Z - is for Zumba

Ok, so those of you who know me in real life could probably guess what I was going to do my post for Z on. I love Zumba, I just recently discovered it and it is by far my favorite workout. There are two reasons that I love Zumba, well there are a million but two are the most important. The first reason that I love Zumba is that it is fun. Really fun. I don't know how many people can say that about their cardio. I can go to Zumba in a horrible mood and I always come out happier and smiling, I definitely can't say that about jogging. The second reason is that it works. The amount of calories burned in an hour of Zumba is more than I have burned in any other cardio I have done, except maybe the P90X. Also the strength in my abs and legs has gone up a huge amount.

So why am I writing about Zumba? To tell you to try it. In a class, with a video, on a gaming system. While my personal preference is in a class, do whatever works best for you, I promise that you won't regret it.

Y - is for Yummy

I am sure that I am not the only one to use Yummy as my Y in this challenge. But since I like to talk about food and recipes I decided that Yummy was the most appropriate use of the letter Y for me. But Yummy is such a broad topic, so what should I write about today that falls under the title of Yummy. Well it's meal plans. I figured I would share the meal plans here in the Diva house for the next two weeks. I will be sharing some of the recipes, so this will be a good way to whet you appetitie.

Chicken Pot Stickers

Edamame in Pod

Southern Oven “fried” Chicken

Salad

Corn

French Dip Sandwiches

Onion Rings

Veg

Chinese Pepper Steak Wraps

Stir Fry Veg

Meatloaf

Broccoli

Potatoes

Linguine Alfredo 

Grilled Chicken

Veg

Pizza (sausage & roasted veg)

Salad

Chicken & Rice

Asparagus

Bar-B-Que Chicken

Grilled Corn

Pasta Salad

Grilled Pork Chops

Grilled Veggies

Herbed Brown Rice

Shish-Kabobs

Rolls

Stuffed Quesadillas

Black bean and tomato mix

Salad

 
So there are 6 new recipes in that group I hope that they all turn out as well as the rolls did earlier this week. Yum. Now it's time to go make that grocery list so that I can actually cook these things.
 
Until tomorrow.
 
~ DD

X - is for Xylophone, Xenophobia and Xanthan Gum

What do these have to do with anything? I don't know. I can't think of a real X word that I can blog about. I hate it when you use a regular word with an X as an X word. Ox is not an  X word, exit is not an X word. My brother and I used to play the alphabet game in the car when we were children. You know the one where as you are driving along the road you need to find signs with each of the letters of the alphabet in order. The decision about weather or not we would allow any letter in the word to be used or just the first letter was always an important one, one that usually hinged on where we were in the country and the likelihood we would see a word beginning with X.

But I have completely digressed from the point. Wait did I even have a point? No. I guess not. I will be posting a new recipe later today, so stay tuned for that.

~DD

Hodgepodge Wednesday - Brought to you by the letter W

1. What is something that bothers you if it is not done perfectly?
Things that bother me when I don't do them perfectly or things that bother me when others don't do them perfectly? I try really hard not to be judgemental of others because I know that not everyone feels like things need to be done to the same level that I do. Things that bother me when I don't do them perfectly. Well I'll just list my biggest little thing. Are they straight? It doesn't matter what, if something should be straight and even and it isn't it drives me crazy. Place mats on the table, towels hanging on the rack, my cutting board on the counter, even my towel that I set on the counter to air dry dishes has to be square with the counter.


2. What is one of your best childhood memories?
I don't think that I could single it out to just one. I had an amazing childhood full of fun and love and friends. There are very few childhood memories that I have that are unpleasant, and I think that is the best gift my parents could have ever given me.


3. Do you plan to watch the Royal Wedding and when was the last time you wore a hat?
No, probably not. I am not a huge celebrity watcher in any way shape or form. I love weddings though, so I might watch it. I actually feel sorry for both of them I cannot imagine having every single thing I chose for my wedding be picked apart by the media and every average person.

The last time I wore a hat was actually not that long ago, I love hats! I wish that I lived somewhere that I could get away with wearing the huge hats all the time. Speaking of which I really need to go get a huge summer sun hat.


4. Where do you fall in the birth order in your family? Do you think this has influenced your personality?
I am the first born. And I am totally a first born in every single way. I am demanding and bossy, I love ordering people around. I am nosey and concerned with everything that is going on with everyone around me. My poor husband.


5. Where do you think you spend most of your money?
Hmmm, bills. I guess that isn't the answer that you were looking for. In the disposable income category I would say that most of our spending recently has been on furniture and house decorations. We aren't people who go out to eat a lot, or have expensive habits, we rarely travel, basically we use the income that we make to live, we do this so that we can afford for me to stay home with the girls while they are young.


6. When you need to confront someone would you rather communicate in person, on the phone, by email or by letter? Why?
I HATE confrontation. I really do. I especially hate it in person, I have a very hard time remaining calm and rational when I am confronting someone in person, or even on the phone, so a written confrontation is my choice. It allows me to state my feelings in a rational manner and also allows me to re-read them before they are sent to see if I am being reasonable.


