Two and a half years later….

It’s been 2 1/2 years since the last update to this blog. A lot has happened, so here’s a short update on our lives.

We moved from MCB Hawaii to MCAS Yuma in September of 2011, shortly after Alexander redeployed home from a 22 month long deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. He was promoted to Captain during our time at Yuma and made a Company Commander. In August he left active duty to finish his final two years of law school and be an almost full time dad. He’s currently a reservist on Quantico one weekend a month.

I (Jen) continued to be a wife, mother, educator, and Marine through a move back to CONUS, back to Hawaii, and then back to CONUS one more time. After a 9 month long TAD to the Marine Corps detachment at Fort Knox, KY I went back to Hawaii just in time for Alexander to be redeployed from Afghanistan. I went from reserve duty to IRR status while we were in Yuma and concentrated on being a mom full time. In May 2012 we had Micah and I quickly got back into shape to attend OCS and TBS at Quantico. Right now I’m in week 5 of 26 at The Basic School. I get to go home on the weekends when we don’t have any field training scheduled. I have the option of living off-base, but the 55 minute drive to and from Alexandria/Quantico means it’s better for me to live in the BOQ and go home on the weekends.

Reed is still Reed. She’s 10 going on 40. She’s in the 5th grade and loving it. Her role as the oldest is one she still takes seriously. With me at Quantico and away from my family she frequently steps in and acts like a mother to her youngest siblings.

Brookes is turning 8 in April of 2013. He’s still energetic, but has calmed down a bit. He’s in the 3rd grade and is eager to move on to the 4th in a few months. He and Madeline always do their schoolwork together. He usually finishes first and then waits, sometimes impatiently, for her to finish her work so they can go play together.

Madeline is 6 now. She’s even 6 according to herself. She’s still a daddy’s girl who has him wrapped around her little finger. Brookes remains her best friend in the entire world, but she also spends some time playing with our neighbors kids. She’s in the 2nd grade and loving every minute.

Beau turned 5 in December. He still has his long brown hair that I refuse to let anyone cut until he tells me he wants it cut. He looks like me but he has his dad’s stubborn streak. I think he doesn’t want to get a haircut because Alexander really wants him to. It annoys him to be constantly asked, and he wants to do some annoying right back. I love that boy.

Reagan and Maddox are 3 now and in preschool. They come as a pair. They’re almost always together. 3-4 mornings a week they wake up in the same bed even though they went to sleep in separate beds the night before. When one has an ill-advised plan to do something, the other is right there beside him to lend a hand. They each take their own share of the credit, but they also take the blame for their mistakes and own up to it. I can’t complain about that.

Bennett is the newest addition to our family, but not by much. He’s our foster son currently, but soon we can start the process to adopt him. After being adopted from Ethiopia and then losing both his adoptive parents in a car accident he came to our family. Due to being in a group home for a few months before he came to us he was slightly developmentally delayed, but he caught up after being given more attention and being in a stable home.

Micah is our youngest. He was born early on 23 May 2012 with a full head of dark brown hair and a set of lungs that reminds me of Madeline’s. When he cries it’s very loud, but lucky for us he rarely cries. He’s usually smiling and laughing at one thing or another. I’ve never seen a baby so happy all the time. He’s spoiled by his siblings who want to be around him all the time when he isn’t sleeping. I don’t think Micah will ever have to worry about not having friends.

Since our move back to the DC area, my parents decided to sell their house in Honolulu. They bought the house before we PCS’ed to the MCB and intended to retire there. And they did for a total of 3 years. At which point they decided they wanted to be less than an ocean away from their grandchildren. With me being away from my family for nearly 9 months of officer training, plus whatever length of time for my MOS school, they offered to temporarily move to NoVA to help Alexander out since I can’t live at home right now. It’s taken a load off my mind to know he has help from them. We have a part-time nanny who comes to help with the kids from 0700-1300 so it’s not totally up to them to watch 8 kids while Alexander is in classes Monday-Thursday. I’m confident that he could handle everything with the help of the nanny, but I’m thankful my parents are so willing to move closer to us so they can help. I know Alexander loves having them around as much as our kids do. He’s made it clear how grateful he is to have Big Daddy to take a few kids out to a museum, and how much he loves my mama’s willingness to cook a meal almost every night so he can spend time with each child. I don’t know what will happen once I finish my MOS school and Alexander graduates law school, but I hope my parents decide to stay in CONUS so they can see all of us often.

That’s what has been going on with our family over the past few years. A deployment completed, 3 moves, 2 more children, enlisted to officer, continuing law school.

