Kimber's Navy Family

Recently on one of my submarine spouse groups, a spouse asked what kind of support is given to the military families while the service member is deployed. Several people answered, but here's the bottom line: no support is guaranteed. Your boat might not have an active FRG (Family Readiness Group). Or Wardroom (for officer spouses). Or you might be geo-bacheloring and nowhere near any of the military support. Or maybe you haven't connected at that particular duty station or you just moved there or you live across country from all of your friends and family or maybe you are going through a hard time: mentally or physically. But here is the great news! Support for military families can come from anywhere: your neighbors, the military community, your friends and family, your existing support networks and social circles, your church, your gym, your kids' schools, long distance, your FRG, your Wardroom, your military base and the programs offered there. Even better, ...

Well, baby #5 has decided that I apparently do not need sleep and she isn't even born yet. I thought I would put these wee hours of the morning to use and write a blog post while I sipped my lemon ginger tea in a quiet, still sleeping house. With 4 children and another on the way, I am not always eager to drag all the children to the store for small errands. Throw in having a husband on submarines, 2 asthmatic children, twin preschoolers, and the roughest pregnancy yet and you can bet running errands is my least favorite thing to do (well, changing pee sheets is probably actually my least favorite thing to do). When our twins were newborns, I really started utilizing the convenience of online shopping. Now I have honed that skill to level expert. Here are my tips on making online shopping work for you and avoiding small errands: 1. Buy in bulk The first step to successful online shopping: go to Costco. We plan our Costco trips every 1-2 weeks. Our twins are in prescho...

Are we crazy? I don't know. We are in the midst of planning our cross country drive. My hubby is at SOBC in Connecticut right now and I am staying with family. In a few short weeks we will be loading up our vehicles and driving across the United States of America, east coast to west coast. With four kids, the oldest being six and the youngest being 11 months. I'm freaking out. It sounded like an adventure before, but the more I look at all the work we have to do to pack for the drive, plan the drive, and then make the drive (with 4 kids), the more my stomach turns to knots and the more I just want to bury my head in the sand. Why did I agree to this? I was going to fly... we were going to ship my van... and now we are driving both our vehicles... But here we are. My husband appealed to my sense of adventure. I agreed. We have a room full of things to pack at my parents' house. We have two vehicles to drive across country. We have a game plan and it is alm...

Our 2-year olds wrestling on a hotel room couch last PCS ;) I wrote a blog post before titled, " PCSing tips from a Navy wife and mother of three ." We have a PCS coming up in the next couple months and so I wanted to write another blog post about how we start preparing several months before an upcoming PCS. Move Notebook The most important aspect to a smooth PCS is organizing all your paperwork which is why the move notebook is so important. I wrote a blog post called " Write it all down " where I explain how I organize our move notebook. The other day I spent the morning getting our move notebook ready for our next move: throwing out and filing paperwork from our last PCS, printing off new note taking pages, adding sections for our new kitten and baby #4. Move notebook: ready. Donating HHG The next step {and one you can never start too early-- seriously} is going through your household goods (HHG). One of the difficult aspects of being a Navy fami...

Using our Baby Jogger City Select with our 3-year old twins When my husband and I found out that I was pregnant with twins, we knew that we needed to buy a new stroller (among many other things!). Stroller shopping was overwhelming! There were so many different types of strollers on the market in all different price ranges. I talked to my dad about it and he reminded me of his system when making a large purchase. I touched on his system in my blog post, " I love my stroller ," but after a recent conversation with one of my girlfriends regarding stroller shopping, I thought it warranted its own post. Large purchases are often hard to make, especially when you start tying a lot of expectations to that purchase. It is easy to become paralyzed by the thought of buyer's remorse. Here is how my dad has always advised me to approach a large purchase and how I applied that to stroller shopping. 1. Take out a piece of paper and draw three columns. The first column is ...

  This is our third PCS together. There were a lot of reasons why this past move went as well as it did, many of which you already know if you read my last blog post, " PCS to South Carolina ." Here are the major reasons as to why this was such a good move: My husband was home on both ends and did not have to go into work much. In North Carolina he was working with the ROTC after he graduated college; he took 10 days of house hunting leave during our PCS. Now in South Carolina he is on hold before he actually starts power school. We did not have to deal with a boat schedule or him being underway while I set up the move. That was a nice change (read " STA-21 'Officer's' Program "). Since we moved one state down (North Carolina to South Carolina), we did not have to ship any vehicles and try to figure out how we were going to negotiate having one car for an extended period of time. Along the same vein, we also did not have to deal with getting specif...