Saturday, June 19, 2010

My highspeed Week this PCS is happening now hooah here I come Germany

Well amazingly my command sponsorship is finished...and just in the nic of time..Go Army lol
The cliff notes version is Pachenko sent an email to ICE on Sunday June 13th & I sent one to Army Family Services about the fact that no one could tell us what was going on with our CS.
  See my husband went to his chain of command and told them on June 1st "my wife got a letter our lease is not going to be renewed she has to be out on the 30th of June" yep gonna be homeless with 7 kids...
Anyways the email went out Sunday well first thing Monday morning we are emailed our CS approval, family orders and an email showing the break down of where are cs was since we turned it in ..it's an awesome time line that I am sharing with my friends so they can actually see the CS process step by step..
So off to housing my husband went on Tuesday the supervisor wasn't there so he went back Wednesday signed for housing, hit transportation and family travel..with in 2 hours my HHG move was set up and scheduled for the 24th & 25th of June and the movers came the next day to do a walk through of our house yikes what a mess..I was starting to think Cs wouldn't happen in time so we had been shoving stuff into boxes, totes & bags just in case I had to move everything into storage at the last minute but thank you to my husbands new Command in Germany for getting this done for me..it is such a relief..
the only kink in this whole thing is I will be here without furniture for 4 days and then we leave on the 30th to drive to Washington Ft Lewis to drop our car off at the Port to ship our POV..
So this means I supervise the movers, then camp out in an empty house for 4 days, then make a 9 hour road trip with 5 kids, spend a night in a hotel, drop off car at port,  spend another night in hotel, hop first plane to Frankfurt 10 hour flight with 5 kids and we have NEVER flown EVER land at Frankfurt Germany then hop another plane to Nuremberg...then hop a ride to our new home at Illesheim just in time to celebrate the 4th of July with Pachenko...
So all  this happened so fast definitely HIGH SPEED..So now I am sitting here doing some more down sizing the movers came yesterday to do a walk through and I told him what was definitely not going with us.
  After finishing the upstairs we went down stairs to the family room he took one look at all the kids my 7 girls and I had 4 additional children over playing he glanced around and said AND ALL THESE TOYS??? LMAO ok so I did tell him that I was going to try to get rid of some more..
I am sitting here going through 5 years worth of saved magazines my keep & toss pile are now equal come on that is better then my previous moves where I said NO WAY I AM KEEPING THEM ALL..after I am done with magazines I am going to work on my books seeI also told the movers I was going to try to get down to 50% on my books...think library and - 50%.
 I am an addict books are my weakness so here I am sitting  trying to get my media down 50% well the mail lady just dropped off my Harlequin box of books...ahhh LML ~{Love My Life}~

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Am I the only one who sizes up potential Army wife friends?


During my coffee time I like to hop on and browse what is up with my fellow Army wives. It is sorta like browsing the personal ads at times Oooh she looks nice, Oh she is funny, sometimes I laugh, sometimes I tear up, sometimes I can relate and sometimes I think OMG what were they thinking. So I send out a friend request or screen ones I receive.. Lately I have seen alot of negative posts (not on here) about the state of peoples marriages being  unhappy, cheating, considering cheating I just sit back and think where are all the happily married people. No marriage is perfect and I think any one who says they have one should write a book because I would love to see some tips on how to have one.
When my husband got orders to Germany I started browsing as many online sites as I could find to get information on everything from what you need to do to get command sponsorship to the neighboring towns I love research. However one of the more disturbing things that I came across was postings claiming that your marriage will end in divorce if you get stationed in Germany, your husband will cheat, your husband will leave you and all the other stuff that comes with it. So as I browse through these postings of course there are comments from others saying the opposite and some where people actually agreed. Now overall the reasons that I found for the supposed unhappy marriages when you PCS to Germany are
1. the amount of time your husband is there before you get command sponsorship approval " If your husband is living in barracks as a single soldier he will be out drinking and having sex with hookers in the redlight district. supposedly all husbands do this and if you don't get concurrent travel then yep your marriage is doomed.
2. you the wife are going to be so far away from family & friends that you will nag him and he will decide to cheat on you, leave you or send you back to the states..
3. That if command sponsorship takes too long and he is enjoying single life he will tell you it is taking too long and just to stay in the USA which supposedly mean he has replaced you.
4. That you the wife will be so bored & isolated at a small post in Germany that you will want to leave
5. That there a zillion German girls looking for US Soldiers to marry them so it's really easy to get a woman..
6. That you the Army wife will cheat when he is deployed..
As a newer Army wife I find the above appalling and hopefully enough Army wives will post some positives about PCS-ing to Germany and living there that the bad stuff will be over looked. I trust my husband and I figure if I trust him here in the states why can't I trust him in another country? and if I can't have faith and trust in our marriage when we are apart for a couple months that doesn't bode well for a year or more deployment.

It is a given that in this career choice our husbands will be gone for extended periods of time, at times we will end up living in different states or even different countries but it is a life style we chose. I know people change, relationships change, our needs change.  Sure the separations and distances apart can wreak havoc on even a stable committed marriage but how can we as a group fix this misconception about Germany and also the bad rep that we are getting because of other Army wives cheating? How do we fight the stereotypical lumped together category of "Army wives cheat when their husbands are away?"
 I am happily married, I love my husband to distraction, he is not perfect, sometimes his jokes aren't very funny  but I miss him, our daughters miss him and we are looking forward to all living together as a family again.  Now I find myself being selective in forming friendships with other Army wives sizing them up I guess I figure I want to be around other wives who I can relate to. Is this normal do you screen your potential friends?