I'm a former Active duty Marine and OIF veteran who went from a stay at home mom/college student to a Active Duty Soldier and College Graduate.  

I'm married and madly in love with a wonderful man who also happens to be a firefighter. We celebrated our 7th anniversary on May 25th.  We've overcome quite a few obstacles in our lives but we still come up swinging. I am so proud of the person he is and has become. I have a tremendous ammount of respect for anyone who can put on a uniform and risk their life for someone they don't even know. It's even more amazing to be married to an individual like that!

After a string of 4 miscarriages and an inconclusive infertility testing period, we have 2 beautiful children. Ethan Stuart is 4 and I have been in love with him since the day I saw his little heartbeat on the 6 week and 5 day sonogram. Even though the doctors told me not to get too attached for fear of another miscarriage, I just knew he was there to stay. April 15th 2004 at 10:09pm, 2 hours and 18 minutes before my due date, there he was. I was training for my first half marathon when I found out I was pregnant with my daughter. She was a big suprise as well, as I was 3 months along when I found out during my yearly exam that I might be pregnant. 4 days later, there were the 2 pink lines. I had a much easier pregnancy with her, and on October 14 2006 at 12:42pm, Lucille Elizabeth was born!

Although I never had a weight problem, I did have a big weight gain during the infertility treatment and the pregnancy with Ethan. I went from 140 to 208 over the course of a year although people tell me I didn't look like I weighed that much. I was miserable and embarrassed. I was deployed to Iraq shortly after my son was born, and over the course of about 4 months, I was able to go from 180 to 140. I continued to run when I returned to the states and went down to 135. I ran during the pregnancy with Lucy and am pleased to say I've lost all the pregnancy weight and then some and I'm at a size I haven't been at since High School and I now weight 128 and I feel fabulous, except during that time of the month, I still feel like a cow! I ran said half marathon (as I wasn't able to run it last year) on April 14th 2007. It was awesome!!! I also ran half marathon # 2 in September 2007.  So if you ever doubt that you can lose the pregnancy pounds, look at my posts, and you'll see that you can!! I didn't diet or anything, just running. I even had to start out slow as it had been a while since I had been pounding the pavement. I most recently became a member of the Army 10 Miler Team here on Fort Lee. We run 4 days a week and cross train the other 3.

After a couple of years of being blown off and a lot of fighting, my son was diagnosed with Autism. I blamed myself for the longest time. But they said I'm doing the right thing by using sign language and sticking to a good routine. They actually praised my proactivity (is that a word??)

So my life is kind of busy and eventful, but I like it that way!!!

I am also on myspace www.myspace.com/nslyng