opening the window

I love to read blogs. My "blog reader" account is full of blogs about all sorts of things: families, cooking, politics, crafting, travel, photography, military life...the list goes on and on. I think it's one of the great injustices in life that we only get one shot through. I wish life was a little more like one of those "choose your own ending" books. That way we could choose to have our "normal" life (family and whatnot) at page 10, go through and live the whole glorious thing, and then come back and choose "join the circus". Just for the giggles of seeing what it would be like!

A little background on me: I grew up an Air Force brat. We moved a lot. I think the longest I lived anywhere prior to leaving home was four years. Thirty-five days after I graduated from high school I left home and joined the Air Force myself. At the time, it never crossed my mind that I wouldn't return back to Indiana to live but that is almost certainly how it's going to play out. I met my husband at Goodfellow AFB (in San Angelo, TX) while going through technical training school. We got married about 12 weeks (give or take) after we met. We have four boys together. We'll be celebrating our 14th anniversary next month. We have been living in Germany for over six years now. We will leave here for Destination Unknown (duh-duh-duhn!) in roughly 10 months.

I love my life. I can honestly say that I wouldn't change any of the choices I made. But I regularly allow myself to engage in "what if" thinking. What if I hadn't joined the military? What if I had gotten out at the end of my first enlistment? What if (and this one is a doozy!) we both had? What if I had taken the assignment to Korea and not gotten out? What if we hadn't extended here in Germany? I like to think about what might have been waiting behind door #2. Would we have the same kids? Would we still be married? What happened down those other roads? I don't want to give the impression that I really dwell on these things, but I certainly think about them often enough. I just find the whole idea rather fascinating.

Blogging, to me, is a way to explore those ideas. Not the writing part, but the reading. Some are people I would like to think could have been me; some go places I wish I could go; some make me laugh so hard I almost pee my pants; some make me nod my head in agreement most of the time. I read religious blogs, agnostic blogs, and atheist blogs. I've never found a blogger I agreed with 100% of the time (wouldn't that be boring, anyway?) and some of them I heartily disagree with a lot...but I enjoy reading them for the views they express. Sometimes you "don't know what you don't know" and having these windows into other people's lives gives me insight I wouldn't otherwise have.

So this is my place to tell you about my life. The "calm crazy" of having four boys, being a military spouse, going to school while doing those things, living overseas, moving to another location (which we will hopefully find out sooner rather than later!), cooking things we love, (hopefully) losing some weight, making my family more goal-oriented, and just living our life. Here's your window into my world. Enjoy!