Last week I lost my 10-year-old. Twice.

It was an eventful week. What can I say?

The first time was on Tuesday. Jake accidentally took the bus home instead of coming out to the parking lot to meet me. He has this story about his friends pulling him onto the bus by his backpack. (Really, Jake? This is what we're going to go with?) He was struggling and everything. (I strained my eyes rolling them during this portion of the story.) He just.couldn't.get.away. (Ha ha hahaha!)

The second time was Thursday. That was the day I officially hit 72 pounds lost. Yep. Since July, I have lost the weight of a fourth grader. Crazy, right?

I had intended to 'go public' with my weight loss when I made the 50 lb mark. When I got there, however, I chickened out. When you've been significantly overweight for a long time, people get used to you always being on some kind of diet. Whether it's a program like Weight Watchers, a 'plan' like South Beach, or simply counting calories...many of the people in your life tend to become immune to your attempts. And, as frustrating as that is, I can understand it. I can't tell you how many times I lost 20 lbs on some plan only to gain it back (with interest, of course!) when I got burnt out or bored. So I kept putting it off until I felt like the weight loss was real.

I have accomplished most of the weight loss using a meal replacement plan but I think I would have been successful with any approach this time. From April until July I spent my time in a place called "rock bottom". I was not in a good place and it was just not getting any better. (I even sent in an application to be on a weight loss show. I made it two rounds in, which was kind of neat! Then I got cut and that wasn't quite as neat. I wasn't truly a sad panda, however, until I found out that Ty Pennington is one of the people who works on the show. I love me some Ty.) Anyway--I think I have just had that switch flipped. I am absolutely ready to lose this weight and willing to do whatever it is that needs to be done to get rid of it.

If you've been around awhile, you might have noticed that I don't make many appearances in the picture portion of my blog. I think I'm ready to nudge my way out into the open. It's been about a year since I posted anything weight-loss related here and there's a reason for that--I started gaining weight. And a lot of it. Here's the picture I've been using as my "before" picture. I had actually lost about eight pounds when this picture was taken but it's the closest thing I have that works. (When compared to the picture of me in the sidebar, the weight gain is pretty obvious.)

And here is my current picture. Jason snapped this for me this morning before he left for work. (Forgive the photo quality. It's the same camera as above but indoor photos don't come out quite as well.) I am at my lowest weight in about eight years.

I still have a long way to go, but I am very happy with my progress. I am currently struggling a little, but I have faith that I'm going to push through it. I'll probably be sharing a little more about that next week.

Looking for a Home Sweet Home

Let's talk a little bit about finding a place to live, shall we?

We've been in country now for more than six weeks. I couldn't even begin to guess how many places we have called trying to find a home. We called realtors, home owners, the housing office, current tenants...it took us five weeks to even get an appointment to see a place! I've heard a bunch of people say that they had to look at 20+ houses before they found the right one--man, I wish we had that problem. We have been inside of three houses since we arrived. That's it.

About two weeks ago we found a house on the housing site that we thought would be perfect. We e-mailed and called the landlord (he is American and lives in the states) and he said he would forward our information to the tenants. He claimed that we were the first on the list and that they were planning to let us see the house the following Monday. Great! We kept looking around but we both figured that we would be taking that house. It was very close to base, big house, lots of room--pretty much just what we were looking for.

Sunday rolls around and we still haven't heard from the tenants. We e-mail the landlord and ask if we should go ahead with the time he had told us for the next day or what? He tells us that the tenants are very busy right now and that we should just wait for them to have the time to let us see the house. It could be awhile.

Um...really? They don't move out of the house for another six weeks. They can't take 20 minutes out of their day to show us around the house and hand us a lease agreement? We've PCS'd from Germany before so we know how it is--and I'm telling you, they aren't that busy.

It was at about that point that we started to sour on this house. (Well, on the landlord anyway. It's not the house's fault it has a &%*$& owner.) We didn't cut things off with him but we did start to look a little harder for a house. The very next day he e-mails us again: Oh, hey. My bad. Someone else called before your initial call and left a message on the voicemail. It was only fair to show them first since they called first. The tenants showed them the house already and they took it. (I might point out that our initial call was also a voicemail. I guess he didn't listen to them all the first night? What-freakin'-ever.)

