Girls Weekend.

It has been a busy week. Well as busy as I can get... but I was able to spend last weekend with my college roommates. It was a wonderful weekend. Even though we lived together for a year, we were all so busy and going in so many different directions that it took work for all 6 of us to do something together. And now we are so spread across the United States and living ridiculous lives that I was wondering if this weekend was even going to happen. But it did. And we all had each others undivided attention.

Ellen and I traveled up from Atlanta, through a HUGE storm and standstill traffic. It was ridiculous and all I have to say is that I am So thankful that I was not driving and that we were together. We arrived and were able to catch up with Meredith Martindale and Caroline Thore at Dean and Deluca Wine bar...awesome by the way. I had a flight of red wine!

 Very, very good. My favorite was called "Tor". It was from a vineyard in Napa Valley, and the cost of the bottle was more than I even wanted to spend all weekend. But those couple of sips that I got definitely tasted that expensive! 

Overall the weekend was wonderful. We literally all talked for hours. We talked while drinking margaritas on the porch, while laying on Carly's bed, while laying on Ash and I's bed, while in the car, gathered around Mrs. Sigmon's kitchen, on the way to the movies, at the fountain after the movie, while we were shopping around the grocery store, while we made pizza's, while we drank again on the porch, at the ridiculously large table at Andrew Blair's, on the dance floor (talent), and around Mrs. Sigmon's kitchen at last. Seriously it was ridiculous. Oh and then Ellen and I had another 4 hour ride back to Atlanta, which we talked the whole time. I literally talked every waking hour...which is probably been more than I have in these past 16 weeks that James and I have been in Georgia.

 Typical. No one paying attention. And Ellen and looking weird.

 Faces together! The "go-to" picture.

 Dance Party!!!

Yes, I stole these from facebook from Emily. Whoops, sorry Em! So ignore the "comment" button.
So we are all basically caught up on each others lives- which is wonderful! And hopefully the next reunion will be in Italy!!! :)

Love Languages.

My poor husband.  I just took the 5 love languages quiz for wives, and apparently I feel love...strongly feel love 4 out of the 5 ways. Physical touch ranked the highest, with words of affirmation, receiving gifts, and quality time all tied for second place, only a few points behind. Apparently, I don't care about acts of service. Now all that is racing through my head is that I must be a very demanding wife. Maybe I took the quiz wrong. I had to have. Seriously 4??

I could have told you from the beginning that physical touch was my number one way. I love holding hands and sitting right beside him on the couch. I'm sure I can be slightly suffocating, but I have tried to learn the signs of when I need to back off and he just needs to sit alone for a while. Luckily, he likes snuggling too...as long as he isn't in uniform or in public, in which case he will usually "escort" me by offering his arm. So my mind/heart is completely appeased with the escort and he doesn't feel like we are grossing out anyone with our "extreme" PDA. Perfect.

Over the past year I have learned several things about myself...one of them being that like getting gifts. Really, I think I purely enjoy opening packages...even the mail. I had to restrain myself from opening James' birthday mail while he was gone at Leader's Forge for 10 days. It was a serious struggle. I also LOVE buying gifts for people, but it is super important for the gift to actually mean something and not just be a random gift...I want it to be important to them. So it usually takes a while for me to find something that satisfies my gift giving desire.

I blame my college roommates and James for the development of receiving gifts as one of my love language. My roommates always left me little notes or flowers, and since James was so far away throughout college his letters and flowers for special days meant the world to me. So this love language is definitely a learned love language and I don't take responsibility for it.


I told James that I feel love 4 out of the 5 ways...He rolled his eyes, chuckled and then he called me a "brat". Believe me, it's endearing. He usually refers to my "bratty-ness"when I am being slightly high maintenance, which lets be honest all girls can be from time to time. So no harassing for the brat comment. So in response to his comment, I made him take the test. He wouldn't let me watch him though... and just as I figured he has ONE love language. Words of affirmation. The next two were acts of service and quality time. I would have figured that quality time would have come much closer to words of affirmation but clearly I was wrong. Now I am trying to figure out more ways that I can use my words to build him up, watch my words so I don't break him down, and find little things that I can do to make his day easier. It is kind of a fun game!

