My first blog

Not really sure how this is going to turn out, but I will give this blog thing a try :)


The name is Sandra and this is my first blog. I chose the title "So far is 2012" since we've had a lot going on already and it's only April. There will be even more to come this year as we're looking at the end of our military career. That's right, we're in the military. My husband, Ray, is active Army since 1998. You might say "Oh, the husband is in the Army, not you". Well let me tell you a little secret. If you're married to a military man/woman, you automatically become part of the Armed Forces as well. You have to deal with everything your spouse is dealing with. You move, just like he does. You're on your own during deployments taking care of EVERYTHING until he/she returns. When leave gets turned down, guess who doesn't go on vacation: the whole family. When the promotion comes, you have to change your ID card and you get to spend more money. His job, is part of what you do, what you are. Just don't wear THEIR rank. It's not yours to claim. It's THEIRS.


We have two kids. Mara and Mikel. We home schooled this year. Not a bad idea but also not a good one. Very stressful and I truly admire all those home school moms who have been doing this for years!! For us, it was a nice experience but we're more of a public school kinda family. Mara, the horse fanatic, will be in 7th grade after the summer. She can't wait to see her friends on a daily basis again. Mikel, my cars, baseball, camping, bug kid, well he LOVES school. As long as he can see his friends there every day. Again, not a bad experience this whole home school year. We learned a lot!!


So off to write about this year. We tore our bathroom apart. It started as a "lets just take the popcorn stuff off the ceiling" and quickly turned into "OH MY GOSH we have to take the walls down" kinda thing. We bought a house back in 2009 (long story and will get to that at a later point) that was build in 1940. Who ever build it HAD NO IDEA WHAT THEY WERE DOING!! Before we bought it, lots of people did renovations to the house "covering up" the prior mess and left it all for us to deal with. Not of purpose of course.


Anyways.......so we started scraping down the popcorn stuff, which can be extremely hard work, just to find out, that there is a lot of damage underneath and it would be just better to replace the ceiling. So we took the old drywall down JUST to find out that there are 2 layers of drywall!! By the time we got the ceiling down, we realize that there is now, somehow, a 2 inch gap between the walls and the ceiling. The thickest drywall you can buy is 1/2 inch. Yes, that leaves 1 1/2 inches of air between wall and ceiling. SO..........now we have to take the walls down because you can't just patch that big of a gap. PLUS from the outside of the walls to the studs, there's like 3 inches!! WHAT IN THE WORLD????!!!! We assume the worst and that came true. THERE ARE 3 LAYERS OF WALL ALL AROUND THE BATHROOM!!!


Now the walls are coming down. As we are removing one layer of wall at a time, we find wallpaper, several layers of paint, plastic tile and some other gook that allowed air between the layers, is moist and moldy in some spots. Not a single beam/2x4 is straight. The walls curve and behold - we can now see the former outside of the house. The bathroom and with that our bedroom, are clearly add ones!! The original wooden siding from the 40's is still hanging and you wouldn't believe it: WE FOUND A WINDOW!! Frame only and patched up with siding from the outside. (I'm starting to think, I should call this the bathroom remodel blog)


Anyways, loooong story short: We replaced ceiling, all walls, build new walls, took out bedroom closet and made bathroom bigger, replaced partial sub floor. Ceiling and walls are painted, new vynal floor is laid, partial tile is on the wall around the tub, new lights and van hung, new vanity installed, all plugs and light switches replaced. NO, we're not done yet, lol. We have to finish the tile and put up new baseboards and put new shelves into the bathroom closet. We can also now enter the bathroom from our master bedroom. Can't wait until it's all done!


Now I feel like I need to start all over again, since, and I do this A LOT, lost my thought and can't think of how to go on.


Hmmm.....oh yeah. I guess a small fact about me/us, we're Christians. We believe in creation, Father God, Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. They are all One but 3 different parts. We firmly believe that the earth was created by God in 7 days, about 6 thousand years ago. Angels are created beings by God. Jesus died on the cross for us for our sins and He is the ONLY way into heaven. No deed, no matter how big and significant or small and insignificant, can get a person into heaven. God knows what you'll do, before you do it and He knows what choices you make in your life and He'll meet you in the darkest places of your life. That is what WE believe in.


We attend church every Sunday TWICE cause we LOVE it. Husband just got saved and is getting baptized. God NEVER makes it convenient for us when we realize that we need Him in our life's. For me, it was the deployment that broke me into thousands of pieces.
As for my husband, well, we won't get into that, but there are some things that happened in his past that kept him prisoner all these years and God FINALLY broke his spirit and got him to confess. It came with TONS of heartbreak but what a REVELATION!!! He was a outside believer. Saying that he believed, saying he was saved but on the inside there was a war he was fighting every day. About one month ago, he broke, confessed, gave his life to Christ and is now getting baptized. It's amazing how God uses simple things like a book, to break us.


We started horse back riding lessons 4 weeks ago. We only got to go once but we had lots of stuff going on in between that kept us from going. Terrible spring weather, got my wisdom teeth pulled .....



I guess I could add that I'll be 34 this year. At least I think that's the age, lol. I stopped counting when I turned 30, so now the kids have to remind me how 'young' I am.


One more thing I might tell about myself, before I write about the next thing, is the fact that I am a German citizen. Met Ray in Germany back in 1999. I'm a permanent resident since 2001 and I applied for my US citizenship this March. So if everything goes well, I'll be a citizen soon. Very excited about it!! Nervous as well. After all, I am giving up the right to be a German citizen and I've been a German citizen since birth. But that will be a different blog.


The more I think about it, I might be doing this a big backwards but there are no rules on how to blog so I'm fine, right? LoL


That's it for right now. I'm sure I'll have something else to write about some other time. The intention is to blog once a week but we'll see how that goes. Bad memory and this is something new so it'll take a while to program it into my head that I do, indeed, started a blog and it needs writing.


Have a great day, God bless.