We made it!

After an incredibly long week, we are safely in Hope Mills, North Carolina! Jake's dad drove our car down, and Jake and I drove down the moving truck (well Jake drove, and I just sat in the passenger seat looking pretty). Magnum was absolutely terrified of the moving truck, so we had him ride with Jake's dad. The roads were absolutely terrible for the majority of the trip. Wednesday (the day we packed the truck) was a giant Blizzard in Michigan, that carried over to Thursday. We left Thursday morning, and only had to deal with bad roads in the morning/ early afternoon. We spent that night in West Virginia. But Friday morning we got caught up in a blizzard in Virginia, and a crazy scary Ice Storm in North Carolina. Thankfully we made it safely, but the roads were pretty awful.
We are all moved in, but only marginally unpacked. Jake has until Thursday to report to his new company, so we are planning on spending the week exploring and unpacking. Magnum hasn't quite settled in yet, we don't think he understands quite what happened. For the first time ever yesterday he tried to run away from me, which leads me to believe he is scared an confused. Hopefully we can introduce him to the dog park here at our complex and he will start to love it here as much as we do.
Our apartment is gorgeous! I will have to post more photos once we unpack, because I'm pretty sure photos of boxes, are not what you want to see. We have a giant beautiful kitchen, two very large, luxurious bathrooms, a dining room, living room and two humungous bedrooms. Seriously, it's a massive apartment, with beautiful appliances and cupboards... And Oh My Goodness! more closet space than you could ever dream of!!! I am in love! I have a gorgeous home, a wonderful husband, actually living in it with me, and a whole new place to explore! Now North Carolina just needs to warm the stink up and everything would be perfect!!!!

WE'RE MOVING!!! (FINALLY)

Well It's official, we are moving to Ft. Bragg in Fayetteville, NC. We are so excited for this move, and to be able to live together again. Jake has been away at trainings and such for 7 months now, and we are finally getting to move back in with each other :) Jake is now officially Active Duty army. While I have been an Army Wife for 2.5 years, I have a lot of things to learn now that I am an Active Duty wife. It will be interesting to see the differences between NG and AD for myself.

We have a beautiful apartment lined up, and we can't be more excited to make it home. I've never been a big decorator, but this time I'm really getting into color combos, and have a few fun ideas (I blame that one on pinterest). I am a little worried about moving out of Michigan for the first time in my life, but I'm also very excited about it! We will miss our friends and family dearly, but we are really looking forward to finally starting this chapter of our lives.

I would really like to get back into the blogging scene, I have abandoned you guys for far too long!!! (I know! I'm sorry!) I am going to do my best to get back on here and keep you all updated on our lives. Especially now that we are moving, but more than that, I would really like to build my readership back up, and to really commit to bringing life back into this blog. Please bare with me, as the next week will be our big move, therefore, posts will be few and far between, but hopefully starting the 28th, I will be back on the blogosphere for good!

Have a good week! Next time you hear from me, I will be in (hopefully) Sunny North Carolina!!

the perfect wedding gift

A couple months back, one of my dear friends, and sorority sisters, Amanda, got married. While on the way to her bachelorette party one of our other sisters, Josie, and I came up with the perfect gift for her. It turned out so well! We are so proud of this idea that we had to share it with everybody.

   We knew we wanted to do something that would help to strengthen their marriage, and be a great gift for them, but also be affordable for us. So we decided that a date night would be a perfect idea!
So, with the help of a bunch sorority sisters (and a few boys) we put together 12 months of pre-paid, pre-planned dates to get them through their first year of marriage together. Each person took a month, planned a date, and put into an envelope everything that was needed for that particular date- we tried to keep anniversaries, birthday's, seasons, and important life events in mind while doing this. Each envelope had everything needed for that date, including gas cards, gift cards, and whatever silly things might be necessary for that date. Also included in the envelope was a letter from the planner for that month. So on the first of each month, they would go and open that month's envelope, read the letter that explained the date, then plan the perfect time to have that date that month.
Our hope was to take away the excuses that come up in marriage in regards to alone time together. We took away the worry that they didn't have money for a nice date this month, or the lack of creativity that sinks in with marriage. We tried to set them up for an amazing year of togetherness and love. And hopefully create a habit of taking time for each other.

So many of my sisters helped with this, and I couldn't have gotten it together without them. It turned out so beautifully when we put all the envelopes into the baskets. And Amanda loved it!

If you would like a list of some of the date ideas we used, please email me at Claire.M.Grimm@gmail.com as Amanda and Don have only gotten through the first few months, and I do not want to spoil the surprises that await them :)

The pooch

So I'm becoming that crazy lady that is obsessed with her doggy..

I used to hate dogs, but I have learned, through various friends, that they aren't all that bad. I actually started liking dogs, and with jake leaving again, we went and got a pooch of our very own to keep me company.

Meet Magnum (Thomas Sullivan Magnum, if he's in trouble). He's the best little guy ever! He is completely potty trained, and not much of a barker, and even asks permission before jumping on your lap! We just adore him! And check out that awesome mustache!!!

