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This the story of how I became “The Happy Housewife.” You might want to start at the beginning.

Sailor came home with sad news, there were no houses available, or least no houses available to us. I decided I needed to start looking for a rental off base.

The dead mouse in the laundry, along with a family of mice living under our oven, and rats running around our backyard was enough for me to spend money we didn’t have to find a better place.

Sailor went to the housing office (again) to get a list of off-base rentals and came home home empty-handed. We didn’t need an off-base rental because they had offered us a house on base!

It was a four bedroom three and a half bath house right across the street from Admiral’s row. We had a playground right behind our house and a sidewalk for the kids to ride their bikes!

Not only would we be moving into a beautiful house on base, the Navy was paying for our move! We would be moving for free!

I couldn’t believe it.

And I didn’t! I was sure the housing office would realize they had made a mistake and take the house away from us. I wouldn’t let myself get excited about moving until we were actually living and sleeping in our new house.

The only problem with the move was that Sailor had a two week course in Texas and then we had a family vacation to Florida immediately following his course. We had about a week to prepare for the move. The movers would be arriving at our house the day after we returned from Florida.

Sailor left for his course and I was able to walk through our new house. It was better than I had expected. There were hardwood floors throughout the house, a large oven, and the washer and dryer were inside! It even had a one car garage (we’d never had a garage). We were beyond blessed!

I spent the time Sailor was in Texas cleaning out the mouse house and preparing for our vacation to Florida. It was a challenging task trying to homeschool, manage a baby and prepare for a move, but I realize now it was just a warm-up in my career as a Navy spouse.

Sailor returned from training and we made the twelve hour drive to Florida. It was our first time back in Florida since we had moved and it was great to see our family again.

On the day we were supposed to drive home I woke up with a scratchy throat. By the time we were out of Florida it was painful to swallow.

I kept drinking water, thinking somehow that would help, but all it did was slow us down getting home. We were stopping every hour so I could use the bathroom because I was drinking so much water.

Sometime after midnight, and on the home stretch of our drive I had to go to the bathroom again. By this time I had chills and a fever and all I could think about was getting home and curling up in bed!

Sailor kept looking for  a place to stop, but we were in rural Virginia and nothing was open. In desperation we finally pulled over and I walked into the woods to go. It was horrible!

Sailor knew I was pretty sick if I was willing to go to the bathroom in the woods so he hurried home and I crawled into bed and didn’t get up for three days.

The movers arrived and I remember laying in bed while they packed up our bedroom. I was so embarrassed to be sick in bed as strangers packed up my house but I had no choice!

Finally on the third day Sailor told me I had to go to the doctor. They didn’t have any appointments so I went to the ER.

The doctor took one look at my throat and then proceded to call the rest of the staff in to “check it out.”  I’ve decided that it is never fun to be the patient that all the doctor’s want to see because your case is either so bad or so strange they all want to have a look!

The determined I had a very bad case of strep throat and a few other things. They didn’t think I could swallow a pill so they asked me to gargle some syrup like substance to numb my throat. I managed to gargle for approximately three seconds before I promptly threw up the syrup and the remainder of my stomach contents all over the floor.

They finally gave me a shot of antibiotics and I went home and went back to bed for two more days.

When I was finally feeling better our old house was empty and our new house was full. Because I was in bed during all the packing, and the moving company wasn’t the best at labeling the boxes, it was almost a week before I found the contents of my kitchen!

Even though it took me over a month to find all our stuff, I loved our new house. We had friendly neighbors and even a teenage girl who babysat right next door! The kids made friends with all the other kids in the neighborhood and I began daily walks through the housing area.

It was a beautiful spring and I was determined to enjoy every single minute we lived in our big house on base.

(Our Story will be taking a break over Christmas. Look for the next installment will be January 8, 2012)

This the story of how I became “The Happy Housewife.” You might want to start at the beginning.

Unlike many families who have researched homeschooling for years before they actually started on the journey, I had researched homeschooling for about two weeks.

My friend who earlier in the year had come over to talk to Amy about homeschooling, lent us her first grade Bob Jones curriculum so I only needed to purchase a few workbooks to get started.

Homeschooling our six year-old was a breeze. She loved to do her schoolwork and we were always finished with school before noon. I wasn’t sure if you were supposed to be finished by noon, but even when I gave her extra assignments she flew through the work.

The biggest challenge to homeschooling was getting my four year-old back in forth to preschool every morning. It was only a block from our house, but once I didn’t have to get dressed (and bundle the baby up) to take our six year-old to school it was much harder to get our four year-old to school.

We managed and I thought it was good for our son to spend some time away from me twice a week. His sickly early years had made him extremely clingy and unwilling to go with anyone else other than me (and sometimes Sailor). He cried every single time I dropped him off at preschool.

I talked to his teacher numerous times about it and she said he was a “sad child” in class but otherwise on target for his age. I wondered how I was going to homeschool this child who didn’t seem to care one bit about holding a pencil, cutting paper, coloring, or looking at books.

