One Month Down

We survived our first month of the new Army/BCT life! I organized some thoughts on how our new life is going.

Everyone always makes jokes about how once you have kids you can never go to the bathroom alone, and I already felt part of the crowd. But what I would give for a private bathroom experience these days. Instead of a two year old trying to look in the toilet and say, "Go poop, Mama? Go pee pee? Good job, Mama! You go potty, Mama! You get sticker and go Chuck E Cheese." It was cute at first I admit. But I would like to leave my bathroom experiences to myself, thank you.

My life literally revolves around a mail box. I promised after Adam's mission I would never let a mail box rule my life again .... never say never, kids. I have moved around my breaks and lunch so that I can drop off my letters at the very last second so they can have as many pages and details as humanly possible in each letter. I can be seen running as fast as my legs can go at about 1:55 PM to drive to drop off my letter. And speaking of my chosen mail box.... here he is:

I named him Larry... as in Larry David for you Seinfeld lovers. Why Larry David? Because he is annoying and a pain in my neck, but also lovable and reliable. Welcome to my sad mind. 

I am usually not one to post or tell people NOT to say things because I personally find it hurtful/offensive... but I have enjoyed people's words of... should we say, encouragement so far? Here's some of my favorites:

"Well you CHOSE this... you didn't HAVE to do this." RIIIIIGHT. 

"You already waited for him for two years, this should be a cake walk!" I get it... I am the first one to make a joke about being the "Waiting Girl". But let me tell you this, I would GLADLY do the mission over 3 times than be a single mom right now. And I would GLADLY do the mission over 10 times instead of having him be deployed. 

"Well now at least you and Audrey can have PLENTY of bonding time." See my first paragraph on the bathroom. But seriously, it is nice definitely to have so much time just me and her. That doesn't mean I want my husband NOT to be here though. 

"You must REALLY be sexually deprived!" This one just made me laugh when it came from the right person. Other people have said it and then followed up with, "You better keep your eye on your man and not wander." Someone honestly said that to me.

"You must be SUPER lonely." Another one where all I could hear after they said that was crickets. 

"At least that gives you six months to lose some weight!" The person said this as cheerfully as sunshine too... so you're telling me I need to lose weight?

I don't go ANYWHERE without my phone. Which yeah, a lot of people could say that - it's the way of life right? But literally I can't even breathe without it, it is ALWAYS by me. And every time I get a call I automatically assume it's him and that I-need-to-get-every-single-thing-I-would-ever-want-to say-to-him-as-fast-as-humanly-possible-so-I-can-survive-another-four-weeks-without-him. Which sends me into a panic, which gets me emotional and I start to tear up... until I realize it's a telemarketer telling me that I could win $10,000... and then I just get really angry. Army Wife Allie sure knows how to get a lot angrier than non-Army wife Allie.

Tears. I cry all the time. People immediately panic and think they shouldn't/can't talk to me and try to run away, but it's usually about the most minor things. Before I would be really ashamed to cry, and only do it if I literally couldn't physically hold it anymore. I don't even care now. I cry freely and about EVERYTHING. You once owned a cat? Sob. You love Diet Coke too? Wail. You broke your leg when you were 9?! Hysterics. But you know what, I am actually really grateful that I now am free to cry as I please. It feels freaking awesome to get it out, even if it makes me a maniac. 

Audrey has absolutely amazed me this past month. People always say "kids know how to bounce back"or "kids are resilient" - and it is absolutely true! She has been so strong and adapted to our new life together so well. We get the mail every day after daycare before we go into our apartment, she helps me do a happy dance on the good days and says "Tomorrow?" on the bad. She loves to put a sticker on our calendar to mark off one more day without daddy, and to rip a chain off after bath time. And my very favorite is every night after her bath and getting ready, we read three books with one always being her Daddy book. I am so happy I made that book for her. It is full of pictures of just her and Daddy and talks about some things that Daddy loves to do with her. She has the entire thing memorized!!! Only a couple nights ago, I had a coughing fit in the middle of reading it to her and instead of waiting she decided to read it herself. She has memorized every phrase exactly as I typed it, then at the end it says Never Forget that Daddy Loves You and she plopped a kiss on the page and says "Wub you, Daddy". This kid. I never knew I could love every stinking thing about someone like I do for Audrey. She is just the perfect kid. I am honored to be her Mommy, and the people who have said that I can get plenty of bonding time with her are absolutely right! So we are making the most of our time just with each other, while trying to always include Adam into everything.

This past month has been hard but it has been so good! We are incredibly blessed to have the people in our lives that we do, and not only family. This past month I have had so many long lost friends reach out to me to just tell me "You're amazing, you know that?" and it has given me so much strength. And I know this isn't the end of the world - believe me. But my biggest goal in life is to help others feel like they aren't alone and that they have someone to talk to. So this might seem silly to some, but I want to document life and all its adventures so other people can have someone to turn to if they are in a similar boat. 

