again and that I will spend eternity with them and my husband and my son.  So yes, hard but worth it.