Pros and cons of being a military family.

First off I love being a part of a military family I love that my husband serves his country selflessly, I also love being able to travel and see different places. There are many pros to this life but many cons as well.

Pros:

1.    Pride in my very brave husband for serving our country in the most selfless way.

2.    The ability to travel to different countries and states.

3.     Meeting new and interesting people from all walks of life.

4.    Being able to introduce my son to different cultures and experiences that if we were not in the military I couldn’t make it happen.

5.    4 day weekends.

6.    Military discounts

7.    Commissaries and the Post Exchanges

There are more pros but I can’t think of any more right now!

Cons:

1.    Those idiots who don’t support our troops get on my nerves. I feel these fools affect us more than if we were a civilian family. It makes no sense to me that people would picket in front of a soldier’s funeral because they don’t agree with the government or for their religious views?

2.    Sometimes the different places we travel to aren’t that great and we have to live there for 3-4 years.

3.    Moving around is great but it is hard for Jean-Claude to have to make new friends and adjust to different surroundings wherever we go.

4.    My hubby doesn’t always get his 4 day weekends in fact he works most of them.

5.    Deployments. I was in the military years ago and deployed but it is a totally different experience being the spouse at home worrying about what could happen.

6.    Holidays are hard having to travel to separate locations my hubby is from Oklahoma I’m from Utah.

          There are probably more cons but ill stop here for now.

Some days the cons outweigh the bad sometimes vice versa like now we are in a place I could see our family staying. We like our neighbors and have made friends but we are leaving in about 6 months so although happy to be going back to Germany I feel a little sad to be leaving all the people who I have been privileged to have met here in San Antonio.

DIY-ing it with the hubby

My husband and I are first time home buyers and we decided to buy a house that is somewhat of a fixer upper. One of the main projects was the take out the nasty linoleum and put tile down. When we started Senor Jorge thought “this can’t be that hard we have watched tons of HGTV and saw some clips on Youtube”.

 We started by taking out the stove, refrigerator than tearing out the linoleum and pouring the glue remover on the floor FYI like with any glue read the instructions! We did not and got a glue high. So after we came down from our high we started the tile work i.e. scraping the glue, grouting, measuring, cutting and what not. At this point I’m a little tired but still hanging in there.

I might have forgotten to mention Señor Jorge is very handy in DIY work and an ever annoying perfectionist every step in his DIY work is meticulously planned, so while I was “helping” wipe the grout off the tiles (I am not so DIY friendly and very laid back not everything has to be perfect) I did it as if I were wiping down my kitchen counters, It didn’t occur to me I was supposed to wipe down the tiles a certain way and Senor Jorge looked at me and said “Why are you doing it that way? Don’t you know?” (At this point I am already sweaty and tired and want my kitchen back) I had to pause for a second and   despite the fact that he thinks I should automatically know how to freaking tile. I did not freak out on him (I know most people believe all Mexicans know gardening, tiling and roofing this Mexican does not!) So I said “well no I didn’t know, you just said wipe not wipe this way or that way.” After being tired and at each other’s throat, the end result came out very nice and perfect. (I have pictures on my Facebook because I was so proud!)

 Our next big project is the master bathroom which is a very enclosed space to be dealing out criticism so hopefully we can survive the rest of our DIY ventures. I love my hubby but DIY-ing it with your man can really test you.