Crawling, falling, and haircuts

Well a lot has been going on around here!

Adelaide is now fully crawling on hands and knees, rather than dragging herself around on her belly. She's getting pretty fast already! Adelaide has also been pulling herself up, a lot! But she still doesn't have very good balance, so she falls over a lot, too. Yesterday she spent a good portion of the day pulled up next to our big bin of dvds, digging through them.

McKaleigh's pretty baby curls are gone:(. She decided she was going to cut her own hair. She attempted a week or two ago, so I found all of the scissors I could and put them up. Well you know those scissor style finger-nail clippers you find in baby first aid kits that you always get at baby showers? She used THOSE to cut off her hair on the front half of her head. This resulted in an amazing mullet. So we took McKaleigh to the salon and in order to make her hair less mullet-y, the curls had to go. She has a cute little bob with layers, and the back is adorable, but she had cut off so much in the front that all we can really do is wait for it to grow out. She has wonderful timing considering that I was going to have family pictures done soon. Guess those will have to wait a month or two.

An update from my goals for the weekend... Big. Fat. Fail. I *did* manage to declutter a bookshelf, which looks pretty nice now. I really have to nag the hubby to help me go through the garage. It's just awful in there and I'm dreading it. Half the mess is his Army stuff that he just needs to put away, and then another big portion of it is stuff that was left in there from someone who had been storing their stuff here. I was supposed to just put it on the corner for the trash man to take away, but anyone who knows me knows that I can't just throw out perfectly good items that could be used by someone else! So now I have to sort through it all to see what is actually trash and what I can donate, because I refuse to send perfectly good items to sit in a landfill.

Hubby has a long weekend, so we should be able to get some stuff done, yay! The garage WILL get cleaned out this weekend! It's like the starting point, so that I have a place to put all of the things that I want to get rid of. Now to decide whether or not I want to have a garage sale...

I sort of feel like super mom

Seriously, I've been doing regular upkeep housework daily and have been keeping a pretty good pace on my school work, too. I'm enjoying this random streak of extra motivation, and have kind of felt like if I stop for too long it will go away. I think that's part of the reason I've been getting so much done. I always have random days where I get a ton of stuff done, and then lots more days where I don't do anything. I think I just need to accept that that's just how I am, instead of getting down on myself on the days that I haven't done much.

I do still intend to purge my house of unnecessary stuff, slowly but surely it will get done. I already started with our clothes, the next step I want to take is cleaning out the garage so I can start putting the items I want to get rid of out there. I already have a bunch of plastic toys out there from when I decided I wanted to limit the number of plastic toys in the house. Just have to get the other stuff in there organized and maybe even moved into the house. I can't wait to go through the closets. We have so much stuff in our closets that we can probably get rid of, but I've just never taken the time to sort through everything!

My goal for this weekend is to clean out the garage and the master bedroom closet:). And if I get those two things done, it would be nice to get started on sorting out the stuff in our guest room. The guest room has become our storage room for all of the random things that we don't know what else to do with!

Wish me luck:). Maybe I'll post before and after pics, haha!

Spring Cleaning

Thought I'd follow up my more serious post, with a fluff post about what's going on in my life:).

With all this work I've been doing for school, my housework has really been falling behind! I decided that every Tuesday would be a cleaning day, where I don't really worry about school work and just get as much cleaning done as I can. I have gotten quite a bit done today. I did all the laundry in the house, which was a lot! I went through my dresser and took out all of my winter clothes to be put away, and then also sorted out some stuff that I want to get rid of. I had my hubby do the same thing, because his dresser is always overstuffed! I went through the girls' clothes too, put away the stuff McKaleigh has outgrown for Adelaide to wear later, and then put all of the clothes Adelaide has grown out of in a bag to be sold or given away. Not even close to being done with sorting out their clothes, and then I have to figure out what I'm going to do with it all!

I also sorted through all of the recycling and organized it, so the kitchen doesn't seem so chaotic. I definitely need a better recycling system, after a week or two the kitchen is just out of control with boxes and papers and glass bottles all over the place!

Most of the messes in my house come from things that don't have a place of their own. My wraps make a huge mess along with blankets, because I just don't have anything to hold them in, so they usually end up on the couch or in a laundry basket. Part of my spring cleaning plan is to figure out what items need a home and go out and find something for it. I also want to *purge* as much as I possibly can! The less stuff we have, the less of a mess there can be! Right?

I would love to be more of a minimalist. I have no idea how we acquired so much crap! And the thing is, we don't have all that much compared to a lot of people. I see some people who have an entire room just packed with toys, we have no where near that much, and I'm still planning on getting rid of a few toys, (mainly those that light up and make noises *gag*.)

So who else is doing a bit of spring cleaning, or maybe some purging? I'd love to hear what sort of things you are doing to control the chaos:).

Dread Progress- 3 months

So about a week or so ago I hit the three month mark on letting my hair dread naturally! Here are some pics of the progress:).

I''m really excited about the progress that has been made so far and can't wait to see how it will look when I get to six months!

