Some days are better than others (but I took pictures on the good days)

Hey so as you might have noticed, this blog isn't private yet.  That's because Brandon's SERE date got pushed back by about a week.  This is where I should say something about how we are upset because we were really looking forward to him doing some important training.  But that wouldn't be entirely true.  In fact, I am THRILLED that he'll be home this week.  Mostly because this week includes the Fourth of July.  Fort Rucker throws what sounds like a huge Fourth of July party, and I'm glad we all get to go to it as a family.  

The later start date does kind of throw a wrench into our plans later this summer, but those have never really been set in stone anyway so we'll just continue to wing it with those plans.  If I've learned anything as an Army Wife it's that nothing is for certain - EVER.

I feel like I should mention how I'm doing in regards to my love/hate relationship with being a stay at home mom.  Mostly I'm doing better, but I've still had some tough days. I didn't take pictures of the bad days.  So as you look through these pictures of all the fun things that went on this week keep in mind that this is only half the story of my life right now.  (The other half involved some ugly crying at one point so naturally I didn't take a picture of that.)

Here's a selfie with sweet little Veronica.  She finally has hair long enough in front to create bangs.  And I completely forgot to mention last week that I got my hair cut.  It's hot here so I decided to go pretty short. I love it!

 Brandon still has a pretty easy schedule so one afternoon we decided to go to the aviation museum as a family.

In addition to all the aircraft it houses, the museum is also airconditioned so that makes it a wonderful choice of a place to visit on a Southern Summer afternoon.

This was heaven for Derrick.  Helicopters and airplanes rank second after trains on his list of favorite things.  He says Ha-tch for helicopter and he kept repeating it as we walked around the museum.

 I think that the helicopter in this picture is THE helicopter that President Richard Nixon flew in when he left the White House after he resigned.  If it's not that helicopter it's another one in the museum.

 Brandon went on a tour of this museum for work one day.  On that day he was stuck with the world's most boring and long winded tour guide.  It took them hours to cover only part of the museum.  In contrast our four rambunctious kids saw the whole thing in less than 30 minutes.

 The girls had lots of fun playing with this cock pit.  They would say things like, "Mission Complete" and "Okay Commander" to each other.  We honestly have no idea where that came from.

 Here's Lydia.

 And Charlotte and Veronica (Charlotte wasn't too happy about Veronica sneaking onto her seat.)

 Veronica has been causing a lot of trouble for me.  Gone are the days when I could count on her to take a nap.  And while she's a sweet little girl she also has a knack for messing up things. We've all but abandoned doing little school because she bit all the marker and then moved on to eating the crayons.  Reading books while she is awake is almost impossible because she tries to sit on whatever book I'm reading.  It's hard because Charlotte and Lydia enjoy doing crafts, but Veronica is too much of a loose cannon for me to deal with during an elaborate craft.

We came up with a solution to the problem almost by accident.  The girls wanted to play with some glitter, but I didn't want to deal with it while Veronica was awake.  I told them they could stay up and use the glitter after bed time.  It turned out to be a really fun evening. While we made designs with the glitter we were able to have conversations about things that we never talked about before.  The girls asked me where I got the glitter and I told them I had it ever since I was in college.  They asked if I knew Daddy then.  I told the no and that led to a conversation about other guys I dated and why I didn't marry them.  I was able to have a very natural talk with my four year olds about how they should make sure they date guys who respect them and love them.  It was amazing.

So after that "Girls Craft Night" became a standard thing we do once a week.  We've tried it out on different nights, but finally we settled on Wednesday night because that's the night Brandon goes to scouts.  Here are the girls making necklaces to wear to my brother's wedding later this summer.  

 And here they are modeling them with the dresses they will wear to the wedding.

 I took this next picture in anticipation for the typical day blog post that I want to write.  Every morning I wake up and think, "I should do the typical day post today."  And then I immediately think of a reason why that day isn't a "typical day."  I think I just need to admit that there aren't any typical days right now and just record everything anyway.  So anyway, here is what breakfast looks like.

 Since Brandon wasn't leaving for SERE we decided to go to the beach on Saturday.  So after the kids woke up we headed on down to Panama City Beach.  We only live about 90 minutes away, but somehow I got us lost on the way there.  I still can't figure out how that happened - I mean we just drove there 6 weeks ago.  So it ended up taking us over two hours to get there.  But it was worth it!

