Friday, May 7, 2010

What's Cookin'!

Wives of Faith is hosting a Mil Spouses Rock! Blog Carnival and today's topic is What's Cookin'

I would love to share a recipe from my collection of favorites but unfortunately we are in the middle of an overseas PCS to Korea and all of our belongings are in storage waiting to be sent overseas. So I am going to raid my mom's recipe box and share a recipe that my mom used to make for dessert.

Cream Puffs

Dough:
1 c. water
1 stick of oleo
bring to a boil and add 1 cup flour and 4 eggs.
Drop onto a baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes at 400 degrees. Cool.

Cream:
8 Tbs. cornstarch
1/3 to 1/2 c. sugar
1 quart of milk
4 eggs
2 tsp of vanilla
1 stick of butter

Mix cornstarch and sugar together. Add the remaining ingredients and cook slowly until thick. Cool. Cut/break open the puffs and add cream to the inside. Eat them and enjoy!

Head over to Wives of Faith.org and see what recipes the other ladies are sharing.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Next Step

The past two weeks have been a whirlwind. My husband finished his outprocessing in Texas and flew into BWI Airport. The next day we hopped on a bus bound for New York City. Our plan was to spend 5 days with his mom and to visit his sister and her family and some old friends. We had a great time even though Angel's mom got sick and ended up in the Emergency Room one night and at the clinic another. The week went by fast and before you knew it, we were back on the bus and headed to Maryland. The next stop was my parents' house, where the girls and I had already been staying for the past 4 weeks.

My mom graciously offered to keep the girls so Angel and I could get away by ourselves. We decided to head east to Lancaster County. We had a great time together, where we were able to talk without interruption ;) We went to see Joseph at Sight and Sound Theatre, which by the way was fabulous. If you ever visit Lancaster PA, you need to save some extra money (the show costs about the same price as a show in NYC) and time (the show began at 4:15PM and we left the theatre around 7PM) and check it out. They always put on an outstanding performance.

By the time we arrived back at my parents', the list of things to be done were stacking up and time was running short. It was Wednesday afternoon and Angel was due to leave on Saturday. We crammed in time with family, time with friends and time to take care of issues that arose (such as going to Carlisle Army Barracks to get a Power of Attorney, a priceless piece of paper which allows me to take care of things in Angel's absence).

Well the day finally came....the day for Angel to leave, without us. After his mid tour break from Iraq last year, we learned that taking the girls to the airport to see their dad off was not a wise decision. We had fussy, crying kids that we had to drag out of the airport and it was not an easy task. This time Angel said his goodbyes to the girls at my sister's house and they stayed to play with thier cousins while I took him to the airport.

His flight was going to be crazy. Baltimore to Chicago, with a short layover there, then on to Seattle, where he would sit and wait until 4AM, when they loaded the charter flight to Korea. They left Seattle by 5AM(local time) on Sunday morning and headed to Japan, where they had another short layover before moving on to South Korea. The flight alone from the US to Korea is over 12 hours. The flight was suppose to arrive in Korea on Monday afternoon. I guess everything went as planned because early this morning (EST) my husband called from Yongsan, South Korea to let me know he made it safely. It was 7PM his time and he hadn't had a full nights sleep yet.

My prayer for him is that his body adjusts to the time change quickly and his inprocessing goes smoothly. By the end of the week he should be at his "Camp" and can hopefully start looking for a house for our family. Once he gets things all set up, the girls and I will be able to join him in Korea. I must say, I am not looking forward to doing all the flying with the girls by myself, but I know that people are praying and that God's grace is sufficient.

So as we are taking this next step in our lives, I am thankful for the support of friends and family. I am blessed to have fellow beleivers praying for us and I am glad that I serve a living God, who loves me and cares about me. My faith is what gets me through the tough times. Without Christ, I don't know where I would be today. So if you are embarking upon a journey of unknowns or facing hard things that this life has thrown at you, don't forget there this is a God who loves you. The Bible says that He will never leave you nor forsake you, so trust Him today. Trust Him tomorrow. Trust Him always!

Thursday, April 15, 2010

I finally did it!

For the most part, I have never struggled with weight. I wouldn't say that I was skinny, but I have never been overweight...until recently. With each pregnancy I would say that I kept 3-5 lbs. Now times that by 4 and you are talking about 15 -20 lbs. of extra weight. Then add to that a homecoming (my husband coming back from Iraq), a cruise (one has to try all the delicious foods) and a miscarriage, and I am not comfortable where I am at right now. So...I decided to join Weight Watchers.

I went to my first meeting last week. It was eye opening. I thought that I didn't have horrible eating habits, nor did I think that I overate, but when you are tracking everything you put into your mouth, it gives you a little change of perspective. I did great the first week, losing over 5 lbs. I wish that would happen every week but I know it won't. I have also tried to do some form of exercise everyday. Water has become my drink of choice, though I am missing a good sweet tea with lemon every now and then.

Last year when I was doing P90X, I did not incorporate a diet along with it. It was enough for me to find 50 minutes in my day to exercise with my husband in Iraq and homeschooling the girls. I look back and think that if I would have just made some changes to my diet, I might I have seen the results then that I had hoped for at the time.