I'm taking my life back!

And deleting Facebook!!! That's right! I'm getting rid of Facebook.

It so frequently dictates my mood. I read something that really irks me and I just get so worked up. I've decided that those who really care about me will find another way to keep up to date with my life. I'll find elsewhere to upload pictures for my relatives who live far away from us. People who want to know what I'm up to will find a way to get a hold of me. Plus, without spending half of my day on Facebook, I will have way more time to call my friends, haha. Facebook has made people lazy. You don't actually have to talk to people anymore, just read how they are doing on Facebook. It is ruining relationships, in my opinion.

I have already deleted all of my Facebook friends and all of my profile information. Once I move all of my pictures, I will deactivate my account altogether.

It's almost like a weight being lifted. I feel free!

One year "no 'poo"-versary:)

Today marks the one year anniversary of when I stopped using shampoo!

My routine has changed a lot over the last year, but I definitely don't regret the decision. For a long time I was using apple cider vinegar only and that was working really well. I only switched again because of the dreading process. ACV is a little too conditioning alone for dreads:). I'm back to baking soda and have added a few drops of tea tree oil and lavender, mmmmmm, smells so good!

This year has gone by so quickly!

Should we stay or should we go?

If you are the spouse of someone in the military, you've probably had thoughts similar to the ones I'm going to talk about in this post. Should we continue to be a military family or should we leave this lifestyle the next chance we get so that we can settle down somewhere.

A little background on my husband and my childhoods:

When my mom was pregnant with me, my dad was stationed in Korea with the Army. He came home for the birth, then had to go back. When he got back, we moved to Fort Hood, TX and lived there for two years. My dad got medically discharged and we moved back to my hometown. We lived there until halfway through my 9th grade year, then moved to Ft Jackson, SC because my dad had gotten back into the Army. We lived there for two years and moved back to my hometown, when my dad deployed.

So, for 14 of the 18 years that I was at home with my parents, I lived in one town. My mom and dad both grew up in that town. I got to graduate from the high school my parents went to. My grandpa still lives in the house that my mom and her eight siblings grew up in. That's what my normal is, and that's what I've always wanted for my family, but obviously this dream is not compatible with the military lifestyle.

My husband has been a military brat for almost all of his life. His dad was in the navy, his parents divorced when he was a tween and his mom remarried a man who was, and still is, in the Army. My husband has always lived the military lifestyle. The longest he lived in one place was about five years. He lived in eight places, that I can think of right now, before he turned 18. He doesn't understand my need to be settled into one place, because he's never had that.

So now for the pros and cons.

If we stay in the Army:

-We may have to move as often as every 3 years, but this also means the girls may be able to see different parts of the country and maybe even other countries.

-Will never really be able to buy a house without worrying about selling it if we have to move.

-Job security, this is huge for us. I think one of the main reasons my husband wants to stay in is because it's a reliable job, the chances of getting "laid off" are pretty slim unless you mess up. And even if he were to have to discharge before retirement we'd probably have plenty of notice. It wouldn't be like a two week notice or anything like that.

-Almost guaranteed upward mobility- it's very well laid out that if you do xyz in x amount of time that you will get promoted. Even if it takes you awhile to get promoted, there are raises for time in service, every two years.

-He will be eligible for retirement when he's around 40 years old. At this point he can stay in to get a higher percentage of retirement, or he can start a new career and eventually will be able to draw two retirement salaries. The con to this is that it won't happen until the girls are almost done with high school, which means we wouldn't get to settle down until the girls are almost out of the house.

If we get out:

-The uncertainty is scary, very scary. There's really no telling what will happen.

-Lack of job stability is definitely a huge con, although there's a good chance he could get hired in a federal agency of some sort, which would ease this a little.

-Potential to make more money, but also the possibility of making less.

-Would be able to buy a house and not have to worry about selling it a year later. Which would mean I'd get to paint my walls and renovate and the girls would have a childhood home.

-Girls would be able to grow up in one town, they'd have the same friends throughout their entire lives, if they wanted to.

-We'd have more control over our own lives. We could up and move where ever and whenever we wanted to, as long as we could find work in that new place. The town we live in wouldn't be determined by the Army.

When it comes down to it, my husband will probably stay in the Army. Even if we'd be happier out of the Army, it's a hell of a lot scarier, and I don't know if we could deal with the uncertainty. We had planned to leave at his ETS date, but the talk got brought up again yesterday. I saw the midwife who had been my midwife when I was pregnant with McKaleigh. She was a Lt Colonel in the Army and just recently retired. She's now working at the birth center where I had Adelaide. So hubby and I got to talking about how she's not very old at all, has a military pension and now has another job. Once again the appeal of being able to retire at such a young age came up. So who knows what is going to happen now. If I was a gambling woman, I'd probably bet on things just staying the same.

As Dave Ramsey has said "Change is painful. Few people have the courage to seek out change. Most people won't change until the pain of where they are exceeds the pain of change." Right now, I guess this just doesn't hurt enough. But I'm scared that I'll always regret that my girls didn't have a hometown.