Beware

Everyone should beware. This Marine now has a Twitter. @MarineGreenPoPo is my name. Marine because I’m a Marine. Green Because our uniforms are green. And PoPo because I’m a military police officer, and police officers are known as the po-po.
I intend to use my new status at a Twitter member to pester my wife whenever possible, because I just love her that much.

Jen is not perfect

You did not misread that. You can also pick your jaws up off the floor. I did actually just put into black and white (or whatever the background and font colors happen to be on this blog) that I think Jen is not perfect. While some readers may find it hard to believe that I don’t think Jen hung the moon, it’s still true. I love my wife as much as a man can love a woman. She and the kids mean the world to me. But she’s far from perfect. She gets on my last nerve sometimes. She also annoys the tar out of me with some of the stuff she does. Here are some examples:

-I really do think that the woman is incapable of making a decent pot of coffee in the morning, because I’ve never tasted any evidence that points to the fact that she actually knows how to make coffee.

-She seems to be physically unable to push the button that lowers the garage door (even though it’s right by the door going into the house), because my father-in-law has told me how often he drives by and sees it open, therefore having to get out of his car and push the button himself so no one will just walk into our house.

-She doesn’t pay attention to the various alerts in her car telling her she needs an oil change or her tire pressure is low, so Big Daddy has to check her Expedition every week to make sure she’s not ignoring something important, then convince her that oil changes actually are really important.

-She absolutely refuses to deal with insects/other Hawaiian wildlife that wander into the house, so she calls Big Daddy to take care of them.

(Are you sensing a pattern here? Big Daddy does a lot.)

-She finds it completely acceptable to let the kids wear their pajamas all day if she isn’t planning to go anywhere.

-I don’t always care for the way she uses her southern charm and Georgia accent to get what she wants from me, and her parents.

-She will not cut Beau’s hair so that he doesn’t look like a little girl.

-She frequently takes my Mustang out on errands when she’s taking 2 or less kids with her, and since she drives like a maniac I worry about the safety of not only my wife and kids, but of my beautiful car.

-She makes our children look like they belong in a stinkin’ Gap Kids/Baby Gap window display with all the preppy clothes she dresses them in.

-I have serious doubts about her ability to consume any beverage besides water and Mountain Dew. (Okay that doesn’t so much annoy me as it just seems weird to me)

Those are just a few of the reasons why Jen is not perfect. That’s not to say that I love her any less. In fact, I love her more because of those things. When we were dating, I had no idea what I would be getting myself into by marrying Jen. She was an almost perfect girlfriend/fiancée. She would literally do everything she could for Reed and me, right down to getting less sleep so that she could cook us meals every night, or leave something in the freezer for me to heat up later. She lived 25 minutes away from Reed and me until we were married, but she still made time to make sure Reed and I were well taken care of, despite her very busy schedule as a Drill Instructor. I’m not the smartest man on earth, but I’m no dummy. I knew very well that she was trying too hard, and that once we were married she probably wouldn’t try to keep up the act. After we did get married I found out that she is actually really great at taking care of her family and the house, and she enjoys it.  That part wasn’t an act at all. (I’m very thankful that she enjoys it, because I really love coming home to a spotless house and supper cooking so I have more time to spend with my family.) However, after we were married I also found out that she annoys the living daylights out of me sometimes. I found out things that I couldn’t possibly have known beforehand, because I never lived with her. One of the most annoying things I found out on the very day that we were married is that she has the uncanny ability to take up an entire bed while she’s sleeping. I’ve alluded to this fact in previous blog posts, but it’s worth repeating. SHE TAKES UP THE ENTIRE BED! And for the life of me, I cannot figure out how. Jen is not a large woman. She’s a Marine who is capable of sleeping in a tiny twin size rack in the middle of a war zone. And yet, when at home in our California King size bed (which I bought because I thought perhaps I would have *some* room to sleep in it) she manages to take up the entire thing somehow. And it annoys me. Like any other red-blooded, heterosexual man with an unbelievably beautiful wife, I like to be able to sleep in the same bed, nay, the same room, as her when I’m not deployed. She makes it hard to do though. I’ll admit that I was more than a little annoyed when I was home on leave and was pretty much forced to go sleep on the couch in the basement on more than one occasion because Jen left me no room in our bed. Granted, one of those nights I did get a visit from Madeline not even 5 minutes after I had laid down, and so we got to lay on the couch together watching Finding Nemo while she went back to sleep with her head resting on my chest. As a father, I will never be annoyed that being kicked out of the bed by my wife meant I got some time with my daughter in the wee hours of the morning. But let’s be honest, I could have just as easily held Madeline if I was in my own bed.
I have more than enough idiosyncrasies of my own, and I know for a fact that I make Jen mad. A lot. Trust me when I say that she’s much closer to perfect than I am. I’m always doing something to T her off, like leaving my socks in the middle of the bedroom floor, leaving my shaving cream splashed on the side of the shower walls, and always forgetting things. So really, we’re equal in our levels of perfection. She gets mad at me a lot, and she’s always doing things to annoy me. It’s a good balance.