My second biggest challenge homeschooling was the cold. That year natural gases prices increased drastically. Our old and drafty house would not stay warm. The first month it was cold we kept the heat at 60 degrees and our gas bill alone was over $300 for a month. We couldn’t afford to pay any more for gas.

Sailor would come home from work with stories of co-workers who had $900 gas bills and were in danger of their heat being turned off by the gas company.

I didn’t know how we were going to survive the winter with out going deeper into debt.

We tried using the fireplace, but it was broken and there was no way for the smoke to escape via the chimney. The first time we had a fire the entire house filled with smoke and we ended up having to open every window and door in the house to air it out. This made our house even colder and explained all the black soot on the windows I cleaned off when we first moved in.

After a few weeks of wearing heavy coats, hats and scarves in our living room to stay warm we decided to buy two electric space heaters. We put one in the kids’ room and one in our bedroom. I let happy baby sleep with me since I was worried he would get too cold in the nursery.

When we woke up in the morning we would take the heaters downstairs and use them in the dining room (school room) and living room. While our electric bills went up, it kept our gas bill under $300.

One cold afternoon I headed down to the basement to start some laundry.

Ever since the flood I hated doing laundry ( I mean I never really liked it before, but…). When we lived in Panama our washer and dryer were outside under our stilt house and in Florida our washer and dryer were in an un-airconditioned space that you had to go out of the house and then into a little room to use. In this house the washer and dryer were in the stinky, wet basement. I remember joking with Sailor that I would know I had “arrived” when my washer and dryer were actually IN the house.

Our washer and dry sat on cinder blocks to keep them from rusting during the flooding. That day I noticed a little gray sock peaking out from under the washer. Since missing socks is one of my pet peeves I grabbed the gray sock to throw it in the laundry.

As soon as I touched the sock I realized it wasn’t a sock at all. It was as shriveled up, flattened dead mouse!

I screamed and ran upstairs. I announced to anyone that could hear me that I would not be doing laundry again until we moved out of this house!

Our lease was due to renew in a month but we really couldn’t afford to move. I didn’t want to stay one extra day in the mouse house, but moving seemed impossible.

Then one day Amy stopped by. While her house wasn’t full of mice, it did have its share of old house issues. She told me they had been offered a house on base. I was devastated! Living next to Amy made our mouse house tolerable. If she moved on base I would be all alone.

I was also surprised she was offered a house on base. Base housing was only for 0-5 and above and her husband was an 0-4. I asked her why they were offered a house and she explained that they couldn’t fill the housing with the higher ranking officers so they were offering it to the lower ranks.

I had an idea. What if we could get a house on base? If we were offered a house on base the Navy would pay to move us (since there was no housing available when we relocated to Norfolk) and utilities would be included so we could stop freezing!

I shared my plan with Sailor and while he thought it was a long shot he agreed to go to the housing office and find out what the real story was.

Meanwhile I spent the afternoon driving down the streets of housing and was surprised to see several houses with junior officers living in them. (They posted the name and rank above the garage)

Sailor came home from the housing office with bad news. Because he was so junior they wouldn’t let us have a house, even though there were several available. I was so upset. I really believed that God was giving us a way out of the mouse house so I couldn’t understand why this wasn’t going to work!

A few days later I was taking our son to preschool and I ran into another Navy wife that lived in our neighborhood. She told me they were offered a house on base. Her husband was only one rank above mine so I knew the housing office hadn’t been honest with Sailor.

I raced home and woke Sailor up (from his 3rd shift) and told him he had to go back to the housing office get the truth. I knew my friend from preschool wasn’t going to accept the house, so couldn’t we just have it?

My husband headed back to the housing office to see if there was any chance we could move on base.

This the story of how I became “The Happy Housewife.” You might want to start at the beginning.

When I look back on my life as a mom there is one person who probably influenced me more than anyone else. Her name is Amy. Shortly after we moved into the Mouse House, Amy and her family moved into the house behind us.

She had four kids, which was a lot in my opinion! Happy Baby was a newborn when I met her and to see someone who was able to get four kids dressed and out the door in the morning gave me hope that I could manage my three.

Our kids played together over the summer and when school began in the fall we started our morning routine of walking to school together. All our kids, strollers, backpacks, toys, snacks, and whatever else our little kids would bring along.

I remember one fall morning her toddler had a cold. He sneezed and had a big booger coming out of his nose. Amy took her hand and wiped the booger off his face, then bent down and cleaned her hand off in the wet grass.

I was shocked! I asked her why she didn’t just use his jacket to wipe his face. She replied that if she used his jacket she would have to wash it when she got home and it was a lot easier to wash her hand than a jacket.

I was sold.

Amy made pizza crust from scratch, decorated her house in Playmobil, and even let her kids cut up Christmas cards and photos they received for crafts. She kept spare clothes for each of her kids in the car in case they stopped at the beach while running errands.

She let her kids get dirty, make mistakes, and solve problems. She was a very involved mom, but never overbearing or controlling.

Amy was the mom I wanted to be.

