2012 is HERE!

Happy New Year!!
Our family at midnight on 1/1/12

I can hardly believe that 2011 has ended and the new year has begun!  Obviously, this blog took a backseat for the majority of 2011. To be honest, this last year was a challenging one. There were highs and lows and lots of in-betweens and I'm really pretty glad to see a new year begin - full of new beginnings and adventures.  Thanks for hanging in there with me while I wasn't very frequent around here.

I'll do a full catch up/re-cap 2011 post in the next couple days, but I thought I'd just update on what is going on in our lives right now.

Sarge made it home (FINALLY) from his 2nd deployment just before Christmas! By the time he got back home he had been gone for 9 months. Re-integration has been quite different this time around, but we are all adjusting and things are falling back into place.  We celebrated Monkey's 1st birthday just before Christmas as well. She actually turned one at the end of October, but we felt it was important to wait until Daddy was home to celebrate. Her party was amazing and it was so nice to be able to celebrate our baby girl together!

We had a fantastic Christmas together! We stayed home this year, which was a very nice change. We haven't been at home for Christmas since our first Christmas together 3 years ago. We took Christmas Day very leisurely and enjoyed Skyping with family and watching our girl experience the magic of Christmas as she opened all of her gifts.

Now, we are busy preparing for our first official PCS!  We are headed to northern California and the movers will be here in about 2 weeks - YIKES!  We aren't anywhere near ready, but we'll get there!  More on that soon -- I am hoping to Vlog our PCS as we go along. We are taking leave en route so we won't actually arrive at our new base until the end of February. It should be quite the adventure!

That pretty much catches up the last couple of months!  I hope to post a lot more this year than I did last year, though in an effort to reduce stress during a stressful time I am not going to promise how often, and will instead just promise to do much better than last year!

I hope the beginning of 2012 has been good to you!  Happy New Year!

Who wants to know?

As a military wife I often have found myself in a tricky situation with family and friends. You see, not everything in our life is free for me to share with even those who are closest to me. This is really hard sometimes! There are times when Sarge has information that he is unable to discuss with even me, which is even harder to accept because we really hate having any kind of secret between us!

However, when it comes to keeping my husband and family safe there is nothing that I would not do.  So, Sarge and I talked and came up with some OPSEC guidelines that work for us. These apply to blogging, email, phone/text conversations and to friends, family and anyone who might ask. There really are no exceptions!

OPSEC stands for Operations Security. "The fancy definition is that OPSEC is about preventing the “accumulation of one or more elements of sensitive/unclassified information or data that could damage national security by revealing classified information.” Practically speaking, it’s like giving someone pieces of an “intelligence” puzzle that are not themselves classified – and may even seem harmless – but that when assembled, could lead someone to discover a classified or sensitive unclassified program, activity, or project." OPSEC definition source

Our OPSEC guidelines:

We don't talk about the specific time frame.

We don't talk about the mission.

We don't talk about specific military locations.

We don't share pictures with unit insignia.

If you know us in *real life* please refrain from using our full names on this blog.

Phone, email, text, chat rooms, message boards, blogs.
Always assume someone is listening.

No deployed mailing address will be shared with anyone.
If you'd like to send something to Sarge, please send it to me and I will get it to him. This includes immediate family and friends.

We have a PO Box for all mail associated with this blog. The address can be found on the "Contact Me" tab at the top of this blog.

While we realize not everyone is as strict about this on a personal level, we feel very strongly and appreciate your respect for these OPSEC guidelines.

*This post will also be linked under the military resources tab at the top of this blog.

Who wants to know?

As a military wife I often have found myself in a tricky situation with family and friends. You see, not everything in our life is free for me to share with even those who are closest to me. This is really hard sometimes! There are times when Sarge has information that he is unable to discuss with even me, which is even harder to accept because we really hate having any kind of secret between us!

However, when it comes to keeping my husband and family safe there is nothing that I would not do.  So, Sarge and I talked and came up with some OPSEC guidelines that work for us. These apply to blogging, email, phone/text conversations and to friends, family and anyone who might ask. There really are no exceptions!

