H - is for Home

What is it that makes home, home? Is it the place, the people, or a combination of both? Thinking about what makes a home a home is actually something I contemplate often. I think that this is because we move so often and I don't want my girls to feel like they never had a place that they could call home as an adult.

When I was younger, in my pre-military wife days, I would have said that home is where you grew up, where you spent most of your young life. Now I don't quite feel that way, and I hope that my girls don't either. To me home is where your family and friends are, no matter where that is. Home is the place that when you walk in you breathe a breath out and let all of the stress and frustration leave. Home is where you feel comfortable and loved no matter what. Home isn't always a location, although it can be, and it doesn't have to be the place where you spent the most time growing up. Home is the place where you feel the most love. The old adage that Home is where the Heart is, really is true.

I have the amazing privilege to call many places home. My Mom's house will always be home, no matter where she lives, it's a place where I can go and always feel comfortable and loved. My Grandmothers house in Texas will also always feel like home to me, as I drive towards it I can feel the stress and anxiety in my life slowly slip away. The home I have created with my husband, no matter where it might be will always be home, and I hope that my girls will always feel that way too. LadyBug's house will always be home. Since I don't think I've talked about her yet, LadyBug is what my girls call my best friend. We have been separated by thousands of miles and oceans and yet I know that she will always be there for me, it's an awesome feeling. And last but not least is my husbands hometown. His friends and family have welcomed me with open arms and I am thrilled to have one more home to add to my list.

~DD

G - Is for Girls Night

Time for yourself is important, no matter how you spend it. Everyone needs to have time to do something that makes them happy and helps them to recharge. Some women like to have a spa day, others use shopping as their time, personally I love a good girls night out.

I am so excited about this weekend, I am not only getting a girls night out, but a whole girls weekend. I am taking AJ with me and P-nut is having a Daddy weekend which is super exciting to her. AJ and I will be making the trip to my hometown and meeting up with my Mom, step-sister, sister-in-law, and best friend. It will be great I can't wait!!!

Oh and on another not so happy note, G can also be for government, who needs to stop fighting and find a way to compromise before there are millions of employees without a paycheck thrown on top of this already failing economy. But, I'm trying not to dwell on that one today and enjoying my girl time.

F - F is for.... umm it's for....

Forgive me. I have no idea what I want to type about that starts with F. I can think of plenty of things that start with F, just none that are screaming out to me to be blogged about. Flowers, Food, Fitness, Friends, Frenzy, Fingers, Flying, Football.... see lots of ideas, just no incredible content to go with any of those ideas. I have already used all of my Fitness material this week, Flowers are so not my skill, Friends is something that seems a little to broad and a little to personal. The last four (see another F word) are reaching, pretty badly if you ask me. So I guess that leaves Food.

I am going to do today's blog in the form of some questions, hopefully to get some feedback from the people who come and visit me. Nothing too strenuous, just two questions.

1) What is your favorite healthy food?

2) What's your favorite unhealthy food?

For me the answer is,
1) Spinach, I eat a lot of spinach in a million different ways. Cooked into things, blended into my morning smoothie, as a base for every type of salad. I love Spinach Caesar salad.

2) Cheese, in every single form, cheap or expensive, hard or soft, cold, room temperature or melted, cow, goat or sheep. It doesn't matter, if it's cheese I will probably love it.

Hodgepodge Wednesday is brought to you by the letter E

1. National Read a Road Map Day falls on April 5th. Would people say you have a good sense of direction? Do you rely on a GPS when you drive somewhere new? When was the last time you used a map? I have a horrid sense of direction, it is really bad. DH hates it when we PCS (move with the the military) because I get lost for at least the first 6 months. Because of this we have both a GPS system and the GPS enabled on our smart phones. It makes both of us panic less. I love maps though. I really do. There is something immensely satisfying to me when I hold a paper map in my hand and can watch our progress, see what it coming up and what we are driving near but not past. When I am the passenger on a road trip I always bring along the good old Rand McNally to keep me company.

2. What's your favorite cookbook? A single favorite? Wow, I love cookbooks and finding new recipes. In fact I have time penciled in my schedule each week specifically to look through cookbooks for something new to serve my family. My all time favorite though would be the one I relieved at my bridal shower, it contains hand written family favorites from everyone who attended and I have been adding to it over the years.

3. What painting would you like to "walk into" and experience? Why? Wow, so many choices. I think that right this moment I would want to go into A Sunday Afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat 1884. I have always loved that one.

4. What annoys you more- misspellings or mispronunciations? Both. But more so the mispronunciations because at times my spelling is horrible.

5. What is something your mother or father considered important? Just one thing? I think that both of them considered growing up to become a Godly, kind, and productive adult very important.

6. Do you like or dislike schedules? I LOVE schedules. I feel lost without them, schedules and lists make my world go around.

7. Let's have some fun with National Poetry Month (that would be April)...write your own ending to this poem-

"Roses are Red


Violets are blue..."

bread is my favorite snack,

Oh and cheese is too.

Incidentally if you'd like to read the history behind that little ditty you'll find it here.

8. Insert your own random thought in this space. I'm going to take a hint from the Hodgepodge creator and use this space for my April A-Z thought today, so my letter is E.