While I am here in PA, I am determined to remain faithful to the task ahead of me. As with most of the things in life, consistancy is the key! I'm a bit worried about next week, when we will be in NYC visiting family and I will not be preparing my own food. I just need to be careful and watch my portions. I am one who will skip a meal and then eat a candy bar or cookies. Away with that! I am turning over a new leaf and going to stick this thing out.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Back "Home"

I have wrapped things up in Texas and the girls and I are back in Pennsylvania. All of our stuff has been packed, boxed up and is now in storage. We cleaned our duplex and cleared out of housing. My dad flew down to join me on the long adventure back east. The first day we drove from Fort Hood to Nashville, TN in a short 14 hours :) The next day we were on the road for just under 12 hours. It was nice to get home. I guess you could call it home. I was born in Maryland and when I was five years old, my parents moved to Pennsylvania. After college, I got married and we lived in PA. It was only when my husband joined the Army that we had moved from PA. My parents' house will be our temporary home until our upcoming move to Korea.

My husband received his tickets for his travel to Korea today. He will be flying out the first weekend in May and hopefully it won't take too much longer and the girls and I will be able to join him. In the meantime, we are trying to get into a routine here at my parents' house. I love visiting my family but when the stay extends beyond a week or two, I get anxious about it. Are the kids too loud? Are they cleaning up enough after themselves? Are we in the way? When it's not my own space, I want to make sure that where ever we are staying, that we are not taking advantage of the family or home and that we are doing our part to keep it clean and tidy, which is not always easy with 4 girls.

We have only been here just over a week and the girls are already reconnecting with old friends and cousins they haven't seen in quite some time. I know that being in transition is not easy but I am trusting God for the strength to get through this season in our lives. I can see how the changes are effecting the girls. We have already had attitudes flaring, whining getting louder than normal and complaining about schoolwork seems to be more frequent. I need to give each day to the Lord and lean on His grace and strength.

Since my husband is still outprocessing in Texas, I am again, a single parent. I can't wait for his two weeks of leave so we can just spend some time as a family again...but once he leaves for Korea, I'll be back to being a single parent yet happily married again. I am not complaining. I know that when my husband decided to enter the military, that this would be part of our life. I have learned alot and grown much in the last two years while being away from our family and having gone through our first deployment.

I will end with this....no matter what life throws your way, GOD IS FAITHFUL!

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Living in Chaos

I wouldn't quite say that life in our home is unbearable, but we are definitely living in chaos. In January, my husband received his orders for his next duty station...South Korea. While our move to Texas just over 2 years ago was pretty uneventful, a move overseas is proving to be otherwise. Even though my husband got his orders, the family was not on them. To get the family authorized to accompany him to Korea, we had to fill out paperwork, have each dependent (me and the girls) screened to make sure none of us had any serious medical condition which would prohibit us from traveling and have all the above sent to Korea. We were told that it would take two weeks to hear back from them. A few days later, we received an email that an additional document was needed and we signed, scanned and sent that off. Last Friday we got our approval for Command Sponsorship.

In the meantime, we attended a brief for transportation and scheduled our HHG (House Hold Goods) to be picked up. One of the restrictions with moving to Korea is that we are only allowed to take 50% of our HHG allowance. So when the movers come, they will be packing and picking up three different shipments. The first is unaccompanied baggage. This is a small shipment of essential household items that will be sent first and a little quicker. The second shipment will be all of our things we will take with us to Korea. The last shipment is the other 50% of our stuff that will be stored for the next two years. Trying to decide what is important enough to take has been a bit overwhelming. I don't want to leave anything behind that we might need because it will be held in a storage facility in Texas and I will not have access to it...unless I choose to take a long flight from South Korea back to the states, just for something that is in the storage unit.

We are trying to break things down into different rooms or piles in a room of what is storage and what will come with us. I feel like my house is in such disarray. Yesterday, a friend of mine came over to help with whatever I needed to get done. We took down curtains and rods, pictures and wall hangings. The house looks so bare. We have just over one week before the packers come for the first shipment and there is so much to be done.

I think with all that is going on, I am going to take a break from homeschooling just so I don't drive myself crazy. With all the chaos in the home, morning sickness and so much to be done in so little time, I need to prioritize what's important and what can wait. At this point, getting ready for the movers is important and we'll just double up school when we get to PA in a few weeks.

As I mentioned earlier, we have our approval for all of us to move to Korea, but the downside is that my husband has to go to Korea first and find our family an apartment on the Korean economy, as they do not have military housing in the area that he is assigned. We are hoping that this doesn't take too much time. In the meantime, the girls and I will stay in PA with my parents until we get the green light to fly to Korea.

I guess living in chaos isn't soo bad. At least my husband is here with me and we can go crazy together :)

Monday, March 1, 2010

You know your a military spouse if....

I came across this on someone else's blog and had to repost it. It's so true!

You might be a military spouse if...

...You live on your own, by yourself more after you're married than before you were married.

...You know all of your husband's coworkers by their last name, and rarely know their first name or even gender.

