Mary Spangler

All in the Family

January 25, 2022January 29, 2022 Mary Spangler 1 Comment military family, Military Life, recruiting

I certainly still miss living on base and having access to certain things, especially the commissary. But there is a bright spot that has recently come to our recruiting environment—my brother. My brother has been in the army for about 8 years now, and has spent his entire career at Fort Bragg, with my sister-in-law and their kids. But he decided to volunteer to become a recruiter, and is now moving to our area. It’s the first time in nearly a decade that my siblings and myself will all be living near one another, and be able to be there for family events that we have missed out on over the years.

Experience Military Life

As Time Goes By…

August 26, 2021August 18, 2021 Mary Spangler 1 Comment Military Life, military spouse, recruiting

We’ve been deep into the recruiting life for more than six months now, and I’m starting to feel a sense of normalcy coming back to daily life. It’s been a struggle at times to reach this, but now that we’re in a routine with more predictability, things have settled a bit.

Experience Military Life

A New Life in Recruiting

July 8, 2021July 7, 2021 Mary Spangler 1 Comment Military Life, perspective, recruiting

We’ve been deep into the recruiting world for a few months now, and so far, this transition has proved to be one of the most challenging of the many years we’ve lived in the military world. Not only has the transition back into a mostly civilian setting presented a number of difficulties, add in a global health crisis and things seem to find a way to get intense.

Experience Military Life PCS

Pandemic PCSing

September 8, 2020September 2, 2020 Mary Spangler 0 Comments Military Life, PCS

Sometimes it is hard to believe that we are already this far into a pandemic. I never imagined that’s what 2020 would look like. And frankly, I’m pretty ready for this year to end. Sometimes I find it difficult to imagine how life has to keep moving forward even though it feels like everything must be put on hold.

My husband is currently at recruiting school, and we are planning to move before the year is over. (We were supposed to move in June, but the stop order put that to an end.) He hasn’t been there long, so I am still waiting to find out where we are moving to.

Experience Military Life

A New Normal

May 16, 2020May 13, 2020 Mary Spangler 1 Comment Military Life

If you had asked me at the beginning of the year if I thought this is how 2020 would go, I would probably have thought you were crazy. Near the end of December, I heard about the alarm being sounded by the Chinese doctor in Wuhan who eventually died from COVID-19, but I didn’t understand then what he was trying to warn the rest of the world about. Now that it has migrated to America, it’s quite sad that we weren’t able to understand the full extent of what China was experiencing at the end of 2019.

In Illinois, we have been asked to shelter in place since the middle of March. My son was already home from school that week before the shelter-in-place order went into effect. The weekend before, we didn’t do much. We stopped at Home Depot for our usual kids’ workshop, but it had been canceled. The employee told us that Home Depot had canceled them nationwide to avoid large gatherings of kids, especially in bigger cities. We got our workshop kit and left.

Experience Military Life

Expecting the Unexpected

February 17, 2020September 10, 2021 Mary Spangler 0 Comments Military Life, PCS

For some time now, my family has been waiting to see where the Army will take us next. As of October of last year, we have been at our current duty station for three years, and we swiftly expected there would be a phone call or email with more information about the next phase of Army life once this threshold was met.

However, we reached the end of October without a peep. And then we went through November and December, still without any word.

I wasn’t complaining, of course, because now that my son was in preschool (snd let me say, a pretty good preschool program), I was dreading the idea of moving or even staying behind while he finished the school year with my husband going to the next place. But then, in January, something unexpected happened.

Experience Health & Fitness

A New Me in 2019

July 23, 2019August 30, 2021 Mary Spangler 0 Comments physical health

If you have been following my blog, you will know that near the end of last year I started to realize that I needed to re-examine some of the choices I was making in my life, and that I needed to really focus on getting healthy. I am working on this part of my life, each and every day. Aside from some rude comments being made to me one day about my size, I was also beginning to experience episodes of apnea during illness. You can read more about that here.

Experience Household 6

Life Unexpected

May 23, 2019August 26, 2021 Mary Spangler 0 Comments Military Life

This year seems to have slowly become more difficult as time goes by. I can say with complete certainty that it will get more difficult before too much longer. The best way to describe what has happened and what will happen is overwhelming, exhausting, and unexpected. The last few months have been wrought with worry, stress, and pain.

My grandmother became ill.

Experience Household 6

The Struggle of Communication

April 23, 2019August 26, 2021 Mary Spangler 1 Comment military kids, parenting, special needs

When my son was around 18 months old, I started to worry about his ability to communicate. By the age of 2, it became an even larger concern, as most kids by that age are able to say around 50 words and string together a sentence or two. By 2, he had less than 20 words in his vocabulary and struggled to communicate with us. I wondered if I should get an evaluation with a speech therapist, but being that he’s my first child, I wasn’t sure if what was going on was normal.

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