Question: Does that strike anyone else as a jerk move? Because I really think poorly of him over the way that he dealt with this situation--if that is indeed what happened, which I totally doubt. I'm pretty sure that what he's saying really translates to one of two things: either someone else just showed up and knocked on the door and the tenants decided to just get it over with OR someone called after us and offered the landlord extra money if he bumped them to the top. Is that jaded thinking? Sorry. It's been a little frustrating having none of our calls returned, realtors who are RUDE and just hang up on you, and just dealing with the overall lack of housing of the type that we're looking for. It's hard to maintain that eternally optimistic glow under the circumstances--especially since I'm not an optimist to begin with! Ha!

We did see a house last week (like, we saw the actual inside of it!) and it looks like we are going to get this one. We think. We hope. Family and friends think we're moving into a different house (Surprise! We're not!) but at the very last minute we decided that it wasn't a good fit for our family. We still have about six weeks before we have to move and we decided that we didn't want to settle for an 'okay' house when we still had more time to look. I didn't update my personal FB page about that because, quite frankly, I had been whining about the house-hunting situation for awhile and figured that they all needed a break!

So yeah. To recap: house hunting in Germany sucks. And now you know.

We are in Germany!

I still have days when I can't believe I can type out that sentence again. Didn't I just write this post yesterday? Okay, maybe it was the day before that... Seriously. Walking off that plane (*cough* six weeks ago *cough*) was absolutely surreal. We flew directly into Ramstein Air Base and it did not appear that all that much had changed. To top it off, we're staying in a temporary house that is literally two streets over from our last home in Germany. I told Jason that it might take me a month to forget that we were ever in California to begin with--and I wasn't wrong. As hard as it is to wrap my brain around the fact that we're back, our time in California already seems like a distant dream.

Obviously I have some updates to post. Jason is out of the Air Force now and that has proven to be a huge change. If you have any specific questions about the transition process, please feel free to ask away. I'll be updating about that and some of the reactions to our news--not everyone was pleased or kind about this change in our life.

I have three kids in school now! Zander started Kindergarten once we arrived here and he is doing great. Sam and Jake are doing the Sam and Jake thing. (This is my way of protecting their privacy--they are really too old for me to blog about in detail. They will make appearances here, but it will be 'approved-by-Sam/Jake' type appearances. Just to be clear. I don't think I've ever specified that before.) I, however, am completely overwhelmed with the amount of homework there is to keep track of. Just, wow! It's crazy.

I started back to school myself last month. Don't ask me what I was thinking because I do not know. I'm an idiot. I'm taking two upper level classes this month and -- crap. It is a lot of work. The positive to this is that I'm actually taking classes that have to do with my degree (emergency management), and that makes things a little better. At least it's interesting!

I am doing really well on the weight loss front. I'm not ready to say more yet for a variety of reasons, but I'm really happy with my progress.

I think those are pretty much all the lose ends I left dangling! If I missed something, feel free to bring it to my attention. It's been a crazy few months and I wouldn't be surprised if something slipped through the cracks. Despite not being quite settled yet (it looks like we have another three weeks until we move into a house of our own) I think I am back to stay now. Crazy as things are, they have started to settle into that calm crazy that our family knows and loves.

Tad-a-poles and Fwogs

If you've "liked" the Calm Crazy Facebook page (yes, shameless plug) then you already know that we've been caring for some tadpoles here at the house. Sam, our 14-year-old, brought some up from the creek a little over a week ago and the little kids went completely ga-ga over them. We've had near constant talk of "tad-a-poles" and "fwogs" ever since. I never knew how much fun a project like this could be; I have to admit to being completely charmed by the whole thing.

The tadpoles' habitat used to be in a much smaller tupperware container but we found this great plastic container while we were cleaning out our closet this weekend--you know, in preparation for 'The Big Move Part Zwei'. Last night Sam ran down to the creek to get more 'crick muck' (I type out 'creek' here on the old blog but the Hoosier in me thinks 'crick' every single time) and then we dumped our five original tad-a-poles into the new and improved version.