But there you have it! One month down, a few to go! As Audrey would say it, "Daddy come back with Tanta!" So that's TWO things to look forward to this year. :) 

June 16th & 17th

June 16th:
Hey! Sorry my last letter which I just sent this morning just ended. I was saying I was worried about push ups but I ended up passing with a 57! You have to get 50 points to pass which is 31 push ups and I did 37. I was doing them all wrong before I left and it messed me up, I have had to do extra push ups every day to get stronger and work on my form. My 2 mile run I got almost 100 points! I ran 2 miles in 13 minutes and I am not sure on the seconds but I know I was under 14 minutes because I timed it on my watch at the same time. So my goal is to get to 300 points which is the max. If I do I will get a medal or something to wear on my uniform which looks really good when you get to your first unit.

(Answering some questions I had sent) You should see how fast I can make decisions because we have to here. When I pick my food I literally have seconds hahaha so I am getting better. Yes I get enough to eat! I actually eat a lot more here than I did at home. The food is pretty good. We have quite a few choices and there is a lot of food to eat all the time.

June 17th:
I am up doing fireguard at 3:00 AM. So I get up for an hour and go back to sleep for one hour. So to answer my questions! We usually get about 7 hours of sleep. They are only required to give us four and they could wake us up every ten minutes if they really want to but they haven't ever done that luckily. Usually we go to sleep at 9 and wake up at 5. The barracks don't usually smell except for in the bathroom which just smells like urine. But they are gross, especially the floors. We sweep them but use the same brooms for outside once a week so there is always stuff on the floor. No I don't feel like basic is changing me too much. It's hard for me to tell though. I am more disciplined and changing physically for sure. I thought I would start swearing a lot but I don't. I don't like it and everyone knows I am Mormon and only swear if I am really mad. So far my favorite part has been road marches where we have all our gear on and we patrol. It's where I actually feel like a soldier. My least favorite thing is how undisciplined some people are and how they still don't get it after three weeks. That has been the hardest thing actually. Basic is different than I thought it was going to be, as in it's not as hard as I thought so far. But we still have two phases left and that could all change very fast so I'm not counting on it staying the same. Food I wish I could have? Probably RIB CITY! And Famous Dave's and Wingers hahaha. The food is actually pretty good.We just have so little time to eat, we barely taste it hahah. The chow hall is probably one of the places the drill sergeants yell the most.

June 13th & 14th

June 13th:
Today was mostly uneventful. We learned how to take our M-16 apart and put it back together. It's actually easier than I thought, there are not many pieces. It rained most of today and part of yesterday it was so nice! It has been in the high 90's all week and humid. We started learning how to read maps as well and that was fun. Weare going to be going out in a few weeks to do an overnight test to see if we can navigate a map and go through the woods. Tomorrow is Sunday, I am so excited! I get to go back to church and write you more. Yay mouse! "A gun rack,what would I do with a gun rack", agh I can't remember the rest of the quote. I feel like I am really starting to bulk up in my arms and my chest. They have already tones up and gotten bigger and it hasn't even been two weeks of consistent push ups. My platoon does more push ups than any other for sure. Did you hear anything about the 10,000 troops being deployed to Iraq in the last few days? Let me know if you hear anything okay?

June 14th:
Today is Sunday woot woot! It's not even eight in the morning and I have already organized my locker and made it look nice, taken apart my gun, eaten and got ready for the day! We should begetting our phones in two weeks and we can finally talk! YAY! And red phase will be over. Woot woot! Things will be more fun after that and as long as we are good we will get phones! I am so tired. I had to do fireguard and couldn't fall back asleep for a while after that. Fireguard is wherewe have two people guard the barracks and make sure nobody is hurting themselves or tries to go AWOL.

Hello! I am at church waiting for sacrament to start. Haha I already got called as a missionary discussion teacher. So every week I will teach the Plan of Salvation. I will get to teach with another missionary again, woot woot! I don't get any prep time because I am not allowed to bring Preach My Gospel back to the barracks unfortunately.

I'm back from church. I helped teach today for my new calling. We had one investigator and he has already read the first book of Nephi and seems to be pretty interested. It's crazy that I am back teaching investigators again.

June 9th-11th

Disclaimers! I only post non-mushy personal things on the blog to read, so if it is jumping around like crazy... that is why. Plus he's a man. :)

Also the grammar and lack of punctuation are true to his letters. His grammar snob wife would never allow this.  Enjoy!

How are you guys? We did the rappel tower yesterday. It was a lot of fun. It wasn't too bad, it was only 40 feet high. We have three days of basic medical training this week and then on Friday we are getting our weapons issued and going to the gas chamber. Today we practiced carrying soldiers out of a combat zone under fire and did a competition with 2nd platoon (we are 1st platoon) where we had to run down, put a tourniquet on a casualty, use a buddy drag through sand and then carry them fireman style and run to the finish line. We won! Other than that our platoon is really struggling. We are behind in everything and everyone makes fun of our platoon because we are always messing up. We had a meeting with ten of our platoon last night to try and fix things so hopefully today it starts getting better. There is just a lot of people always talking and looking around in formation.