So you see, I’m not quite the dedicated follower of Jen as you all thought I was. She’s my wife and I love her so much that is hurts sometimes, and I never want to know what it’s like to live without her. The past (almost) 5 years have been the greatest of my life and I wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world. But good God, that woman really irks me sometimes.

(Just to be clear, this post wasn’t written because I’m mad at Jen or anything. I’m not venting because she did something in particular that annoyed me. I just thought that I should paint an accurate picture of our marriage, given that most of my mentions of Jen make it seem like I worship the ground she walks on. I love her, but I know she has plenty of faults.)

Goodbye Hawaii

Alexander and I talked about it for about an hour, and discussed the pros and cons, and we made the decision that I should take the position at Fort Knox’s Marine detachment. Provided the kids are okay with it. We don’t want to disrupt their lives anymore than we have to, so we want them to be okay with moving back to the mainland. My parents are completely on board with moving along with us so they can continue to be a part of our daily lives.

If the kids are agreeable to the move, we would be leaving Hawaii pretty soon. My parents are renting their house that’s 3 doors down from us, so it’s easy for them to move. Since Alexander and I own our house, my parents will take over the remainder of the mortgage and use it for their vacation home here in Hawaii, then move back to the mainland shortly after the kids and I do. We hope to find a few houses close together in Louisville that won’t require a really long commute to Fort Knox.  It’s technically a 9-10 month long TAD, so I’ll be done with it not long before Alexander redeploys back to Hawaii next July. After the TAD we’ll just fly back to Hawaii and live in this house in Ewa Beach until we’re scheduled to PCS in November of 2011.

Overall it should be a good thing for us. I’ll be on track to make Gunny much sooner than I thought. Most likely before I’m even 30. Since my parents are coming with us I don’t have to worry about finding schools and childcare for the kids. I’ll continue to homeschool the older ones on my days off, and my parents are thrilled to be able to watch all the kids on the days when I’ll be on the post working. They love spending time with all the kids, and I’m thankful for a place to take the kids where I know they’re safe. The kids are always excited to go to see Big Daddy and my mother anyway, so it all works out well.

All good things must come to an end

We’ve been in Hawaii on a three year assignment since mid-December of 2008. Alexander, Reed, and Brookes actually moved here in late November, right after Thanksgiving, but myself, Madeline, and Beau followed a week and a half later after things in the continental U.S. were wrapped up. Hawaii is great, and I love the constant fresh air and warm temps. It’s great for the kids to be able to go outside and play practically every day of the year. There’s a lot of history at Pearl Harbor that I want our kids to learn about. I like my new reserve unit at the MCB. My parents moved down here to be able to spend more time with the kids and me. I love the house we have here. If it had one more bedroom somewhere it would be the perfect house for us.
But, as the title of this post says, all good things must (may) come to an end. I got a call from my CO’s assistant saying the Captain needed to meet with me in exactly 1 hour. If I wasn’t such an outstanding example of a Marine, this would have had me worried. But since I have a perfect military file, I wasn’t at all worried about why she wanted to see me. So I put on my uniform, dropped the boys off down the street with Big Daddy, took the girls to a store nearby to meet up with my mother, and stole Alexander’s Mustang to go onto MCB Hawaii and meet with the Captain. Since I’ve only been drilling with this reserve unit for about three months, I had no idea why I needed to go to a meeting, but I knew I’d soon find out. When I got there and found out the reason, I was surprised. It seems that with my job skills and security clearance, I’m “needed” (Marine Corps language for “we strong suggest”) in one of two slots back on the mainland. However, given that Alexander is currently deployed, and I’m the sole parents for our six kids, the suggestion wasn’t as strong as it could have been. Basically I have three choices. I can turn down the new position and stay with my current reserve unit in Hawaii, I can go to the Marine Corps detachment at Fort Lewis in Washington state, or the Marine Corps detachment at Fort Knox in Kentucky. In both positions I would go as an active duty Marine working in the reserve unit, but in reality I would only be working 2-3 days a week because it is just a reserve unit. The advantage of the last two are that I would be almost guaranteed a promotion to Gunnery Sergeant within two years because of the job I do (which I can’t give any details about, so don’t ask), and I think being a Gunny would be a great thing. The disadvantage is that it’s considered a 1 year TAD, and so I wouldn’t be able to get much, if any, time off when Alexander goes on leave again next year a few months before redeploying home. The job is about 85%/15% office work/being in the field with the units, which would leave me a decent amount of time to spend with the kids.
If I decide to take one of the positions, I’ll probably choose Fort Knox because it’s closer to family, is in a better area, and has much better weather than the Seattle area does. I still need to think it over and discuss it with my parents, Alexander, and the kids before making a final decision. I have two weeks to give the Captain an answer, and then another three weeks to get everything wrapped up here if I choose to go. I’ll post my decision here, on Facebook, and on Twitter when I come to a conclusion.