 The kids were all super happy to be back at the beach.

We'd tried taking them swimming at the neighborhood pool the day before, but the trip had ended in sadness when it started raining only a few minutes after we got in the pool.

 That pool trip disaster combined with our past two weekend trips not being so fun had left me feeling like we could never have fun as a family out in public again.  So it was very nice to go to the beach and have everyone happy the whole time.

 For a lot of the time Veronica was content to put sand into buckets.  She also liked to smash any castle I attempted to make.

 Brandon and the twins spent a lot of time collecting sea shells.  We have plans to make a big collage for girls craft night.

And Derrick got in the water!  I was so proud of him.  Last time we came he didn't want to get in the water, but this time he liked splashing in it.  I really haven't mentioned this before, but Derrick has started speech therapy and occupational therapy here.  (And by here I mean 35 minutes away in Dothan - I'm still really annoyed about the drive.)  He goes to two different offices, but by a strange coincidence both his therapists are named Laura.  He's making lots of progress with them.

 Charlotte and Lydia loved having the waves crash onto them and push them around.  At one point I was standing in the water with them.  A huge wave crashed into Charlotte's front and knocked her onto her back.  The wave pushed her about 10 feet on its way to the shore.  It was so funny to watch her go shooting by me.  She thought it was hilarious too.

 The girls played in the water for a long time.

 For the most part Veronica was pretty happy on the shore, but I wanted her to play in the water too.  I brought her out on my lap and I'd hold her while the waves crashed into us.  Derrick joined us and we had so much fun getting hit by waves together.  Derrick and Veronica would let out peels of laughter every time the water hit them.

 It was such a nice day.  There was a nice breeze that helped keep us cool even when we weren't in the water.  And the waves and the clouds were so pretty to watch. This was definitely one of the better Saturday we've had in a while and it did a lot to restore my confidence as a mom.

 Before we left the girls made sand angels.

 I'm pretty certain that's a piece of an apple in Veronica's mouth, but she did eat a lot of sand so who knows what it is for sure.

 My poor winter deprived children have to resort to making snow angels out of sand instead of snow.

And here are all the kids zonked out in the car as we drove back home.  Charlotte's eyes are open in this picture, but she was asleep right after I took it.

Yes, some days are hard, but some days are really really good.

Privacy Change and Tips

I know I swore I'd never do it, but I'm going to take this blog private.  But don't worry it's only for a little bit.

Brandon starts SERE school next week.  SERE stands for Survive, Evade, Resist, and Escape.  A lot of what goes on in SERE school is classified so I don't know the details, but basically Brandon will get to play Macgyver for a few days and then get treated like a Prisoner of War.  He's oddly excited about the whole thing.

During the prisoner of war segment of training, the people in charge are known to use a soldier's online information against him.   They'll try to psych him out with mentions of his family members and other info like that.  I'm making sure that they wont have very much info about me. I already have this blog set so that it doesn't appear on search engines, but I figured I might as well take it all the way private, just to be in the safe side.

So don't be surprised if you can't find this blog in the next few days.  I'll bring it back when Brandon is done with SERE in late July.  If you don't think you can survive that long send me your e-mail and I'll add you to the list of people who can read it while its private.

While we are on the subject of privacy I have a few things I want to bring up.  I'm really careful with how much of my info is available online.  Illguth is a very uncommon last name and so I'm willing to bet that I'm the only Valerie Illguth in the world.  So even though I'm comfortable posting a lot about my life online, I've taken steps to make sure that it doesn't all pop up for anyone doing a google search to see.

I want to share some of the things I've done to protect my privacy.  I'm hoping that you have already done these things too, but in case you haven't hopefully you'll learn something from this.

White Pages - want to see something really scary?  Type your name and state into www.whitepages.com. No really, go do it right now.

Then click full profile.

Yeah, that's a map showing the exact location of your home address.  Pretty freaky when you think about it.

I was shocked when I found that out.  I hear all the time about how unsafe Facebook is and how ISIS is going to track down military families and blab blah blah, but no one ever mentions that your home address is readily available on white pages.

Fortunately its fairly easy to fix.  This post from Fight Cyber Stalking explains how to do it. http://www.fightcyberstalking.org/remove-whitepages-com-public-listing/

Blogger - I used to have this blog available to search engines, but then I decided I wasn't comfortable with that.  However, I didn't want to go completely private because that's just one giant hassle for everyone involved.  (I pretty much stop reading any blog that goes private.)  Thankfully there is a nice middle of the road option.  I can hide all the content from search engines, but my friends can still read it.

