This is how it started...

Hi, all. I'm Ashley. I am 20 years old and a new wife & mother. I married the love of my life on December 16, 2008 at 6 months pregnant. We were blessed with a very unexpected pregnancy at the beginning of our engagement and it's been pretty much a roller coaster ride since. My husband's name is Eric and he is nearly 13 years my senior. He is 33 years old. I met him on Myspace, believe it or not, when I was a senior in high school. Two days after my 18th birthday to be exact. It took some convincing him (6 months of it) to get him to give us a serious try. The age difference freaked him out, which is actually pretty comical because many of the people I'd tell his age thought of him as some pedophile,in which they would respond, "what does a 30 year old man want with an 18 year old girl/woman?" Oh, it used to drive me nuts! I wanted to say, only if you realized! TEN months after we met, we became "official" and we have been inseperable since.

After we found out about our "unexpected but very wanted" pregnancy we had to come up with a plan about what we were going to do as far as finances and our future. I was only a sophomore in college and though he had a bachelor's degree (in business) and his real estate license, the economy sucks where we live in NW Georgia. He had been looking for a good job for such a long time and the economy was only getting worse at the time, so we were running out of options. That is when we discussed him joining the service. We decided it was the route for us to go. He did some research and found out that he was too old for all branches of service except for the Army and Airforce. He really wanted to go into the Airforce, but his college GPA wasn't quite high enough. It was a about .4 less that the required GPA. So, that made his choice easy, the Army it was. He visited his recruiter and began the recruitment process. He took the ASVAB test and surprised all of the recruiters in the office by only missing 4 questions total. He scored in the top 98% on the ASVAB test. When he told them he had a college degree, they were very impressed and decided to court him for Officer Candidate School (OCS), which is very difficult to get into by the way. We found that out really quickly! After many rigorous tests, both mental and physical, he was officially accepted into the OCS program this past February.

On March 23, 2009 our beautiful son Maddox was born at 11:22am via csection weighing 8lbs 10oz & was 19.5" long. He is the most gorgeous little man in the world ;) The past 9 weeks have been life changing. Eric & I have a new found love and respect for one another & I have felt a love that I never knew I could feel and that is for my precious little boy.

On May 26th, Eric left for 9 weeks of Basic training. Today is day 3 and I feel so empty inside. My son is in his swing crying at the moment. I am at my wit's end. He can sense my despair and I've NEVER seen him have three fussy days like this in a row. He cries even when held, so for my own sanity, after he was fed and changed, I just put him in his swing and let him fuss a bit. I know he misses his daddy. I feel like I have a broken heart. My husband is at basic training in Lawton, Oklahoma at the moment. He was originally supposed to be in Fort Benning in Columus, GA, but his post was changed unfortunately. In 9 weeks time, Maddox and I will fly out to OK to watch him graduate. Following his BCT graduation he will go through 12 weeks of OCS which will be at Ft. Benning as that's the only post in the US that has OCS. Afterwards, we are unsure of what his training will hold. This is definitely way harder than I had imagined, but my son is my number 1 priority so I have to make it through.. and I will. I definitely look forward to the day when he is finally stationed and we live together as a family again. But, until then, I will enjoy my Maddox and take this opportunity to lose my baby weight & get fit again!

Well, I suppose this is enough for one day. I am sorry it is so lengthy but I wanted everyone who may read in the future to know about how this crazy life of mine began (well the wife and mommy part). Until next time...

Love, Ashley