OPSEC stands for Operations Security. "The fancy definition is that OPSEC is about preventing the “accumulation of one or more elements of sensitive/unclassified information or data that could damage national security by revealing classified information.” Practically speaking, it’s like giving someone pieces of an “intelligence” puzzle that are not themselves classified – and may even seem harmless – but that when assembled, could lead someone to discover a classified or sensitive unclassified program, activity, or project." OPSEC definition source

Our OPSEC guidelines:

We don't talk about the specific time frame.

We don't talk about the mission.

We don't talk about specific military locations.

We don't share pictures with unit insignia.

If you know us in *real life* please refrain from using our full names on this blog.

Phone, email, text, chat rooms, message boards, blogs.
Always assume someone is listening.

No deployed mailing address will be shared with anyone.
If you'd like to send something to Sarge, please send it to me and I will get it to him. This includes immediate family and friends.

We have a PO Box for all mail associated with this blog. The address can be found on the "Contact Me" tab at the top of this blog.

While we realize not everyone is as strict about this on a personal level, we feel very strongly and appreciate your respect for these OPSEC guidelines.

*This post will also be linked under the military resources tab at the top of this blog.

Changes

This blog is still a work in progress!
I'm hoping that I can do all the changes while still posting regularly, but you might notice a few things out of whack from time to time while I figure things out.

What's Changing?

New tabs - circled in purple!

If you look under the banner at the top you might notice there are some new tabs. When you click on these you just see the pages and a note that says "coming soon". I hope to fill the content on these pages over the next week or so, and will let you know when they are officially up and running!

Connect using these buttons!

On the right side of this blog you'll see several buttons.  The "F" is for my facebook fan page. "T" is for twitter. The envelope allows you to email me. The "V" will allow you to view our videos hosted on vimeo.com.  You can also choose to "follow" us using Google Friend Connect. I am currently debating whether or not I will keep this feature, but for now it's there so feel free to connect with us that way!  I will soon be adding a few more ways to connect, such as through RSS feeds and readers.

The change I am probably the MOST excited about is my new comment system. I hope this will be a better way to connect with my readers and it should also allow you to connect with each other better. This is the first post in which the new comment system will be visible so feel free to test it out!  You'll notice that there is a reply button next to your comment so that I, or anyone else reading, can easily reply to your comment. Comments will be "threaded" so that it is easier to follow the conversation.  In addition, you can log in using your twitter, facebook, or Open ID accounts which allows many more people to comment.

If you have any questions or suggestions about the changes you see on this blog, let me know!  You can either leave a comment on this post or email me at raisingmonkeyblog@gmail.com

Changes

This blog is still a work in progress!
I'm hoping that I can do all the changes while still posting regularly, but you might notice a few things out of whack from time to time while I figure things out.

What's Changing?

New tabs - circled in purple!

If you look under the banner at the top you might notice there are some new tabs. When you click on these you just see the pages and a note that says "coming soon". I hope to fill the content on these pages over the next week or so, and will let you know when they are officially up and running!

Connect using these buttons!

On the right side of this blog you'll see several buttons.  The "F" is for my facebook fan page. "T" is for twitter. The envelope allows you to email me. The "V" will allow you to view our videos hosted on vimeo.com.  You can also choose to "follow" us using Google Friend Connect. I am currently debating whether or not I will keep this feature, but for now it's there so feel free to connect with us that way!  I will soon be adding a few more ways to connect, such as through RSS feeds and readers.

The change I am probably the MOST excited about is my new comment system. I hope this will be a better way to connect with my readers and it should also allow you to connect with each other better. This is the first post in which the new comment system will be visible so feel free to test it out!  You'll notice that there is a reply button next to your comment so that I, or anyone else reading, can easily reply to your comment. Comments will be "threaded" so that it is easier to follow the conversation.  In addition, you can log in using your twitter, facebook, or Open ID accounts which allows many more people to comment.

If you have any questions or suggestions about the changes you see on this blog, let me know!  You can either leave a comment on this post or email me at raisingmonkeyblog@gmail.com