It's really easy to do.  Just go to the Settings tab on Blogger.  Then click on privacy.  Select No for the option that says "Let search engines find your blog?"  Here's a picture of what everything looks like.

If you have a blog where you talk about your family - even if you haven't posted on it in a while - you should definitely think about making this small change.

Facebook - I'm still surprised at the number of people who don't realize that Facebook's default setting is to have your profile set to public. So if you haven't ever done anything with your Facebook privacy settings then EVERYTHING you post is available for anyone to see. (No matter how many times you re-post those stupid viral warnings telling your friends to change the way your stuff shows up in their settings.) And even if you have changed things in the past you still want to check your settings from time to time.

Locking down your privacy on Facebook can be a time consuming task, but there is an easy way to check to see what shows up on your profile.  Click on your name to go to your profile page.  Then click on the three little dots next to the View Activity Log button.  Then select the View As option.

That will show you what your profile looks like to the public.  I was actually shocked to look this up a few months ago and find out that more was showing up than I thought.  I took some time to make sure that hardly anything shows up now.

To change who sees your post you need to manage your privacy settings.  Here is a video explaining how to change your privacy settings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6sadi57anA  The narrator's English is a little odd, but she does a great job of showing you where to go.  Plus this video shows the most up to date look of Facebook. (at lot of online tutorials show older versions of Facebook with tabs and options that no longer exist.)

Other sites: Another thing that will help you keep your info more private is to do a google search for your name.  You'll be able to see what comes up and decide if they are things you want everyone to be able to see.  One thing I recently changed was the settings on my Youtube account.  All my subscriptions showed up and I didn't really want those up there.  In the past I've also had to make changes to my Amazon account to make sure my lists weren't public.

In a perfect world we wouldn't have to worry about any of this, but unfortunatly there are a few crazy people who ruin it for the rest of us.  Hopefully I've shared some things that will help you be more safe online.

Father's Day and other Stuff

Can we talk for a minute about how I feel about my life?  Lately I've been really frustrated with myself. I mean, so many things seem to be darn near perfect- Brandon and I have a beautiful home, he's working on his dream to be a professional pilot, we have a comfortable income, we have great kids - but I feel like I'm not measuring up.  I feel like I should be doing more, being more, being better.    

After a lot of soul searching I've realized that I don't get a lot of satisfaction from being a stay at home mom.  Don't get me wrong, I love my kids, but I don't like being constantly assaulted by their neediness and their clingy-ness and their whining, and their fighting.  Over all my kids are great, but the fact remains that I have FOUR very young children.  And it's been wearing on me.  I often feel like a terrible parent. 

For a while I thought that I was just tired.  Tired from taking care of the kids while Brandon was away, tired from running the house by myself, tired from worrying about the move.  But now I've had a lot of time to relax and I'm still not very happy.  I've realized that my problem isn't that I'm tired - it's that I lack motivation.  And I lack motivation because I lack any real opportunity to do something besides be a stay at home mom (at least for the foreseeable future).  I'm just kind of stuck here, taking care of my needy little kids, and wishing the time away.  

I've felt all this before, but I've always kind of pushed the thoughts aside.  I've told myself, "things will be better in Alabama."  But now I'm in Alabama and things are better, but I'm not. 

So where do I go from here?  Oddly enough, admitting that I hate my "job," kind of made me feel better about it.  Brandon and I were talking and he mentioned that some of the things I was saying reminded him of how he felt on his mission.  Most people talk about their mission in glowing terms.  They talk about how much they loved it.  But for Brandon his mission was mostly disappointing and discouraging.  Looking back he can see how those two years impacted his life, but at the time he often felt it was a waste of time.  But he kept at it, and got through it.  Now he can look back on it from 11 years and say something like, "that was a hard time in my life.  I'm glad I went through it and I'm even more glad I'm done with it." 

During our talk I realized that I don't have to LOVE this time with my kids.  That it's even okay to hate it occasionally.  What is important is to keep showing up.  And in 10 years I'll be able to look back on these crazy pre-school age days, and say I'm so glad that phase is over. 

So that's where I'm at right now.  I'm honestly feeling more at peace with myself and my life than I have in several weeks.  It's a good feeling. 

