Ok, i'll try!

I have been thinking about blogging for a long time now. No really, I promise! But I always think, why? No one will want to read about my boring life. I don't even want to read about it, it's depressing! But today changed me. I attend MOPS meetings the 2nd and 4th wednesday's of the month during the school year. For those who don't know, MOPS stands for mothers of preschoolers. We get together and eat, talk, listen to speakers, do crafts. It's really great to have time with other mommies! Today our speaker was Kelly Stamps, a pretty well-known blogger. She talked about how blogging is sort of like a scrapbook for your family. I had never thought of it that way! I have never had the desire to scrap book. I don't even have a baby book for Joslyn, whoops! But typing, I can do. Uploading pictures? Can do that too! So i'm going to give this blogging thing a try.

This being my first post, maybe I should tell a little about myself. Well, there isn't much to tell, heh. I started my life in a small town in Arkansas named Danville. If you don't know what or where that is, well, I assure you, you aren't missing anything. My parents divorced when I was 12, and eventually my mom re-married and moved us to Greenwood when I was in 9th grade. During my sophmore year, I met Justin. We got married right after high school (this is not an exageration, literaly the day after we graduated!) Then Justin left for basic training less than a week after we got married. Yeah that was no fun. but he was only gone a couple of months, and then we were able to start our married life. He worked, I worked and went to school at Arkansas Tech, and we lived in Russellville. Everything was going great!

Then, in the Spring of 2004, I started to not feel good. My joints would ache, I was extremely fatigued. I just kept telling myself it was nothing, that I would get better. But I didn't. It kepe getting worse and worse, untill I was so ill I couldn't get out of bed without help. Couldn't bathe, dress myself, or anything without help. One day I woke up with horrible rashes all over my body and was scared to death. We decided that even though we didn't have health insurance, I had to go to a Dr. The Dr threw out some different ideas of illnesses, some really scary, some unkown to me. When he mentioned lupus, I had no idea what it was. I went home that night and looked it up on the computer. I knew right then that's what I had. But we had to wait for all of the tests to come back before we could get an official diagnosis. Meanwhile, Justin was supposed to go to TX for his weekend drill. We thought that odd, since usually he just drilled in Barling. I was way too sick to even try to go with him, so I stayed with my mom. When he came back, he told me horrible news. He was going to be deployed to Iraq. I was so scared! What was I going to do? We started trying to plan for that. 2 days later, I got the call from the Dr. I definitely had lupus. I needed to start seeing specialists immediately to get things under control.

Justin was deployed for around a year, and durimng the time I stayed with various family members trying to work on getting well so I could go back to school. Then he came home, and ta-da, a month later I was pregnant with Jaycee! Hmm, funny how that happens...... But this created another problem. We still didn't have insurance! But, we thought, the military insurance we had while he was in Iraq covered everything, so we decided the best choice for our family would be to go active duty in the military. Unfortunately, that meant moving away from our family, and the only home i'd ever known, Arkansas. So we moved to Clarksville TN. Had baby Jaycee on July 21st 2006. I was totally in love with being a mommy! I just really wished that she could spend more time with her family in AR that loved her so much. Then, 8 months later, though on supposedly 99% effective birth controll, I found out baby #2 was on the way! Then on Dec 13th 2007, sweet little Joslyn was born.

Around fall 2008, we decided we couldn't stand it anymore. We didn't belong in TN. We were lonely, felt out of place. We decided that even though it would be tough, we were going to do whatever it took to move back home. So in Jan of 2009 the girls and I left TN for good. Justin joined us a few months later when his contract was up. The job search was on! Things were really scary for awhile! Thankfully with the help of family, we made it through and Justin found a job.

Now I feel like we are really starting to enjoy life. We recently purchased our first home! It's no mansion, but it's ours and after all we have been through that means a lot. We have also been attenting church regularly at the first baptist church in Greenwood. We aren't officially members, though I feel like we should be! We love being close to our family and being able to attend family functions. We still don't have a lot of friends, but we are working on trying to be more social! I have never been good at making friends. I always feel very awkward around people, and out of place.

Ok I promise i'm done. If anyone actually read this, thanks! Hopefully now you at least know a little more about me, and I promise i'll post more interesting things!