Back in Iraq

I’m back in Iraq after about 23 hours of travel time. I took a flight from Hawaii to Japan, then a transport to Iraq. I do so love to be in the air for that long… Not.

I had a great time being home with my family. I’m still laughing about the look on Jen’s face when she saw me. I wish I had taken a picture of it. The scream that Madeline let out was something that would have shattered glass if there had been any actual glass near her. Her reaction may have been better than Jen’s actually. But I digress.
Being home after 10 months in Iraq was awesome. I knew I missed Jen and the kids, but I didn’t realize how much until I was back in Hawaii and with them. I got the chance to spend some time with Jen, which is something I always miss when I’m away. Anyone who knows me, or reads this blog, knows that I love Jen a lot, and I miss her while we’re apart. Being in Iraq on a base that’s 90% men means that the conversation is usually not the best. I love my job, and I love the people I work with because we’re a family. But I miss getting to sit down and have a conversation with Jen. One of my favorite times of the day is when the kids are all sleeping soundly because they’ve had so much fun that day, and I can sit on the couch with Jen and talk about something besides guns, ammo, bombs, and why the water in the showers is ice cold. I really enjoy talking to my wife because she always has something interesting to say and always has good insight into whatever is going on. I love to sit in front of the TV and watch whatever show or DVD that Jen picks out, while pretending I don’t want to watch another one of her chick flicks, but really enjoying every moment I get to spend just sitting there. I also enjoy seeing her happy, which is why I spent about $500 getting her a new iPhone 4 that she assured me that she “needed” so badly that she had to upgrade 7 months early. The good thing is that now I have her old 3GS to replace my BlackBerry which has sand and dirt practically melted into the outer shell. With a new Otterbox case, her old iPhone should actually make it through this deployment.
Having the chance to be with my kids was also a blessing. I get updates on them on an almost daily basis and pictures on a weekly basis, but seeing them in person was a gift. One of our favorite things to do has always been to take each of the kids out individually to make sure they get enough one-on-one time with us. I got the chance to take Reed to the beach to play in the sand and swim a little. Brookes wanted to visit the various memorials at Pearl Harbor, and Beau wanted to tag along, so I took them out for awhile to see everything they wanted to. The twins are just happy to be alive, so I didn’t actually take them out alone anywhere. But I did give them their first feeding of the day most mornings, and gave them a few lessons in the finer points of playing Halo 3. I think they enjoyed it. Madeline and I made plans to not only go on a lunch date to her favorite pizza place, then spend a few hours shopping, but also to have a tea party so she could turn 3. (she’s waited since last October to “be 3”, so we had a killer tea party)
I love all my kids equally and without boundaries, and it’s hard on me when I have to leave them. It’s hard to leave Jen too, but I know that she understands the reasons I have to leave. My kids on the other hand are another matter entirely. Reed and Brookes have both been alive long enough to know that I deploy sometimes and that so far I’ve always come back alive. Beau doesn’t really understand why I leave, but he takes it pretty well because I tell him that I’ll always do my best to come home. The twins are just now learning to sit up on their own, so I’m not worried about explaining it to them quite yet. My biggest concern is Madeline. Madeline is like my little shadow when I’m at home. She’s very attached to me and always has been. I worry about her because her reaction to me being gone is nothing short of depressing, for the both of us. She’s a smart 3 year old, but she is just 3. I don’t expect her to be completely okay with me being home for such a short amount of time before leaving again. But the way she reacts to me leaving worries Jen and me. Before I deployed last September I had several discussions with her about me leaving and why I had to go, simply to attempt to make the whole situation easier for her. That seemed to work fairly well because she went back to normal after about a day, according to Jen. She was still sad about me leaving, but later the same day she was back to playing with her siblings. This time she’s been much more depressed and doesn’t want to do much of anything except sit in my chair in the basement. It’s heartbreaking to know that she’s so upset and there’s little we can do about it. Jen spent some extra time with her on Friday and Saturday, but she’s still fairly apathetic about life in general. Friday night she fell asleep in Jen’s lap while they watched TV after everyone else was asleep, and woke up less than 10 minutes after Jen put her in bed. Reed woke up and heard her crying in her bed and took her into the master bedroom to Jen. I’m hoping she sleeps better on Saturday night and this doesn’t become a problem for her. There’s no worse feeling than knowing someone you love is upset, and not being able to be with them. If anyone out there is the praying type, please pray that Madeline goes back to normal soon.
When I was waiting for my transport back to Iraq on…whatever day it was in Japan…I talked to Jen on Facebook for awhile. We were discussing when I would be on leave again and how maybe it should be closer to when I would be home for good, for the kids’ sake. Then we considered that maybe I shouldn’t even come to Hawaii during my leave, and that Jen should just meet me somewhere and we can spend a week together. I would still get to see her, which is always great, but I wouldn’t have to upset any of the kids by being there for a week  and then leaving again. The downside to going on a vacation with just Jen is that I wouldn’t see the kids for another year from now, and if anything were to happen to me between my leave and redeploying home, I wouldn’t have seen my kids for 9-10 months, and they wouldn’t have seen me.
There’s a lot to consider in the next few months. Obviously I don’t expect anything to happen to me, and I’ll always do my best to get home to my family. But there’s always some chance that things will go wrong and I won’t make it back alive. I’d hate to die knowing that my kids were upset at my seemingly constant in and out, or that the fear of upsetting them kept me away from them for a year and they never got to see me.