At one point during the evening I managed to get Zander and Izzy to sit still long enough to take a little video of them talking about the whole thing. Right before the start of the video I told them to tell me what they were looking at, but the rest is pretty much all them. The video is pretty cute (obviously I'm a bit biased) and just over a minute long. But really. I dare you to watch this thing and not smile.

I think I've thanked Sam about 50 times for coming up with this idea. It probably would never have occurred to me that these two would enjoy it this much. And, I have to say, Jason and I like it too. There are all kinds of little bugs and things in that water. It's really neat to watch. We've got our own little ecosystem in that box.

Have you ever raised tadpoles? What kinds of science projects have you done with your kids?

And After the World's Longest Drumroll...

Finally! I can share our big news.

Four months ago our family was presented with an opportunity to make a huge shift in our life. We weren't sure if we were going to do it at first. It's ridiculous. It's crazy. It is--well, I'm sure there are some people who are going to think we're nuts. Honestly, we think we're a little nuts too. Regardless, after weeks of debate with each other and hours (and hours) of consultation with people we trust, we are taking the plunge.

The news: Jason is separating from the Air Force and accepting a civilian position with the government. He starts terminal leave on 1 July--which means that our days as a "military family" are officially numbered! And that number? It's pretty freakin' low. We are truly, extraordinarily excited--and scared to death!

The process of applying and getting accepted for this job was long and arduous. The uncertainties with the government budget have come into play a couple of times as well, further complicating matters. I wanted to shout all this from the rooftops weeks ago, but we have been trying to wait until things solidified a bit. I've stayed away from blogging a bit because this is, literally, all we've been able to talk about for weeks. (And, by way of apology, I truly did not mean for this to get dragged out as it has! We thought we would be able to announce two weeks ago but someone didn't push some paperwork as quickly as they should have and things stalled out for a bit. It's all good now though.)

Oh wait...did I mention where the job is? I didn't? Yeah. It's in Germany. We will be heading back sometime in August!

Deep Thoughts and the Great Cherry-lanche of 2011

It's hard for me to believe sometimes, but I have been out of the work force for eight years now. When I separated from the Air Force I had zero intention of staying home. I worked at the kids' daycare for about five months and then took a temporary contracting job on the base, hoping that it might eventually turn into a permanent job. I hadn't been in that job two months when we received our orders for Germany. (We got the notice for orders less than an hour after we put an offer in on a house. Fun, right?)

Finding a job for my career field in Germany is a difficult thing when you don't have a degree. I went to a job fair not too long after we arrived and one of the HR people told me that if I had been Jason's AFSC he would have hired me in an instant--but because of the agreements in place with the German government there would be a problem hiring me with my lack of degree. (There are/were ways around that for high-demand/hard-to-fill jobs, but it wasn't worth jumping through hoops for a career field as prolific as mine. It sucked but I understood.)

So the decent-paying jobs were out. The odd job that I was qualified for didn't pay enough to cover day care in Germany. We ran the numbers six ways to Sunday and it kept coming out the same way: I would have literally brought home less than $100/month when you subtracted daycare and other work-related costs. Jason's work schedule was going to be unpredictable and brutal, making 'family time' something of a rarity. It just wasn't worth it for us. After hours and hours of discussion Jason and I decided that I would stay home for the duration of our time there, taking care of the kids and attending school while I was there. (We also decided that we would have another kid and that I would stay home with all the kids until the youngest went to school, but that is a whole different post.)

Lately I have wondered just how badly this time "off" is going to hurt my ability to find a job when the time comes to pack all these rugrats off to school and do something productive with my time. What are my future prospective employers going to think when they see that I took 10 years (give or take) off to lie on the couch and eat bon-bons all day? At the upper end of my 30s, am I going to be unemployable and obsolete? It sometimes keeps me up at night.

Then I have days like yesterday. I don't think I have mentioned it here but the degree I am working toward is in Emergency Management. I would love to someday work for Red Cross or FEMA. My dad has told me before that he can't think of better job experience for disaster preparedness and response than managing a house with four boys. Most days I just laugh; yesterday I kind of agreed with him. I'm getting great on-the-job training. Here's my latest resume bullet:

Single-handedly saved an individual...

...from a massive landslide...

...brought about by an undeniable force of nature.

Man, let me tell you. There is never a dull moment in this house!