Let's take a look at the pictures from the past week or so.  

We've discovered the magic that is the neighborhood pool.  We go there about once or twice a week and the kids love it.  Sometimes we go as a family and sometimes either Brandon or I will just take the twins.  Swimming always wears the kids out and they go to sleep so well.  It's wonderful.  Here's Lydia after a trip to the pool.             

 And here's Charlotte.  The only downside to these pictures is that we had previously made arrangements with some friends from the ward to watch the kids while we went to see Jurassic World. So we had to wake the girls up to take them to the babysitters.  I thought they would fall back asleep and that Derrick and Veronica would fall asleep too, but instead they were all still wide awake when we came to pick them up after the movie.  So for future reference we wont go swimming before date night.

The movie was really great by the way.  I think I had a smile on my face almost the whole movie (except the scary parts.)  The funny thing is that I totally bought the idea of real dinosaurs, but I just couldn't get over the fact that the main lady was wearing heels the whole time.  That just seemed so implausible.  

We were hoping the kids would sleep in the next morning, but alas they were up around 7:00.  All the kids were super grumpy.  We wanted to go visit Providence Canyon State Park, and we assumed the kids would sleep on the way.  We weren't so lucky and so we arrived there with even grumpier kids.  I wrote about the trip on my travel blog so you can read about the whole thing there.  Overall it was a great place to visit, but the grumpy kids came very close to ruining the trip. Still, we got some nice pictures out of the deal.

 The kids did fall asleep on the way home.  They all woke up a lot happier so we ended up stopping off at a McDonalds in Dothan for dinner.

 I know I keep promising a post all about Fort Rucker, and it really might happen this week.  But again. in the meantime here is another random picture.  This is the main gate - yes the MAIN gate - to the fort.  All my Fort Hood friends are probably staring at this in shock.  Fort Hood's main gate was at least 8 lanes wide.  I'm always so surprised to see this one that only has two lanes - and one of them is usually closed.  This place is definitely a lot smaller.  (I took this picture through the windshield because I'm always worried the guards are going to think I'm a terrorist taking pictures of the gate.)

 My neighbor went out of town for a few days and she asked us to take care of her dog Daisy.  I decided it would be a good chance to see if we are ready for a pet.  As you all know, Charlotte loves dogs and was asking for one for Christmas last year.  The deal has always been that we wouldn't get a pet until all the kids were potty trained because I just didn't think I could handle being responsible for one more family member's poop.  But lately I've been thinking that maybe we should get a dog sooner than that.  Charlotte started asking for pets like mice and snakes and suddenly a dog didn't seem that bad any more.  So anyway, I said yes to taking care of Daisy.  

Daisy turned out to be the sweetest little dog, and I fell in love with her.  She seemed to know that I was the family member to win over and so she turned on all her charms for me.  She followed me around everywhere, she cuddled up to me on the couch, she sat by my feet while I worked on the computer, and she even slept on my bed at night.

Having Daisy around showed me a whole new side of Brandon's personality.  He grew up with two dogs and I never realized how much he's missed having a dog until I saw him play with Daisy.  The kids loved her too.  Before the first day was even over I'd decided that we need to get a dog.  I don't quite know when we will (I'm kind of thinking we'll give one to the girls for their 5th birthday) but we definitely will get one.

 I can't remember while Lydia wanted me to take her picture, but I love how happy she looks.

 I took the camera along on one of our trips to the pool.  When I was a kid we would go swimming maybe once or twice a year.  So to visit a pool once or twice a week makes me feel very affluent.

 I just love how cute Veronica looks in her swimming suit.  I love her chubby little legs.

 Charlotte and Lydia are really brave and love to put their heads under the water.  So we bought them goggles to help them see better when they are under there.

 The lifeguards had to take a 15 minute break about 5 minutes after we got to the pool.  So we hung out in the shade of the community office.

 Derrick was not happy about waiting.

 Soon enough we got to go back to the pool.  I love the beach entry.  It makes me feel better about taking all of our young kids swimming.

 Derrick and Veronica love to jump into my arms at about the 2 foot deep part.  One day I'd love to get Derrick into some sort of diving class.  He's always been really good at jumping off of stuff and I think he would love to do high dives.