E ~ Is for Energy. Which I am feeling a great lack of today. Yuck. I woke up this morning with a huge headache and an immense craving for caffeine. I am currently working on satisfying this craving. Hopefully I don't go overboard and have so much that I can't get to sleep tonight. Sometimes I do that to myself and get into a cycle of not sleeping at night, needing caffeine to function, but having too much and not sleeping at night.

TPT ~ Failure

There is no picture today. I had a brilliant plan, and a dead camera battery. :-( Hopefully I can get it up tomorrow.

D ~ Is for Domestic Diva.

LOL, I know that this blog is sort of cheating. But I'm going to use the D today to re-introduce myself since I have some new readers and to talk again about what it is I am trying to do here and why. So if you know me or have been a long time reader bear with me, and if you are new, enjoy!

My name is DD, well sort of. I have a first name that is rare and somehow unpronounceable. Which is strange since it is 6 letters and pronounced absolutely phonetically. But whatever, after spending a lifetime correcting people when they say my name I have learned to accept that nicknames make things easier. I do love my name though, it's pretty, unique and suits me.

I am currently a housewife, stay at home Mom, CEO of domestic affairs or whatever it is that you want to call it. Before I became a sahm (stay at home mom) I had done a lot of different jobs from retail, fast food, banking of sorts, to nannying. I did finish my degree in History and Social Studies Education for Secondary, however once I finished my student teaching I did not ever start to teach. It wasn't because I was bad at it, I moved overseas and honestly, I didn't try that hard to start teaching.

I am married to DH who is in the Air Force. He has been in for 11 years this week, sometimes those years go really fast and sometimes they crawl. He currently works with a RED HORSE unit so deployments are a part of our life. I was figuring it yesterday, and he will miss our wedding anniversary and one or both of the girls birthdays for at least 3 years running, possibly more if we don't get re stationed. Hmmmm. My husband is an amazing man and a great helper. He absolutely does not think that just because I stay at home I should do everything. He cooks, cleans and cares for the kids when and as he can, which is a huge blessing to me.

DH and I have two little girls, AJ is 5 and P-nut is 3. Not to brag but I think that they are both amazing wonderful children. I won't gush about them too much because I think that can sometimes come across as a little to competitive Mom and I don't want to do that. They are both great though. AJ is in Kindergarten this year and P-nut is at home with me full time.

The goal of this blog is to write about the ways that I have learned to make my life run more smoothly. Cleaning and organizing tips, recipes, exercise, whatever I learn that I think people will benefit from my sharing I will share. So that's about it, that's me, my family and my purpose in a nutshell.

~DD

MM ~ Exercise, getting back into the groove

Exercise is a part of my life, it is a part of who I am. This wasn't always the case in my life, in fact it has only become the truth in the last few years. When I was younger, especially in my teen and college years, I viewed exercise as something I should probably be doing, but hated. I had given myself a million different reasons and  excuses as to why I couldn't or wouldn't ever take that step to work out.

The habit of exercise that I have developed actually came from a few different things. The first was really out of boredom. I did my student teaching at a DoDDS campus in England. It was an amazing opportunity to travel and meet new people, that's where I met DH, but I had long frustrating days trying to take what I had learned in school and mold it to fit myself, my students, and a supervising teacher who did not share any of my teaching philosophies. So I would get home from school and run straight to the gym. The change in me was amazing. I found that not only was I losing weight that I had been carrying around since my freshmen year, I was happier. That's right, happier. All of those years that I had ignored people telling me that it improved their mood thinking that they were full of it. Oops. The second thing that motivated me was a common thing. I had two babies. If you don't take care of your body during and after pregnancy it can wreak havoc on your figure.

Working out has been a part of my life for years now and it has become a habit that I love and miss when I can't do it. When I miss my exercise time for a few days in a row I see my mood go downhill, especially when it comes to patience. I also start to miss some of the other benefits as well, especially the ability to treat myself to junk food without worrying about what it will do to my waistline.

In January when I had my surgery I was explicitly told that I could not work out at all for 8-12 weeks. That time just about killed me. I am happy to announce that I have been cleared for full workouts for almost 2 weeks and I am loving getting back to this way of life. It's harder than I remember and things that I used to do with ease are tough. I know that it I keep it up I'll be back on track soon.

~DD

C - Is for Challenge

I think I may have over committed myself in the last few weeks to this. I love the whole process of blogging and sharing, but when I sat down yesterday and actually looked at my blogging schedule, Holy Cow. I am currently doing the April A-Z challenge which will require a new post a day for the entire month. I have joined in with the Hodgepodge Wednesday which is so much fun to answer and to read all of the answers that the other participants give. I also started a challenge to myself with the Diva Days of the Week, which gives me a task for every day.

So now I wonder where I am supposed to find time to blog about what it is that I started this blog to talk about. I don't want to lose site of the goals that I started this whole blogging experience with. I started this to share some of what I am as a housewife, military spouse and mother. Participating in the challenges will help me to become a better and more consistent blogger, but I need to find a way to do it that doesn't depart from my purpose.

So starting tomorrow with Take a Picture Tuesday, and letter D I will find a way to incorporate all of my challenges not only together with each other but also in a way that stays within the frame work of talking about what makes me who I am, and shares how I succeed and how I fail on a daily basis. Also how these things help me to grow and become a better person.

~DD