This is why I don’t hang around with other women

I read a lot of blogs. I never comment on the blogs, but I read a lot of them. Some of these blogs have message boards and other social networking type applications attached to them. I occasionally post on a few of them, but I’m not a regular, per se, on any of them. There’s a reason for that. I don’t care to subject myself to reading the mean and, more often than not, uncalled for things that a lot of women say when they’re in a group of people who they think are their friends. I’m the kind of person who will read some threads and messages if I have a free minute in my day, but I certainly don’t spend all my time replying and starting new threads like a lot of the people on the message boards do. I don’t see the point in engaging in a conversation with people who will turn on you if they decide they don’t like you anymore. I have more important things to take care of in daily life. Their names are Reed, Brookes, Madeline, Beau, Reagan, and Maddox.
But truthfully, with Alexander home on leave right now, I’m finding slightly more time in my day to read the blogs I normally read and look at the message boards attached to them. As I said, I don’t reply to threads often, and I don’t read the ones that don’t interest me. Why waste the time? However, in the last few days of reading one particular message board (I won’t give the name of it, because I think the woman in charge of it is a perfectly nice woman and I really do enjoy her blog) I’ve come to realize that there’s a very good reason why I don’t normally hang out with other women. Women are the meanest creatures that God ever put on earth. They will take any flaw in a person and drag it out until they feel it’s been exploited enough, and then sit back and laugh with their other “friends”. That doesn’t appeal to me in any way, shape, or form. Maybe it’s because I don’t have time for that kind of thing. Maybe it’s because my parents taught me that people who do those kind of things are probably just unhappy with their own life and need to make someone else feel like nothing as well. Whatever the reason, I don’t bother myself with reading garbage from people like that.
There is a particular instance that has made me realize that I’ll probably never again go back to one particular message board/community. It’s made up of around 95% (or more) women, which should have been one indication that it wasn’t my kind of place. The way a certain group of women behaved toward another member of the community was shocking to me. They took this person and practically eviscerated them. Instead of just quietly letting the person know that they weren’t believable, these women very publicly brought out everything bad and then took pleasure in the resulting chaos. That’s sickening. As a woman, I hate seeing things like this because it only serves to stereotype women even more as being heartless, mean and catty on the inside, but all pretty and polite on the outside. Whether or not this person was telling the truth is no ones concern. There was nothing that would indicate that it was all a lie, and nothing to indicate that it was the truth. It was all circumstantial. But that didn’t stop a group of women from “protecting” their “friends”, which is really just a nice way of saying getting a kick out of humiliating a person. It’s absolutely sickening.

There’s a very good chance that some of the women who frequent that community will read this, and they’re going to know exactly what I’m referring to. I hope they do. I hope they know that behavior like that isn’t welcomed by everyone. I’m one of the people who doesn’t welcome it.
As I said before, I’ll still read the blog that’s written by the woman who owns the community, because she’s a lovely woman who is willing to share her story. She also makes a little bit of money from the ads on her blog, and I’m happy to support her in that. But I will not return to the community attached to the blog because I don’t agree with the way that some of the members are acting. I think it’s repulsive.

