A new year & a new beginning

2014 is coming up fast, and I'm excited to see what it has in store for us!

My little family and I are starting the new year in a new home! My Nana has moved to Michigan and hasn't sold her house in Florida so we will be renting that for an indefinite time period. It's a cute 'cottage style' brick home, 2 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, a dishwasher (thank GOD!), fire place, big master bathroom and a walk in closet! I've always wanted, and now that Justin and I share a closet I need one! It's a smaller house, only 1050ish square feet but it's a good enough size for a temporary place. I would ideally like to stay there until we are able to decide on an area to settle permanently and build out own home. Brantley's room is quite small, but he doesn't need a lot of room right now. It will begin to suck once we have the second baby we're currently trying for, but that's along time away!

Here's a photo of the outside :) I'll have a post all it's own of the inside and my decoration choices once that's finished!

Christmas came early

My sweet sweet husband has to leave tonight and won't return until Christmas day so we had our family Christmas today. Why not do it after he gets home n Christmas day you ask? There's no telling what time Christmas day that he would get home, it could he 2pm or 9 pm. We also have to do Christmas with his mom and step dad along with dad and step mom after he gets home that day. I wanted to be able to take our time record Brantley's first Christmas, and not feel rushed to move on to the next place, it just made since for us to do it today. Not to mention, we will be moving on December 26th so our tree must come down before even the 25th. Probably not the most picture perfect Christmas to most, but it was perfect for us :)

I blog fed a few days ago about what I bought everyone, but had no idea what I was getting! I was very surprised to get the make up brushes I've been needing, a set of baking pans including a petite loaf pan (I'm going to make everything possibly in petite loaf form now!), and the Vera Bradley diaper bag I've been dying for! It was a good year :)

Tis the season!

This is completely unrelated to my post, but our daddy came home today! Brantley & I were so happy to see him :)

The holiday season is my absolute favorite time of year, even more than football season! I do admit I like Christmas more than I do Thanksgiving, but most people do.

This Christmas is very special to me and my new little family, not only is it mine and Justin's first Christmas as a married couple, but it's out little monsters first Christmas!! I'm so excited, and I know I over did it with the presents for him, he'll only be 3 months old and obviously not able to open them but he's got about 15 boxes under the tree. Everything I got him is stuff he's going to be able to use or wear over the next year, so I don't feel quite so bad. Last year I spoiled my husband so much, this year he's only got about half the stuff I had originally wanted to get him.

This year I bought Justin the following:

-Drakkar- Which is the best cologne ever.

- A new zip up hoodie from American Eagle, I got it for 40% off

- A random American Eagle T-shirt I snagged for 40% off also.
- A Hulk mini mug toy thing to complete his Avengers collection of them.
- Thor
- Captain America
- Iron Man (I had originally got Iron Man 3 also but he got that one early)
- Wolverine
- The Amazing Spiderman

If you can't fell he's pretty fond of superheros. I do want to get him the new Batman PS3 game that just came out and Man of Steal also when we get paid next week.

I spoiled the crap out of little Brantley and he got the following:
- 3- 2 packs of the Carter's swaddle blankets, they're his absolute favorite.
- 2- 24 month onsies and 3 24 month T-shirts
- A few onsies in 3-6 & 6-9 month sizes
- Rubber stacking blocks
- 2 awesome NUK sippy cups I snagged o sale at Walmart, with an elephant print of course.
- travel baby silverware, with a cute little case too!
- a few packs of baby spoons for the house
- those mesh teethers I can put soft foods and whatnot in.
-  a few other toys I honestly can't describe.
- a taggy blanket I got on sale also, along with a rubber book about gardens or something
I feel like I'm forgetting something... Little man made out this year!

I'm also excited for the first few days after Christmas when all the decorations are crazy cheap! I need to add to my collection, it's seriously lacking this year!

Merry Christmas, and remember the reason for the season!!

The proud wife

As you can probably guess from my title, I'm an oil field wife. Unless you are one of us, you can not possibly fathom how hard it is to be one of us.

I am extremely proud of what my husband does for a living. His job is more dangerous than even he sometimes realizes, but he's grown to love what he does. As proud as I am of my husband and as happy as I am that he likes his job, it makes my heart hurt to say goodbye to him every other week. Most may say that a 7/7 hitch is the best you can get, but it's honestly one of the worst in my opinion. Only second to the 28/14 and 28/7 hitches.

The oil field is very gracious with their pay and there are endless job possibilities, which is Justin's favorite thing about the field. On his specific rig they have roustabouts, which are deck hands, then a C, B, A, and Lead operator. He started out as a Roustabout in January and by July his Lead had him in the process of moving up to a C operator. In August he did his 2 weeks of school and got a promotion and raise, a great thing at that time since it was just a month before I had Brantley. I do have to brag on him a little bit, in his training everyone is given the same test and you only have to pass certain parts based on your job, well my smart hubby passed the entire test, even the Leap operator portion. That being said, his ultimate goal is to become a Lead within the next 5 years. Generally moving from a roustabout to a C operator only takes a year but after that it gets a bit tougher and slower to move up.

As generous as the oil field is, there is no amount of money that can make my husbands time away from us better. Obviously not having to worry about if we can pay our bills make it easier, but saying goodbye and spending so much time apart is still extreamly hard on both of us and so much more now that we have Brantley. I do worry that Justin being gone so much will affect his and Brantley's relationship more so when he's a bit older than right now, though I know now is important too as he's finally starting to recognize people and all that. 

All in all it just sucks having my husband gone so much. I got to thinking about it and no matter how long we are together we'll never spend more than half of that time physically together. It makes me incredibly sad to think about this fact. One thing about his job that I rarely let myself think about is that his job in insanely dangerous, even deadly at times. When he walks out that door hitting the road to Louisiana every other Tuesday night, there is absolutely no guarantee that I will ever see him again. That's why every hug, kiss, phone call, and conversation is that much more important to me.

This post has been all over the place, but I've had a lot on my mind that I needed to get out.