WHAT A YEAR!!

April you could not come any faster and while you were here, you were a doosey!!! THESE LAST FEW MONTHS have been CRAZY to say the least! I couldn’t blog about some things that were going on until IT happened!

Derrick joined the Army National Guard April 30^th! History lesson! Lol not an official one!

2012

Derrick and I felt something was off in our life. We decided to pray and figure it out. Derrick text me and said I need to tell you something and I tx back and said I need to tell you something. When he got home he said, “ I think I need to join the Army National Guard.” I opened my laptop and the ARNG website was up. We knew this what would help us move forward and progress!  Little did we know how long this process would take! How could something be sooo right and then have so many stumbling blocks!! Good heck! We had friends tell us that maybe this was all BAD luck and we shouldn’t continue to go forward with it. Whatever we learned in the process and as many crazy things were happened, we still felt it was right to continue pursuing it!

I’m going to start to list the crazy events, in no particular order because I can’t remember!

1.     Over the military weight limit. He needed to be at 148lbs. MAX and he was 170. WOW he worked hard to get to 145 and quickly! It still fluctuates for him and it is frustrating!

2.    No hiding he has bad ears, the military already had a bible on Derrick’s ears! All 13 surgeries! He appealed the denial twice because they would not clear his ears! FINALLY they approved it! He had to have his ear tubes removed and had his ENT write a letter saying he could medically serve in the military!

3.    Somehow the military had in their book of remembrance that Derrick was allergic to melons. This was the reason he was disqualified the first 2 times and they didn’t tell us! I knew he doesn’t like melons… but allergic? We went to an allergist and he did an allergy test on his forearm (super sensitive) for the melons… The doctor declared him allergic! WHAT? I knew he wasn’t so the next option was to sit at the doctors office, have the melons spoon fed to him, 3 hours a melon, and see what they find! Finally NOTHING! Doctor declared him not allergic! 9 hrs Total!

4.    Right before MEPS, where he would have to strip to his whitey tighties and be examined, Derrick went swimming in a hot tub and tragically he was allergic to the chemicals they used. He looked like he had chicken POX!! He tried for a week trying all sorts of magical treatments to clear it up! They could disqualify him for this! It cleared up enough that they didn’t say a word.

5.    Derrick sliced his hand open with a knife while making his pinewood derby car!? It needed stitches but we decided to glue it shut! I think I should have just bubble wrapped him!

6.    Derrick has been in 4 car wrecks during this time, one of them he was rear-ended on the freeway, one he was side swiped, one I was driving and hit debris in the road and crunched the frontend of our car and one he rear-ended because someone stopped in a continuous flow lane. So blessed that did not have more problems then just the cars.

7.    At Derrick’s new job, he was attaching a crane hoist to a monument and this special employee moved the crane while his hand was still there and his thumb was pulled into the chain crank thing. NOT GOOD! This ripped off his thumbnail, split the back of his think, and broke the tip of the bone on the thumb!! WHAT THE HECK! How can this stuff happen?! I met him at the ER and was super frustrated! Not with him! He was supposed to go to MEPS in a week! We practice shaking hands with that thumb down and felt it would be ok! It was until the lady needed his thumbprint and she squashed and rolled his broke thumb over and over. The print reader wouldn’t take his thumbprint because it was hot and sweaty!! UHMM yea! She was rolling and squeezing a broken finger! Eventually it worked, he almost passed out because of the pain! Wouldn’t that have been wonderful!

8.    After a year of this, they finally granted him the medical waivers and allowed him to join the Army National Guard. June came along and Derrick broke his foot! We are back to square one and now need gazzilion medical papers for MEPS! OH MY GOSH! I just remind myself that this will be for our good! We now have the approval for his leave for basic in February! YIPPIE!! 

9.  Im pretty sure there is more but I have tried to forget about them!

Enjoy the pictures! Sometimes the most opposition comes when you’re trying to do what is best for your family!