Here I go…

I wanted to let you readers know that it’s very possible that you may not hear from me for awhile, if ever again. You see, I fibbed (lie is such a strong word, and I refuse to use it) to my wife and told her that my leave began on Wednesday when I landed in Honolulu at about 10am. It didn’t. It began yesterday (Sunday) when I flew from Iraq, to Germany, then waited for a transport to take me to Japan where I caught a commercial flight into Honolulu. I landed about 45 minutes ago, grabbed my pack, and ran to the parking lot where my father-in-law put my Mustang.  I’m now sitting outside the restaurant where my family and in-laws are eating, waiting for the signal from Jen’s father. Then I’m going to walk in and scare the ever-loving crap out of Jen and my kids (except Reed, who knows I’m coming). I fully expect for Jen to maim me in some way. I’m ready for it though. The entire island may be as risk when I go in there and she finds out I fibbed. Sorry about that. The entire island may also go deaf when Madeline screams at the sight of me. I’m apologizing in advance to anyone who lives here. So put your earplugs in and let’s boogie.

I’m going in! May God have mercy on my poor little Marine soul.

Is it really that wrong?

A few days ago Alexander set his status message on Facebook to say something to the effect of ” I’m looking forward to going home so I can hug and kiss my wife, hug and kiss my kids, and drive my Mustang. Hopefully in that order.” I commented on the status and basically said that it would only be myself and Reed at the airport because she’s the only kid who knows when he’s coming home. I don’t want to tell the other kids yet, because the military is really good at messing things up and delaying flights and I don’t want to disappoint them. Reed is really good at understanding that things change, and she’s okay knowing that if he gets delayed, he will eventually get here. I’d rather Alexander get to surprise the younger kids anyway. I thought that it was a good idea, and Alexander agreed that it would be fun to surprise them all next Wednesday afternoon. Then yesterday evening I received a message in my inbox on Facebook saying that it was mean of me to not tell all the kids that their father is coming home on leave next week. The message was from one of Alexander’s Facebook “friends”, I think. The individual basically said I was a terrible mother for keeping something that big from my kids. While it may be true that Brookes would understand if things go awry, I doubt the others would. Reed is 7 and used to her father being away a lot. Brookes is more used to it than a 5 year old should be, but he still doesn’t like it. Since the next one down is Madeline, and she’s absolutely in love with Alexander, I’m not going to get her hopes up. Beau is too young to understand delays, so he wouldn’t react well. And the twins don’t really care one way or another.
Because of all that, is it really so bad that I’m withholding information from my children? Isn’t it better to give them a good surprise when Alexander walks through the door with us than to disappoint them if he doesn’t get here when scheduled? Being the children of two Marines, life is going to be full of deployments and assignments that will take us away from home for various lengths of time. I’d like to do what I can to keep the letdowns to a minimum, when I can help it. By not telling them that Alexander is coming home for 11 days, I’m not making them look forward to something and then possibly be disappointed if he doesn’t get here when expected. I don’t see how that’s a bad thing to do.

The dreaded day

Readers of this blog have probably caught on to the fact that I’m my wife’s biggest fan. I like her a lot. She is one outstanding example of womanlyness. I like her so much that I just made up a word to describe her. Yep, I like her that much. So in honor her birthday tomorrow I’m going to write a special birthday post for my lovely wife, whom I love. I’m going to list one thing I like about Jen for every year old (read: young) she is. And away we go…