...Your husband's work and dress clothes cost more than yours do.

...You only write in pencil because EVERYTHING is subject to change.

...You know that a 2 month separation IS short, no matter what your civilian friends say.

...You have enough camouflage in your house to wallpaper the White House.

...You don't bat an eyelash at 22:45 and 0300 duty times.

...You are asked to stop talking in acronyms and translate it all to English.

...You've done more oil changes than your spouse, and even when your husband is home the mechanic asks to speak with you.

...You ask someone to hold on a second by saying, "Stand by."

...Military homecomings on TV bring tears to your eyes because you can relate so well.

...You've ever checked your email multiple times an hour in hopes your spouse has written you, and know how horrible email being "down" is.

...You wouldn't dream going anywhere without your cellphone, and all your other numbers forward to it.

...You've researched ways to surgically attach your cellphone to yourself.

...If you have a power of attorney, USE it, and freak out when it expires.

...If you know that not everyone accepts a power of attorney, despite the fact it gives you permission to practically BE your spouse.

...If you've ever argued that fact with someone in person or over the phone and gotten nowhere.

...Your husband spends more time getting ready for a formal function than you do, and on an average day spends way too much time ironing, polishing shoes, and shaping his beret.

...You can literally hold down the fort while your spouse is deployed or in the field.

...You know that 'dependant' means anything but dependant.

…the floorboard of your car is littered with french fries, yellow foam earplugs and chem lights.

…you lean to the right while driving on post so the MP’s won’t see you talking on your cell phone.

…you’ve ever wished your husband would get the Medal of Honor so you could get front row parking.

…you know better than to shop the Commissary on the first or fifteenth day of the month.

…you have a “favorite gate guard.”

…you don’t feed your kids before FRG meetings but plan to let them fill up on brownies and Sprite once they get there.

…you watch “Army Wives” just to yell at the TV whenever something is unrealistic.

…you’ve ever stopped your husband on the way to work because of pair of your panties was stuck to his velcro.

…you plan a special day because of the words “Case Lot Sale.”

…you’ve ever had a nightmare that involved not knowing ”your sponsor’s last four.”

…you know all the words to “Blood on the Risers” but still cringe when you hear it.

…you save an especially stinky shirt to get you through a deployment

…you think the only thing sexier than ACU’s on a man are ACU’s off a man.

…your sentences start containing more [acronyms] and numbers than actual words.

…you refer to everyone not in the military or dating someone in the military as a Civilian, you can rattle off the time in perfect military time without having to think.

…you start referring to all girls & women as “females”

…you tell the timeline of your past through deployments.

…you think 6 months away from your husband is “not bad”

…you can’t remember the last four digits of your own social security #

…you constantly have to explain to businesses on the phone that your husband can’t call to fix the problem because he’s in the middle of a desert somewhere

Saturday, February 20, 2010

I've become one of them

Many years ago, not long after my second child was born, I was invited to a get together of young moms by a lady from our old church. I thought how nice it was going to be to see some old friends and to make some new ones. Boy was this get together way different than I envisioned.

All the young moms there, except for my sister and me, had lots of kids, took daily walks with their family of over 2 miles and ground their own grain. With everything a mom had to do, why would anyone want to grind their own grain. I really don't remember anyone talking about the nutritional value or how the grinding took place but I could just see it in my mind.

This huge machine sitting on their kitchen table. A large hopper at the top which would hold the grain. And a large crank, which they would joyfully be turning and turning and turning. Spending hours just making flour, let alone the fresh bread their families would enjoy.

OK, now fast forward 8 years later...to the year 2009. I am participating in a homeschool co-op and it all comes back again. Women in the co-op are grinding their own grain. But how could they spend all that time grinding flour if there was homeschooling to be done, houses which needed keeping and fights between siblings to referee. The truth has come out. You purchase a machine that does it for you. WOW, revelation. That can't be that hard, can it.

I just had to see it in action. It was really easy. Measure out how much you needed, put it in the hopper and click the knob to on. And this time, all the nutritional informaiton was shared with me. When you purchase flour from the grocery store, all the nurtrients and vitamins has been removed but not so when you grind the wheat berries yourself. That flour is full of the good stuff.

I had already been making homemade bread for quite a few months from a recipe I found online. You can find it here: http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/Artisan-Bread-In-Five-Minutes-A-Day.aspx?page=4
I then purchased the book and have tried other bread recipes. Check it out!

So I borrowed some fresh ground flour from a friend with a mill and tried it in my Artisan Bread recipe. It was great! My kids even liked it and it was not a white bread. I ended up purchasing my own mill, getting my wheat berries and asking for friends bread recipes.

Now I am one of them....those people who grind their own grain into flour. I'll try to post the nurtional information later, I'm getting tired and may not last much longer on here.

Let me encourage you today, try something new. Maybe you're not ready to jump in and make a $230 purchase for a mill but maybe there is something you've been wanting to try or a dream you have had. Maybe you've heard about something and thought, there is no way that I can do that. Do some research, find someone else whose doing it and try it. Just don't ask my to go skydiving with you, I'm not quite there yet.