Stress

With the date of Jake leaving looming over our heads, I feel extra concerned about every little thing. It's as if the stress in my life has been multiplied by a thousand. This is the opposite of helpful right now. I really would like to enjoy our last few days together. I would really like to spend my time making memories, and enjoying the man I love. Instead, I find myself going over in my mind all the things that could go wrong while he's gone, or all the ways our plans could get messed up, or all the random things that could happen. I know that I am just trying to prepare myself for things to come, but I have no control over those things, and stressing about them doesn't change whether or not they will happen. I just can't stop thinking out all the possible outcomes in things. This is no way to live your life, especially your last moments together. So today I am going to make a conscious effort to stop, to relax, and to enjoy my husband. I have no idea how I am going to do that. This is definitely one of those easier said than done situations, but I am determined to try. Hopefully I can just turn off the stress part of my brain, and learn to relax. Because I just want to relax with the man I love. <3

any tips for learning to stop the stressing would be greatly appreciated!!!

Waiting to say GoodBye

With Jake leaving VERY soon, I decided to start back up in the blogging world... I haven't been good at all  with keeping you guys posted about our lives, and I'm sorry. I will try again, I promise. For those of you who are out of the loop, here is a quick summation of what is going on in our lives currently.

  As most of you know, Jake has been attempting to go from National Guard to Active Duty Army for quite some time now (2 and a half years). When he deployed in 2010 he was told that he would be going active duty when he came back. Well he has been back since September and the process is only now beginning. The Active Duty army is only taking prior service as Special Forces, at the moment. So here is what we are looking at, you can only go through selection if you are an infantry soldier (Jake is a medic). Infantry school is combined with basic training, therefore Jake must go back to basic/AIT, then to airborne, then to special forces selection. This all adds up to a total of 26 weeks (6 months) of separation for us. If, for whatever reason, Jake does not make it through selection, he will be an infantry soldier for 2 years, before he can reclass back to medic. This is not easy for me, but I know he would LOVE being special forces, and I know that God is control. I hate the idea of us being separated yet again, but I know that that's whats best for our family.

   Waiting to say good bye is the worst. knowing that you only have X amount of days left together is haunting. It's like this giant dark cloud in the form of a calendar is following us around in everything we do. Planning everything out is stressful, because when you come down to 2 weeks left everything gets booked up so quickly. You run out of time to do things with all the people you want to make sure he sees before he goes, and more importantly, you've booked up all your time together, for time with other people. Though that makes sense at the time, when it comes down to it, you begin to resent having plans. We are hoping to counteract this by going camping next weekend. Hopefully I will be able to stay positive, and we can just enjoy our time in the woods. I have had a hard time not thinking about how it's June 15th and he is leaving me July 1st. I think I am doing a better job with this, than I did with the impending deployment, because truthfully this is not that bad. However, I am not doing as well as i should be. Hopefully with some more Army Wife practice, I can get better at the time leading up to goodbye. (Or Jake makes it through selection, to Special Forces, and I just have no warning about when he leaves... There are definitely good and bad things in that.)

  Hopefully that caught you guys up on our lives, and gave you a little insight in what's going on in my head with Jake leaving so soon. and with any luck, you guys will hear from me sooner, rather than later. :)

BACK!

So sorry I have abandoned you guys! I have been enjoying my time with my husband home!! It has been amazing!! I love having him home! We have done so much together and have just spent time hanging out. Life is perfect. We still have no idea about our future, whether we will stay National Guard or get to go Active Duty, but at least we will be together no matter what.

We are at this odd (but wonderful) stage in our marriage. In one sense we are newlyweds, we only had a few married months together before he left, and those months were filled with week long trainings every few weeks. So now that he is home we are actually having the chance to experience this newly married stage that wasn't really available to us before. But in another sense we have experienced so much in our marriage that I feel like we have the wisdom and experience of an older married couple. now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we're the best or anything like that, I'm just saying that through the year long deployment we have had, it has caused us to "grow up" in our relationship faster than most need to. So, this combination of newlywed meets wisdom is kind of amazing, and totally working for us right now. We have learned how to communicate with each other best, and what works for us.

Recently we have made a very important discovery for our relationship. We have discovered that because we are a team all things need to be solved as a team. We know each other well enough that chances are if something is bothering one of us, the other can tell. Now, what we have learned is instead of internalizing our problems and coming up with solutions on our own, we need to go to the other person and discuss our solutions together. This might sound like a very obvious thing, but for us it was not. For both of us we didn't want to bother the other person if we didn't have to. we would internalize things that we conceived as "personal problems" and would come up with our own solutions. but here is the problem with that, there is no such thing as a personal problem in a marriage. My stuff effects me AND my husband, so I am not capable of solving MY problems alone, because they are not MY problems they are OURs. This realization is liberating! We have promised to seek help from each other and to share our problems. We no longer have to worry about anything alone, that is one reason we got married in the first place, so a year and half later we are finally embracing it.

I hope you guys enjoyed the peak into our lives, and I promise to be back more often!!