I'll just start from the very beginning I guess. I was 21 and John was 19 when we met on a Christian dating website. YES! We met online! Hehe. It's not that uncommon these days really. He instant messaged me one day and I almost didn't answer because I saw that he was 19, the same height as me, and a Marine! But for some reason (in God's plans all along), I answered him, and I think we ended up chatting for the next several hours! We continued this chatting over the next 2 weeks and then decided to swap phone numbers. We still were able to talk for hours and hours on the phone, and 2 weeks later, we decided that he would come to my parents house (where I was currently living) to meet me. It was about a 4 1/2 hour drive to my parents house from Camp Lejeune where he had just been stationed. The first time we met felt like we had always known each other. We were completely comfortable with one another and it felt like we had been friends forever. That weekend I thoroughly enjoyed schooling him in a game of basketball in our driveway (he still will not admit how good I really was). We went on our first date where I super duper embarrassed him by taking him to a steak house where you throw peanuts on the floor and talking to the waitress like she was out of her mind when she told me how much the chicken fingers cost! Yes, I'm a Southern/country girl and he just wasn't quite used to that yet. ;) We went to a creepy theater to see, "The Amityville Horror", where we were the only two in there. And then the last night he was there that weekend, we had our first kiss on the golf course behind my parents house. Two weeks later I went to see him at Camp Lejeune for the first time, and I knew on my drive home that I was going to marry him. Four and a half months later, he proposed to me on the same golf course where we shared our first kiss, and 7 months after that, we said, "I DO"!
I was in nursing school when we got married, but it was summer break so I was able to move to Jacksonville with him! We were supposed to buy a house but that ended up falling through at the last minute, so we found the most perfect apartment and settled in. Two months later, I had to go back to school in Charlotte which was 5 hours away. Again, just like when we were dating, we only saw each other on the weekends when I would drive to our apartment. It was tough and not fun at all. But then just a few months later, the first of many of our bumps in life happened and he was deployed to Iraq for 13 months. Being only 22, brand new to the military life, and a brand new wife, it was tough. REALLY tough! Little did I know, that was just the beginning of toughening me up for this Marine lifestyle.
About a month before he came home from Iraq, he called me the day after Christmas and after about 10 minutes of talking he said, just out of the blue, "So, what do you think of Okinawa?" I was like, "What do you mean? TO LIVE THERE??" Well the whole time he had been gone, I had told God I would go ANYWHERE as long as we were together. So I said, "Baby, I go wherever you go." A week later he had orders to Okinawa, Japan. Three weeks later he was home at last!! I will never be able to describe what it feels like to have your beloved come home from war. Safe in my arms to hug and kiss all I wanted. It's absolutely indescribable.
While he was deployed we had talked about starting a family when he came home. We found out just a few months after his homecoming that we were pregnant with our first baby! We were ecstatic! But we still had a lot to do before preparing for our firstborn because we had an overseas move to make! When I was 7 weeks pregnant and throwing up, the movers came to pack up all our stuff. I had to decide what went, what was to be thrown out, and what was staying in storage there in NC. We found out that week that there were some problems with John's orders/paperwork and so we decided that I would go on to my parents house to help them pack for their move and say goodbye while waiting for the paperwork to be taken care of. A week later and it hadn't been fixed yet, so I sent my parents off to Texas and went to stay with my best friend just down the road. After 10 days of being with her, the paperwork still wasn't taken care of so I drove back to Jacksonville. John had been staying with some friends (3 married but separated guys to be exact) so I bunked in with them, still dealing with morning sickness mind you. To make a REALLY long story short, we found out that John couldn't go to Okinawa until he re-enlisted and they had put a freeze on the re-enlistments until October (they packed and shipped our stuff to Japan in JUNE!) So we waited. My belly grew and so did my impatience with this military life. After living with the guys for three LONG LONG LONG months, we moved into a furnished condo on the beach because it was now an after season price that we could afford! We lived there about a month or so and then, off we went to Okinawa!
As I said earlier, I was 7 weeks pregnant when they packed and shipped our stuff over, and ended up being 7 months pregnant when I was unpacking our new apartment on Camp Foster. Two months later, our precious baby boy, Izaak Raiden was born on February 3rd 2009. I was a mommy! We were parents! It was crazy! I definitely experienced some baby blues after that. It was very hard being a new mommy on a little island with none of my friends or family around to watch him grow. Thank God for Skype and free phone calls to the states!
We loved being parents so much that we knew we didn't want to wait a long time before we had another little one. We prayed about it and left it in God's hands and when Izaak was just 11 months old, we found out baby #2 was on the way! Nervous? Um, yeah! Besides the regular nausea in the beginning, I had a wonderful pregnancy and on October 9th 2010, we welcomed Maverick Ronan into the world.
We both had a traumatic birth/delivery experience, but once we were in our room that night, everything was perfect, or so I thought. The next morning we were hit with some pretty tough news. News that you don't ever, ever imagine hearing about your child. Your brand new baby. I will save the rest of this story and you can read it here.
In November of 2011 our family was finally back together after a tough separation due to Maverick's health issues, and we moved here to our new duty station in 29 Palms, California! The arm pit of the earth! LOL! Yes, we are very happy to all be together under one roof and I will be very happy when we are all under another roof somewhere else. :) We're actually expecting to get orders this month! *HAPPY DANCE* We have requested to stay near the San Diego area so that Maverick can continue to see his specialists at the Naval Hospital in Balboa. Oh yeah, and also because it will be SO much easier for me to move when I'm 7 months pregnant!
That's right, you heard it! Baby #3 is on the way! We are completely thrilled and so at peace in God's timing with this pregnancy. I could have been freaking out (and I'm not perfect, I have my moments), but I know this baby is someone special and someone God wanted to be on this earth and in our lives. Do I worry sometimes that he or she will have the same unknown condition that Mav has? Um...sort of but not really. I guess it's kind of scary since we still don't know what he has or what kind of chance we have of having another baby with the same thing. But, he's such an easy special needs baby on the other hand, and right now, the specialists and his therapists have no reason to believe that he won't catch up in his areas of delay and live a perfectly normal, functioning life. We're just leaving it all in God's hands and we pray that lives will be touched because of his story and that we/he can use this for God's glory! So back to baby Miller #3, or "Bambalino" as I've been calling "it". He or she is due on October 24th of this year. But knowing my kiddos track records for loving to stay in the belly, this will be a November baby! I'm SO very anxious to find out what we're having and I just couldn't wait for the 20 week anatomy ultrasound, so I found a place not far from here that does 3D gender ultrasounds starting at 14 weeks! So that means we find out in just 3 1/2 weeks what we're having!! I'm REALLY thinking *PINK* this time, but, I thought both my boys were girls too. Haha! I would be so thrilled to have a daughter! But another little boy would be lots of fun as well and just another one to add to John's growing football team! Either way, I just can't wait to find out!
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Well thanks for taking the time to read all about us! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed reminiscing about it all. We would love for you to follow us through our journey here on our blog and try to keep up with our lives if you can! :)
God Bless,
Brittany