Tomorrow we are doing our first march now for two miles in full combat gear. It should be pretty easy. I'm starting to get sores and break out all over my legs because it's so hot and I am literally drenched every single day all day long. ALL. DAY. LONG. Sorry my letters are few and far between, my free time is very short because we have been staying extra time to talk as a platoon to fix things or we have to stay extra and get smoked. Today one of our platoon was smoked in front of everyone for probably 15-20 minutes because they never stop talking and refuse to listen when people talk to them.

Today is the 11th now, we are almost done with half of June! Our 4k march today was pretty easy. I enjoy marching. Oh and yes cadences means we march to songs or whatever you want to call it.... I can't wait until we get out of red phase. We get to do a lot more in those like field missions and fire our weapons and learn more cadences and stuff.

*PS Adam says he is called A-Dog because there is another Christensen in his platoon that is spelled the same.

I was able to find Adam's platoon on Facebook. Already they have posted a few pictures! It is fun to try to spot Adam and so far I have found him in two. 

 Adam is in the very back with his back towards the camera.

Here he is bossing people around! HAHAHAH he is on the right pointing at something. 

First Letter Highlights

Alright! We have received our first OFFICIAL basic letter. I will give the highlights as the mushy gushy stuff is just for me! :)

06/05/2015
Sorry! Today has been the first day I have even had a chance to write. The whole ship day was a lot like moves day on my mission to be honest, just more intense obviously. So we have our permanent drill sergeants now, we have two of them. I like them both and I think I will like basic. Some things are tough. I messed up after saying I knew how to do something really bad and so I felt pretty stupid, but it's pushing me harder to do better and pay closer attention to detail so that I can be ready next time and do well. I'm sorry about the phone call. I know it was rough. Hopefully we can get a phone call soon though. Tomorrow is my first PT test. We are only doing the 1 mile and one minute push ups and sit ups to assess us what we need to improve. It was so good to hear your voice and Audrey's too, but it made it hard too. That day already I had been a little homesick for the first time.

06/07/2015
Hello! I am at church and it feels like a load just lifted off my shoulders. Something familiar feels nice. I miss you guys a lot. It is a lot harder on weekends because we aren't nearly as busy as the weekdays so I think of home a lot more. I am doing good. Tomorrow we start week 1. This week had been week 0 and now all the real stuff starts. We have been issued pretty much all of our equipment except for our gun. Our drill sergeant said we won't get our phone until we get out of red phase which is three weeks long. We got to do a team building exercise on Friday where we had to do obstacles together as a team and get across a bridge that had been blown up with just wood planks and rope. Or we did one with a zip line and we had to get our whole team across the water and get a casualty across as well.

It's the end of the day now. It has been a very easy day. Church was great. I found the only other member in my whole battery which is four platoons that each have about 47 or 48 people each. So in total we have around 150 people and each platoon has 2-3 drill sergeants around them all the time. But anyway back to church, I brought a guy with me today because he wanted a quiet church to meditate in and heard our church was quiet. HAHAH. Then later today I found a guy who almost got baptized when he was 16 and his mom wouldn't let him but he said he really liked it and he said he would come with me next week. I think I will give him a Book of Mormon. One of the counselors in the branch did an interview with me for like 15 minutes and he used to be a drill sergeant here. He gave me really good advice. He was telling me that you need to remember to not let the Army take over your life and become more important than the things that are important in life. Family, priesthood, the temple, and education. He let the Army become more important than his family. But he kept encouraging me to chase our dreams and do what we want in life and to make sure that our kids keep those things in mind and make them a priority in life. HAHAHHA he said I need to enjoy the primary and don't worry about other callings because one day I will be bishop and will miss the primary. I was only able to give you my address. So if other people want it you will have to let them know. How is your family doing? Have you seen them much? How is baby Winda? She will be so big when I come home! I have been here for 2 weeks, it feels like two months hahaha. I hope that you and Audrey like living one base with me. It's going to be a much different lifestyle. I didn't get a shower last night because I was working on an assignment and ran out of time and I was soaked in sweat, my uniform was still wet this morning and I just took one it feels so much better. HAHAHA I don't think I have ever sweat this much in my life except maybe Florida. It's been upper 80's and into the 90's with humidity everyday and the people from here say it gets up to 110 a lot of days during the summer.I feel like I have already lost another five pounds even though I eat a lot everyday, I'm eating a lot more here than I have been the last four months. They have this system for food where everything is in a different group - green, yellow, and red. Green is the best food for you, I usually only get stuff in there and I like most of it more anyway. But they have angel food cake and this parfait to put on top that is so good! I try not to get it very often but it is amaze so I have had it the last three meals.