1. She’s hott. It may be stereotypical to say, but it’s true. She’s like a bhut jolokia on the surface of the sun sort of hott.
2. She’s a Marine. While this may not appeal to much of the population, it appeals to me. Marines can do things that no other population can do, and Jen is no exception. Back when we had 3 kids I used to tell people that she could change a diaper, cook a meal, and field strip a rifle all at the same time, with one hand tied behind her back. Now that we have six kids I think her Marine status has made her even more amazing.
3. She’s an outstanding mother. Anyone who knows Jen can see that. But I think when someone is good at something as important as mothering, it should be brought up often. So I’m stating once again that Jen is an amazing mother to our kids and I can’t imagine that anyone is better suited for the role of handling kids with my genes.
4. Her parents are awesome. This may not be anything she had a hand in, but it’s still worth mentioning. I think she’s evidence of what great parenting can produce. Big Daddy and Claudia-Grace Moore raised a great daughter, and then turned right back around and offered to help Jen raise our kids while I’m deployed. They didn’t have to move to Hawaii after Big Daddy’s retirement, but they chose to be an active part of their grandchildren’s lives and remain close-by in case they’re needed. They set a good example to Jen and our kids everyday.
5. She doesn’t know how amazing she is. Anytime someone tells Jen how amazing it is that she’s raising six great kids, how well she handles it, or anything like that, she tells them she’s just doing her job. She doesn’t see anything special about what she does everyday. In truth, what she does everyday is far more than a lot of people do and that makes her amazing by my standards.
6. She’s not a typical officer’s wife. There’s an unspoken rule in the military that says officers socialize with officers, and enlisted socialize with enlisted. The same goes for their families. Well since Jen is an officer’s wife who is also enlisted, she feels that she has the right to break those rules. At least once a month she hosts informal parties for the families of the people serving with me in Iraq. Mostly the people serving under me, who happen to be enlisted. But that doesn’t matter to her. Anyone who has a husband or wife willing to go to combat with me is welcome in our house and backyard.
7. She knows exactly how to get me to come to her side. Even if I don’t know that I want to be on her side, she knows I do. She’s very good at persuading me to look at things from her point of view, even if I don’t agree with it.
8. She always respects my decisions. We are a Christian family, and as such we believe that the husband is the head of the household, and should be the one who leads that household. That doesn’t mean that I’m a dictator. I value Jen’s opinion and input on every decision that will have an impact on our family. She’s my equal in almost every way and I try to treat like my equal. That means that we discuss almost everything that happens in our lives. From the really big things, down the to small things. But in the end she knows that it’s my duty to make the final decision about everything.
9. She can cook. Seriously. That woman can do wonderful things with the most simple ingredients. I think Reed and I both knew we were lacking in the nutritional balance department before Jen came along. Even before we were married she would come to my apartment almost everyday and make sure we had good food to eat for every meal. I was happy to have good healthy food, and Reed was happy to not have to eat burned food all the time.
10. She takes care of me. As I stated above, when Jen and I were dating she used to come over and fix us food. If she knew she wasn’t going to be there the next day, she would make an extra meal for me to heat up so Reed and I would eat well. I knew from the moment I saw her that she was the one for me, but when she cooked for me the first time it made me sure that I had made the right choice. Even now when I come home from work everyday, or am home on leave while deployed, she never expects me to do anything for her.
11. She lets me take care of her. Even though she doesn’t expect anything to be done for her, she still humors me and lets me do things for her. I’m not content to just sit around and watch her clean or cook a meal. I feel the need to be doing something all the time, even if I’m not doing things the way she would normally do them. She never complains or tells me I’m doing it wrong. She just gives me a kiss on the cheek and tells me I’m sweet for helping her out.
12. She plays Xbox with me. Even though she doesn’t like playing Halo with me, she’s always willing to play co-op so we can kick the tar out of some grunts. Honestly, I think she just likes sitting next to me on the loveseat.
13. She made Reed a happy kid. When we got married, then adopted Brookes very shortly after, Reed didn’t react well. She was used to having one or both of us around all the time to be her own personal audience. All that changed when Brookes came home with us. But after some days of Reed not acting correctly, Jen took her aside and explained to that 18 month old that throwing toys at the baby wasn’t a good thing to do, and it needed to stop. So it stopped, and Reed was a happy kid again.
14. She proposed to me when she found out about Brookes. Don’t worry, I proposed properly later on. But it was Jen who first suggested that we get married so that we could adopt Brookes and not have him go into foster care. She didn’t even know my friend who was having the baby and yet she insisted that if it was important to me, it was important to her.
15. She surprised me with a daughter. Okay, so God did the surprising, but Jen carried the kid for 9 months. All throughout Jen’s pregnancy, we thought she was having a boy. We were all set to have a 2nd son. And then out popped my little ray of sunshine, Madeline. Jen would not let the hospital take pictures in the MARPAT onesie we had brought, so I had to go find a 24-hour Wal-Mart at 0430 to buy a little dress for Madeline’s pictures. They both had me wrapped around their little fingers.