Really this quiz just reminded me that my words have a serious impact on James and people in general. I have been praying recently that I would watch my words and my tone and learn to always speak kindly to James and really all of my friends and acquaintances. So this quiz was a great reminder!

What is your love language?

The Deep Fryer.

I got a deep fryer for Christmas from James' parents. I was so excited! But for some reason it has taken me until now to actually use it... I am a terrible daughter-in-law. I think I might have been a little scared to use it...probably a good thing, considering these things are dangerous. BUT my cool deep fryer has some built in safety features- a magnetic plug (so if someone/thing happened to trip over the plug the whole tub of boiling oil wouldn't come down), the basket can rest completely submerged in the oil- for the frying, or it can sit out of the oil- to let the oil drip off- but it is still underneath the top. Somehow, with all of these safety features, I still manged to burn myself- but only once, and it will probably never happen again. I was really excited to fry some chicken because the grocery store had drumsticks on sale so I picked up a huge pack! It was even better because we were going to a pool party- so why not have fried chicken?! So I coated the chicken in eggs:

And then flour.

Then made James run out to the store to buy more oil...didn't realize how much it needed. When he came back I heated the fryer up to as high as it would go and started to put the chicken in!

See the window...another added saftey feature, so that I can see if the food is cooked without taking the lid off...but unfortunately the window fogs up and you actually can't see it that well. But VOILA! The chicken was done...or so we thought.

James was dying of hunger, so I let him eat a drumstick early...good thing, because once he got down to the bone, the chicken didn't look completely done. Well, let me rephrase that- James and I didn't really know what done was suppose to look like, so decided to stick it in the microwave for a couple minutes just to make sure. Genius! Not so much.  After about a minute or so, I heard a loud pop, opened the microwave to find blood covering one of the drumsticks, sliding down the inside part of the door and on the ceiling- of the microwave. Sick. The blood stained chicken turned me off and we decided that we didn't want anyone to even try the chicken. So we left it sitting on the counter and went to the pool party empty handed. Fail. James decided that he was so hungry that he was going to eat me instead of the chicken:

Luckily, I tasted like sunscreen, so he decided to take a normal picture.

Lesson learned: Next time use smaller pieces of chicken. And yes, there will be a next time.

Destin Bound.

The girls...Meredith, Fawn and I decided that we would take a little vacation to Destin while the boys were gone. I should have written about this last week...but I was gone in Destin, and when I returned home I was anxiously awaiting James' return, so sitting still enough to write on the blog just was not going to happen. So I waited a week. At this time last week, I was getting ready. It was perfect that the 3 of us went because we were intent on making it cheap. We ate out once, had great dinners that we cooked in our little kitchenette, and stayed at the Army Resort place. I am not going to lie- I was a little scared of staying there, but it was actually really nice! It was like a hotel and you could even rent little cottages. The resort place we stayed at was right on the harbor and it was beautiful. Every night we would sit out on some lawn chairs and watch the sky change colors, the moon rise high above us, and the fish jump out of the water.

It worked out perfectly to get away for a bit. Each of us had our lows and our highs on opposite schedules so we could easily pull each other up. We also each shared our life stories- which was really awesome. It pulled us together, showed each other our hearts, and really bonded us on a deeper level. We got the best complement when we were down there as well... our waiter asked us if we were sisters, when we looked at each other, scrunched our foreheads and said no, he responded well y'all must have been friends for a really long time then. We laughed, and he walked away. A long time or 3 months- either one :) I prayed really hard for friends before we moved down here. I was so nervous that it was going to be hard to meet people but really harder to find people that I would actually get along with. The army is always going to surround me with wives, but my fear is that I am not actually going to like any of the people that are surrounded by me...and I am sure one day it will happen, but I am thankful that it has not happened yet.

Here are some pictures from our trip:

 Decided to have seafood each night because we were by the ocean. Perfect sense!

 This was our view every night. After Fawn put Tirzah down for bed, we would sit out here and talk for hours.

 Shrimp, veggies, cheese, crackers, and wine. Sounded like a perfect dinner to us!

 Meredith brought her 2 person tent so Tirzah could sleep on the beach.

 We like these pictures :)

The Power Saw.