One day Amy asked if I knew anything about homeschooling. I told her I knew a few people at church who homeschooled but I really didn’t know much about it. She said her son was struggling in school and she wondered if homeschooling might be a better option for him that year.

I told her I could invite my friend over for lunch and she could talk to her about homeschooling. The day my friend showed up I decided to stay at Amy’s house and listen to her “homeschool speech.”

I had no interest in homeschooling, but I didn’t want to leave my  friend alone at Amy’s in case she felt awkward. Our ten kids played while my friend gave Amy all sorts of details about homeschooling.

It was interesting but definitely not something I would ever consider. I liked our little neighborhood school and our daughter had just been accepted into the gifted program. We were excited about her opportunities (as much as you can be for a first grader).

My homeschool friend left and Amy and I discussed the pros and cons about homeschooling. Amy had such an opened mind about it, she wasn’t sure if she was going to homeschool her son but I knew that whatever she chose to do it wouldn’t be without a lot of thought, prayer, and research.

Over the next few months during our school walks we talked off and on about homeschooling. Her son was adjusting well to the new school but my daughter was bored. The gifted program wasn’t really designed for first graders at her school so she spent her gifted time reading to other kids.

Sailor and I didn’t mind her doing all the extra reading, but we thought a first grader reading to another first grader every single day and calling it “gifted class” was a stretch.

That Christmas we excitedly went to the school Christmas performance. I was a bit surprised when the children sangs songs about Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Las Posadas, and Santa. Where was the Jesus song?

I came home and told Sailor I was upset that they kids were taught songs about several holidays, but not a song about the Christian holiday. He agreed. I didn’t expect the school to only sing Jesus songs or even make the kids sing a song, but to leave it out when they sang about other December holidays bothered me.

It bothered me all winter break. We looked into Christian schools but they were too expensive, we even went to a homeschool bookstore but I got overwhelmed and walked out empty handed.

In the back of my mind I knew public school was no longer my first choice, but I felt like I didn’t have any other options.

Two days before school resumed we dis-enrolled our daughter from school and filed homeschool paperwork with the state of Virginia. I had no homeschool experience, curriculum, or even a vague idea of what I was doing.

I just knew it was the right choice for our family.

This the story of how I became “The Happy Housewife.” You might want to start at the beginning.

I saw the blood in the diaper and having already been through this experience with my older son I knew it was not normal.

I panicked, ran back to my hospital bed, grabbed the phone and called one of my friends who was a nurse. When she answered I told her that something was very wrong and that happy baby’s diaper was full of blood.

She told me to hang up the phone immediately and call the nurse on duty. She couldn’t help me from her living room.

I pushed the nurse’s button and waited forever (at least it seemed like forever) for the nurse to come to the room. When she finally arrived she had my discharge paperwork in hand and told me I could go home as soon as someone came to pick up me.

I told her I was not going anywhere until I knew what was wrong with happy baby. She peaked into his diaper and told me that was normal. I told her it was not normal and I wasn’t going anywhere.

She was obviously very frustrated that I was refusing to sign my discharge paperwork. Finally she told me she would call the intern to come and talk to me. I told her that I would not talk to any intern or resident and that I wasn’t leaving until I saw the staff doctor.

She was getting very irritated with me, but I stood my ground. It was all I could do to not burst into tears. I was exhausted, afraid, and very mad.

Finally the intern showed up. I politely told her that I did not want to talk to her, I wanted to talk to the staff doctor. She tried to explain what happened to happy baby, I told her that I wasn’t going to listen to her and that a staff doctor better get in my room or else.

Now, I’m not really sure what the or else meant, but when you have just had a baby, shared a toilet with another lady who just had a baby, and haven’t slept for three days “or else” means something.

Finally the staff doctor showed up. He explained to me that when they started the circumcision they noticed a possible malformation and the only way to fix the malformation was to use part of the skin normally removed in a circumcision.

They had to stop the procedure in the middle in order to save the skin for a possible future operation because the malformation could not be confirmed until our son was older.

Basically our son had half a circumcision and that was the reason for the increased bleeding.

I was aghast. I could not believe the hospital was planning on discharging me and happy baby without even telling me what had happened. When I shared my concern with the doctor he told me there was a note on my paperwork to NOT discharge me until he had come to explain the situation.

The ward was filling up and the nurse was in a hurry to put a new patient in my room so she ignored the instructions and had planned to send me home without any knowledge of the partial procedure.

I was livid. In fact I was so angry that I do not even remember what I said or did after that moment until Sailor arrived at the hospital.

Sailor arrived and I made a mental note to never have a baby in a military hospital again. This was our first military hospital birth and it was going to be my last!

Earlier that morning I called Sailor and asked for some clothes to wear home from the hospital. I requested my sweat pants and also asked if he would buy me some underwear suitable for wearing after you’ve had a baby.

In his hurry to get to the hospital he grabbed a skirt by mistake and bought the biggest, ugliest pair of granny panties you could imagine at Target on the way. I hesitated even putting them on because they went up to my neck (I’m only sort of kidding) but since I didn’t have any other options I wore my skirt and granny panties home from the hospital.

It was time to start our life as a family of five.