Running Army Wife

Well.. technically Fort Lewis actually. But I couldn't resist the Owl City reference. We are definitely in Seattle area though. After a crazy 4 days of driving and a pretty rough start*, we finally drove into Seattle area on Monday afternoon. And we were welcomed with a pretty hard rainfall. Ah.. Seattle. Way to live up to your reputation. But the rain can't be that bad, because apparently Fort Lewis is the most requested base in the Army. Yeah. That's pretty awesome. I can see why now because the area is beautiful. We are less than a few hours drive from either the city, beach, or mountains. Amazing. So we are now currently apartment hunting.** James is actually right now at a meeting about housing on base, because we haven't ruled that out. If we lived on base though, we wouldn't get James' housing allowance in his paycheck (but our housing would be free). And if we lived off-base we could find a place for less than what his allowance is. But he would have to ...

I'm in the middle of moving. My apartment is full of boxes. The good news is that my husband is be home TOMORROW night and will be able to help me pack for a couple days before we get the u-haul truck. YAY! I decided I could still take time to make a good dinner for myself. But not too much time. This was really easy. This is all it was: Easy Salmon Patties 1 egg 1 3 oz packet of salmon 5 or 6 Ritz crackers, crumbled up about 3/4 cup Italian panko-style bread crumbs Pepper to taste Panko bread crumbs are really new to me, but I'm loving them. Then I just mashed it all together and made patties. This recipe makes about 2 1/2 hamburger-sized patties. Then I put them in a frying pan with a little olive oil and cooked on medium about 3 minutes per side. Yumm. I know not too many people read this, but I figure that I love reading what other people do for food.. especially if it's an easy recipe. So maybe someone someday might want to try this. :) This was also a breakthrough for...

Next week, I'm leaving this: The beautiful, calm flatness of Illinois, for the more adventurous mountains of Ft Lewis, WA. I took this picture of a bike ride. It's going to definitely be different running and biking in higher altitude with with actual hills. We're moving. Next week. And James is getting deployed in December for a year. Ick. Much sooner that we thought it would be. But I'm glad it's before kids are in the picture. After talking it over with James and some close friends and family, I think I'm going to go ahead and move out to Washington with James, be with him out there for a little less than 3 months, cook him good food, be an awesome homemaker wife, but them move back to live with my family in Illinois for the year once he deploys to Afghanistan. I feel kind of weird moving back in with my family after being married almost 2 years, but they want to be there for me and it gives us that wonderful opportunity to save a lot of money by not paying r...

I did it! I broke 2 hours in the half marathon, breaking my PR of 2:05:05! My official time was 1:59:20. woot! I decided to stay with the 2:00 pacers. I hadn't ever done that before, but it was really helpful to have a visual representation of my goal. Every time I stopped at a water station, I would have to catch back up to them. But I guess that makes sense, because you have to make up for water stops when you are going for a certain time on your own anyway. Oooh man. I'm so happy I did it. 5 mile split: 45:53 (9:10 average) 10 mile split: 1:30:53 (9:05 average) Finish time: 1:59:20 (9:06 average) So apparently the fastest part of my race was the between 5 and 10 miles. And I must have slowed down at the end. But I didn't hit a wall this year. And I didn't use gels. Because I'm pretty sure they mess my stomach up. So what did I use? Honey packets! That I got for free from starbucks. Mhmm. And I tried them out for the first time in this race. Probably...

At Ranger Graduation, they had a whole tent set up with souvenirs. With everything you could have possibly wanted with the word "Ranger" on it. They even had a "Proud Ranger Wife" shirt. But here's my problem with it.. it had Rhinestones. Ew. Not my thing. In fact, I think a lot of Army wife apparel in general ends up looking pretty tacky. But I won't go into that right now. I already knew what I wanted before I even drove down to Georgia. A Ranger charm for my necklace and a pair of "Ranger panties" (and no, it's actually not what you think). Okay.. the charm is pretty straightfoward, you say. But Ranger Panties? These are Ranger Panties: Not what you were expecting, eh? Btw I apologize for the extremely dorky picture. "Ranger Panties" are what the army calls the Ranger PT short shorts. Because guys tend to have a hard time wearing short shorts unless they are cross country runners these days. Yes, these are actual PT uniform...

I have a confession. I was debating not doing my half-marathon this Sunday. Terrible! I know. But with everything going on (hubby graduating ranger school, finding out we are moving a month sooner than expected, finding out about upcoming deployment, TERRIBLE Georgia heat), I convinced myself for a while that it would be okay to ditch it. I even had several friends tell me that it was okay to not do it. And really, it would have been. But I need to do it. Even if I run slower than I did last year, I will hate myself less than if I totally didn't do it. Because I trained for it. I paid $80 for it. And dangit, I want my shirt and finisher's medal. And I'm going to have fun, whether I run a PR or not. (I'll just have more fun if I run the PR) What that means: I need to leave Georiga a day earlier. Leave the sweet slowness of the South and return to busy Chicago to pack. Leave sleeping in, cooking good food, and movie cuddling to return to my lonely empty apartment. My cat ...

Update October 5, 2017: It's been 6 years and I still get a ton of hits on this post. This post will still give you a good overview. As I understand it, this information is still up to date, with the exception that they can no longer receive food in care packages except one at the completion of phase 3. For the most up-to-date info, join this facebook group. https://www.facebook.com/groups/rangersupport/ So since this was something that I googled a lot over, I thought I would write a post on my own experience of all my communication with my husband during Ranger School. Letters: It took about 5 days for each of my letters to get from James to me, once they were sent out (and sometimes it would take 3 or 4 days for them to be sent out). Now.. I live all the way in Chicago area, so that's why it took so long. A friend of mine that I met on twitter while our men were both are Ranger School, Lindsey , got hers in about 3 days, but she lives in Tennessee. The first letter I g...

Omygoodness. It's official. James has been graduated from Ranger School for about a week now. Feels so nice that it's finally over. His graduation was last Friday. I got here on Thursday and he was supposed to be released for his pass sometime between 2 and 4pm that day.. so I got there at 2:30 and waited until 5. :/ But he was the first guy to get to the gate (since he decided to run- typical James) and it felt so good to hug him! Then went out to dinner with his family and I had to drop him off again that night at the Ranger Battalion. That was kind of annoying. I felt like we were at our little Christian college again before we got married and had to say goodnight at curfew. Soo so proud of him though. He was one of around 60something to graduate in one shot out of close to 400 that started in class 08-11. When we got there that Friday morning, it was actually kind of hard to find him in the crowd. But there he is! The one looking at the camera! Ranger School Graduati...