I had a terrible experience at Lowe's. Shock, I know. I'm pretty sure everyone thinks I'm crazy because the people at Lowe's are suppose to be the nicest people around right? Wrong. This man was rude. They were all slightly rude, but this one man was extremely rude. One random comment about myself, but I promise it will help you better understand the story: I am very sensitive to tone. I don't like it when people yell at me, at all, but I can get pretty caught off guard even when people take a certain tone with me. Usually it is shock, because I don't think people should be speaking to me in that manner, but if it's a man who speaks to me in a certain tone, then I usually cry. Weird, I know. But this man at Lowe's of course spoke to me in that tone. It was awful. Add to that, that the man wouldn't even help me and I got passed off from employee to employee. So what is my reaction? To hysterically cry. Awful. Embarrassing. Infuriating. It just made it worse knowing that if James had gone to do this at Lowe's that he probably would have gotten it done in half the time and people would have inevitably been kind a courteous to him. Because that is logical. 

I came home. Mad and upset. Well, by came home, I mean sat on the front step of Fawn's crying some more until she opened the door. We decided that since those rude men wouldn't help us, we were going to take it into our own hands. So we did. I waited till 7:00 that night, hoping that the change of shift would have occurred and everyone at Lowe's would have gone home and new people would have started. I ran in. Didn't ask anyone for help. Carried my own 36"x12"x 3/4" board, polyurethane can, paint brush, and 3 1x6x6 boards to the check out line-Of course ran into one of the men I cried in front of, go figure. And headed out to the car.

 Ready to go! I headed over to Fawn's. Rummaged through Daniel's tools. Found his power saw- James' was at the bottom of the Army aka Junk closet. Set up the saw horses that I borrowed from the maintenance man. Measured Twice.

 And cut once. 

Thanks to my handy dandy "holder" and photographer this was all safely done.

 Power tools are awesome. I have now decided that James and I are definitely building our house- if we ever settle down in a single place and that I am going to help build it. I'm letting him know of this plan when he comes home. I think he will like it.

"I AM"

I have not done a very good job today. I got some very good advice from an older military woman a couple months ago. She reminded me that it is okay to be sad when your husband is gone, you have to face the reality of your emotions. She said that she always gave herself "5 minutes" to have a pity party and then she made herself move on with her day.  I tweaked her idea and decided that I'm giving myself more like 30 minutes to sulk... 5 minutes can come down the road when I have gotten better at moving on. Well, my "5 aka 30 minutes" of sulking has turned into an all day event. It's slightly ridiculous. I've had a rough morning filled with rude people and events that are really more funny than irritating, except on days like today. For example, not being able to turn on the lights in the bathroom at the gym, and then once you finally figure it out the lights somehow turn themselves back off while you are in the middle of peeing. Just one of those days. 


While, I was sulking, I was looking at some old pictures. I found this one. And of course my server is rejecting the picture right now... Screen shot to the rescue!! 

Not the cutest, it of coursed pulled some more tears from my irritatingly swollen eyes. Seriously, I'm an adult. James and I have spent months apart from each other, why am I having issues now? There really should be no reason, which only makes me feel worse. 

Then I happened upon this picture.

I actually stole this from one of Ashley's books that I randomly picked up to read one night. But I don't think I can get in trouble for posting it since it has the author and the title of the book...at least I hope so. 

The funny thing is that I never really understood what God meant when he called himself, "I AM." I thought it was sort of weird, and it never really intrigued me enough to look into it further. But I think I get it now. It reminds me of a verse...and if I was a better Christian I would know where this verse is, but I don't, so bear with me... that says God gives us the strength that we need for today. And I needed to hear that. When I have a rough day, I can usually make it worse by fretting over the future. If I can't make it through today, if I can't make it through an awful trip to Lowe's then what am I going to do when he is in Ranger School for 2-3 months? Or when we are in Italy and he doesn't come home till too late to help me fix whatever I broke? Or what am I going to do when he is deployed for a year? It turns into a vicious cycle that makes it hard to remember that today is all I have to deal with now. Tomorrow will bring it's own troubles and when trouble occurs, I will have the strength to get through it...or the eyes to see the paths around it. 

I have strength for today. Today will not be hard because I have all of the strength I need. But only for today.

Learning to live in the moment.