My introduction :)

Those that have been around my sites know all about me, but I realize that a lot of our new members and visitors only know me as the Admin/Owner of this site and USMC Hangout. So for those that don’t know my background, here’s a brief rundown on me, my introduction!

I am 30 37 years old. I have been married to the Military for 10 17 years and have been through a total of 7 deployments. I have 4 great kiddos ages 22, 19, 16, & 14. I’m from Dallas, Texas but now reside in Maryland thanks to the Military. We are back in Texas as of June 2013, stationed at Fort Hood! I have come full circle (almost). My husband is retiring here in a couple of years and we decided to make this our forever home! Yes, we love the Fort Hood area!!!

My very first site and blog was USMC Hangout back in 2001. Actually, back then it was a Yahoo Club (who remembers those?). When yahoo clubs shut down it was converted to a Yahoo Group, which is still up and running till this day. In October 2003 I created the actual website as a way to put as much information about the Marine Corps as possible all in one spot. As a brand new bride to a Marine, I wanted other Marines and wives to talk to. I also knew that in my search for information about the Marine Corps, I realized there was not once single website I could go to find all the information I was so desperately seeking. How nice would it be if you could just find one site to get all the information you wanted about the Marine Corps, I thought to myself. And the USMC Hangout website was born.

I never planned on putting up forums (we had Yahoo Groups after all). But a very persuasive member (Steve) installed them and we slowly made the transition over from using the Yahoo Group, to the forums on the USMC Hangout website. USMC Hangout has been on the web now for 6 15 years and has gone from a small forum and only 10 pages of static information (these are the pages outside of the portal area), to over 200 pages of static information, blogs, arcade, articles, and what is getting to be a nice size forum.

So now that you know how USMC Hangout got started, you may wonder why my service affiliation says Army. My now ex-husband was in the Marines when we got married and for about 4 years afterwards. He then decided to get out of the Marines. He tried civilian life for a while and decided that was not for him (DUH, I tried telling him he would regret it).

Anyway, due to his time in rank when he got out, he was going to need a waiver to get back in the Marines. He decided instead to go into the Army. Several years later we divorced after almost 10 years of being together. We still remain good friends and his is still in the Army.

I have since re-married to a wonderful guy, who happens to be in the Army (after I swore I would never ever marry a military guy again, after all I gave almost 10 years of my life to the Military as a spouse!). We have been married now for 7 years, moved three times, been through 1 deployment, and he is truly my best friend! He also happens to have PTSD.

I started blogging originally in 2001 shortly after having my 3rd child as a way for family and friends to keep up with us (well those who had internet anyway). Back then internet (and computers) were just starting to become somewhat affordable. It actually took us using our entire tax return to buy our first one and it was the cheapest they had!

Blogging then turned into people emailing me questions about military life, which turned into my Dear Military Spouse column, which then led to writing articles, which eventually led to here (and also landed me a job as a newspaper journalist and editor)!

I blog about several different subjects and I hope you will stick around to see what I write about next! As always, I am open for suggestions!