16. She convinced me we needed “one more baby”. And therefore, Beau was born. Somehow that boy got about 95% of Jen’s genes, 1% of mine, and 4% of genes from some unknown origin. He’s exactly like Jen, right now to his long brown hair, and cute little pout. I’m happy she decided we needed to have another baby.
17. She pulled a fast one on me and we got two. The twins were not my idea. I thought if we had more kids it would be well into the future and after we were settled somewhere besides Hawaii. But God, and Jen, had other plans and not long after we got to Hawaii she told me she was pregnant. Eventually we found out there were two tadpoles in the tank, and a few months after I left on this deployment I got a phonecall saying she was in premature labor and the boys were coming. Five weeks ahead of schedule came Reagan and Maddox. I was almost sure that the stress of 4 kids under 6, plus newborn twins in the hospital would be too much for even my amazing Marine. But she proved me wrong and handled the stress with an amazing amount of grace.
18. She bucked up and started driving an SUV. When we had 4 kids we all fit in a mini-van very well. Four carseats/booster seats and two adults fit into a Chrysler Town and Country like a dream. Life was good. Then the twins made their appearance and Jen knew it was time for either a huge SUV or a 15 passenger van. Being the cool mother she is, she refused to drive a 15 passenger van and decided that a Ford Expedition was in her future. The thing is, Jen hates large SUV’s. She thinks they’re just too big and unnecessary. I guess she figured out one was necessary…
19. She has an accent. Being from Texas myself I’m no stranger to accents of the southern persuasion. Accents are awesome. But Jen’s Georgia accent is beyond awesome. It’s downright amazing. She reminds me of some of the people in Gone With The Wind who had very strong and very deliberate Georgia accents. Most of theirs were fake, but hers is 100% real and 100% hott.
20. She doesn’t yell. Except maybe when she’s on duty and needs to set some young Marines straight. But at home she never yells. Not at me, the kids, the pets, no one. She never raises her voice even when she’s mad (which, to be fair, is usually at me). She’s very calm and talks things out. She also never yells in the house when she’s trying to find a kid. Our house is a big one, because it has to be in order to contain six kids. Most mothers would walk to the bottom or top of the stairs and yell the kids names to find them. She never does that. She goes around the house and finds the kid/s she’s looking for, even though it’s tedious and arguably a waste of time to check every room where they might be. She’s just awesome like that.
21. She doesn’t make our bedroom too girly. This may seem minor to a lot of guys, but I’m a Marine dadgummit, and I don’t really want flowers all over my bedroom. Jen took this into consideration and chose bedding and all forms of decorations that are not overly girly, but still reflect her sense of style. I wouldn’t want her to have to live in a really butch room, especially since I’m not always there to enjoy it, but I think it’s great that she searched high and low to find things that would suit us both.
22. She makes me happy. It’s that simple. She just makes me happy to be alive and married to her every day of my life. There’s never been a day when I’ve regretted any part of my life with her, because 99% of the time it’s all smooth sailing.
23. She always looks happy when I come home. I know everyday life with six kids isn’t always a bundle of fun. It’s tiring and stressful even on the best days. But Jen never looks stressed out when I come home, either from work, on leave, or an entire deployment. She’s always thrilled that I’m back home, even though sometimes having me at home is like adding an extra child to the mix. I love that no matter how mad I’ve made her recently, she always gives me a kiss and tells me she loves me before I leave the house and when I get home.
24. She keeps our entire house in order at all time. Jen is always ready for anyone in the world to drop by the house for a visit. Somehow she keeps the house clean, the kids looking presentable, and food ready for eating at all times. That’s hard to do, but she can do it.
25. She loves me. I know for a fact that I’m not an easy person to love. I leave my socks on the bedroom floor, I get the kids riled up right before bedtime, I have to leave to go train on a moment’s notice, and I can never remember to wash out the sink after I shave each morning. But she loves me anyway, despite having very few redeeming qualities. She could have had any number of guys in the world, but she chose me instead. I consider myself to be the blessed one because, let’s face it, I’m not exactly a dream guy given all the reasons I listed above. I’m just happy any woman wanted me, and I’m really freaking happy that the woman who wanted me was Jen.
26. She’s beautiful. I know my first point was that she’s hott. And she is. But beyond being hott there’s this level of beauty that few woman can reach. Jen is one of those women (the second one is Catherine Bell, but that’s an entirely different matter). Jen is the kind of beautiful that makes me wish I could stay at home all day every day just so I can be around her. She’s the kind of beautiful that makes people turn their heads and look when she walks around in public. She’s the kind of beautiful that makes me wonder if her vision is really 20/20 because she’s married to me and not some better looking guy. She’s the kind of beautiful that women aspire to be, but few ever reach. I don’t just mean her outside appearance (she’s hott). I mean she’s beautiful for all the reasons I’ve listed. And those are just a few of them. There are a lot more reasons that she’s beautiful that I could have named, but I chose 26 of them so there’s one for every year of her awesome life.

There are a lot of reasons why I love my wife so much. There were 26 of them. You may not hear from me again once I get home on leave because Jen may kill me for posting yet again about her, but I’m willing to take that chance. It’s her birthday and she deserves a little praise on this day. So happy 26th birthday to Jennifer Grace Moore-Harvey, the best thing to ever happen to me and the love of my life.