A few weeks ago the girls told me they wanted to decorate Daddy's car again.  I told them we could do it for Father's Day.  We talked a lot about how fun it would be to surprise him when he came out of work.  The only "problem" was that Brandon has a really laid back work schedule right now.  He finished up his 3 weeks of WOBC (Warrant Officer Basic Course) last week.  Now he's just on a hold over until his SERE (Survive Evade Resist Escape) course starts in about a week. He usually goes to PT at 6:00 in the morning, comes home around 7:15 for breakfast and a shower, reports to work at 9:00, and is back home by 10:00.  He goes back around 1:00 and then is home again around 2:00.  He has a few things to take care of online at home, but overall it's an awesome schedule - unless you are trying to plan a surprise.

I thought we had our chance when Brandon was assigned to do HOST (Helicopter Overwater Survival Training) on Thursday  It's basically where he is put into a helicopter cockpit that is submerged in water.  He has to show that he can get out without panicking.  Brandon isn't a strong swimmer and so he's been taking lessons and working to improve.

He went to the training early in the morning and wasn't home by 7:30 so I thought he'd be gone all day.  I took the kid to the store to buy the stuff for his surprise.  But when we came back home to make the signs he was already home.  I told the girls, "if Daddy asks where we were say, `dont ask questions.`"  Lydia walked in the house and the first thing she said was "Don't ask questions."

Brandon hadn't passed the swim test which meant he gets to go swimming every day for PT until he can pass the test.  It also meant we'd lost our chance to work on our surprise.  He caught wind of our need for him to be gone so he made himself scarce in the afternoon.  The girls colored letters that I traced on poster board.  Then I cut out the letters and taped them to a sun visor we'd bought.

The next day, we all innocently said goodbye to Brandon when he went to work at 9:00.  Then we raced to get in the car and drive to the parking lot outside his work.  I knew we probably had less than 20 minutes before he would be off work for the morning so we had to work fast.  I'd hoped to put the sunshade up in the windshield, but I'd forgot that the jeep is a lot smaller than the Honda so we just propped it up on the front seat with some treats we'd bought.

 Then I taped another message to the back window.

 Charlotte and Lydia had fun decorating.  They put candy under his window visors and they had fun imagining what it would be like when the candy fell on Daddy.  I knew our time was running out because soldiers were returning to their cars all around us.  I hurried and got all the kids back in the car and then we drove off.  It was hardly 3 minutes later that I got a text from Brandon telling us how cute we were for decorating his car.

 He was going swimming, and would be home in an hour or so. (In case you can't tell, he's basically being paid to learn to swim right now)  The kids and I went to the library to return and pick up some more books and then we went for a little drive.  We went up to the lake here on post to do some recon on the cabins that are up there.  My family is getting together here for Christmas and I reserved two of these cabins for some of my family to stay in. This is what they look like from the back.  It's going to be such a fun get together.

 And this is a quick shot of the lake.  So pretty.  One day I'll have to tell you the story about the dream I had about this lake.

On Saturday we were planning on going down to one of the Florida beaches, but I woke up pretty tired.  Brandon wasn't feeling up to a big adventure either.  And our kids didn't have the best track record for behaving themselves out in public.  So we decided to just stay home and relax.  I spent probably three hours sitting on the couch with Derrick.  He loves to watch train movies on youtube with me.  I love trains - but not that much.  Fortunately he's pretty content if I'm just sitting there and occasionally say things like, "where is it?"  "There it is!" "Choo Choo" "Tracks" and of course, "Train."  the rest of the time I'm free to read a book.  So that's what I did.  (I was reading an unauthorized biography of Tom Cruise.  Highlights include the fact that his real last name is Mapother and that Scientology is whacked up)

Brandon on the other hand was creating a master piece.  I was vaguely aware that he was doing something with cardboard in the playroom but nothing prepared me for the final product.  Check it out.  He made a boat.  A BOAT!

 The girls loved it of course.

 He even put a sail on it.

 And made a wheel.

 And then helped the girls dress like pirates.  I think this pretty much cemented his role as best dad ever.

Brandon had a pretty great father's day today.  I feel bad because he ended up cooking most of dinner, but he assures me that he loves to cook.  We invited some new friends from church over for dinner and it was fun to get to know them.  We also spent some time talking with my parents about all the changes that have been going on in their lives lately (and boy have they had some exciting changes.)

I'm really looking forward to this next week.  Now that I've finally sorted through my emotional issues I think I'll be able to live my life instead of analyze my life.   It's nice to feel normal again.