7. Dodge ball, freeze tag, kickball or jump rope? You have to pick one.
When I was a kid.... Jump rope. Now, kickball. I am not coordinated enough any more to jump rope. I think that I would benefit health wise from trying to revive my love of jumping rope.


8. Insert your own random thought here.
W is for...Wind and Wilting. The wind has been blowing so badly here that I cannot keep enough water on the garden and my plants are wilting. So I no longer have strawberries and peas. I can't wait to live somewhere a little more garden friendly than the desert.

V - is for Very New and Improved...

Diva Days of the Week.

After test driving the old Diva Days of the Week for a while, and participating in a few blogging challenges I have made some changes to the Diva Days of the Week. I feel like this new group will continue to challenge me on a daily basis both as a person and as a blogger, while also sticking to the purpose of this blog and allowing me to have some free time. I have a tendency to over commit myself sometimes and things fall by the way side. So you will see some new things and some old ones and hopefully this list of Days will better serve both me and you!

Make-up Monday - This one stays the same, I will be reserving Mondays for anything that got ignored or forgotten the week before to give me a clean start.
Fitness Tuesdays - I will start sharing some of the things that I am doing in my life to improve my overall fitness level.
Hodepodge Wednesdays - I will continue to join in the Hodgepodge Wednesday fun! I am enjoying it!
Tasty Thursday - I will be challenging myself to share at least one new recipe a week. I will get these together and up on Thursdays.
Clean it Up Fridays - On Fridays I will be sharing some of my favorite cleaning and organizing tips with you , as well as concentrating on getting my house weekend ready with a good cleaning.
Family Saturdays - This is a day for family. I will be sharing some of the things that we do as a family to stay connected, not only in my immediate family, but with our family that is far away as well.
Take it off Sunday!  - Get your mind out of the gutter! This will be my free day, my day off. Everyone needs a day of rest.

U - is for Unmotivated

Although I am not feeling this way today, thank goodness, I actually feel this way a lot of the time though. I have these lists of things that I need to be doing, but all that I want to do is sit and watch the Cooking Channel or play a game on Facebook. I often sit there and wonder what it is that makes me feel like that is more important or me interesting than living my real life.

I gave up Facebook games for lent. I am pretty sure that I shared that already. After the first few days of feeling like I needed to be playing them, I found that I didn't miss them at all. Now at the end of the season of lent I find that I really don't want to restart any of them. It is amazing how much more motivated I am to live my own life when I remove that addiction from it. So I have tripled my motivation to do things in my home and with my family by removing one of my excuses to keep being unmotivated.

After seeing what a big difference it made in my day to day life I will keep looking for other things that I use as an excuse to be unmotivated. If it is something that I can fix as easily as I did with the games than I will do it. I challenge all of you to look at the things that you use as a reason to avoid doing the things that you need to be doing. Are they something that you can remove from your life? What is it that makes you unmotivated? Take it away, I promise that it will make your days more enjoyable.

T - is for Traveling a Recap

Well we are home, mostly unpacked and getting the girls calmed down. It was an interesting trip, good and bad interesting.

I was successful in my goal of calm and easy airport trips, the girls did an amazing job getting through the airport both times, including the red eye flight that we took. They really are great little travelers. The only bad thing that happened was that at the end of one very bumpy flight in a very small plane AJ got air sick. The good part about it was that it happened as we were landing at our destination, so it was over quickly.

We did an amazing job with packing. I didn't forget anything that we needed, and I don't feel like I over packed (too much). We made it home with everything that we took and only forgot one gift which is also amazing. We did everything in carry-ons for the plane so that we didn't have to pay that ridiculous baggage fee and I was proud that we weren't one of "those people" who have a carry on that is so big that it can't fit into the bin without help from three people squishing it, and a body builder to lift it.

The time with family and friends was, as it always is, a blessing. While the trip wasn't long we did get to spend some special time with everyone that was home and available to us and that was great. We did a lot of fun things and had a lot of laughs. Also there was a lot of relaxation which was amazing. DH and I were both getting to the point where we needed a few days off.

The only huge glaring fail of the entire week was my food intake. I didn't just forget healthy eating every once in a while, I dove off the healthy eating train head first into the fast food. Yikes. I won't go into detail about my fall from good food, but I will give you one statistic that will illustrate my point. In 9 days I gained 7 lbs. Double Yikes. So now that we are home it is time to get that under control.

So that's it, the recap of Spring Break 2011. All in all I would say that the trip was a huge success. We loved our time over there!

~DD

S - is for Sorry so Behind... Again

Well, not really so behind, but I'm behind for the April A-Z challenge. We have been travelling back home and I never seem to be able to find time to blog when I am travelling. I was going to write out the story of what happened on our vacation, but it is so unbelievable that I am afraid to even write it down. The highlights/lowlights were 6 hours in clothes that were covered in vomit from my 5 year old getting air sick, car breaking down in the pouring rain, no power in the house we stayed at, and 43 hours with no sleep. After those days were over though the trip was great. Really fun!

So now I am home and hoping to get things all put back away and back on schedule, including this blog. All I have to do is get T done sometime tonight so that I can do U tomorrow. Too bad I am clueless as to what I am going to share. Here's hoping that inspiration strikes me sometime soon. Now off to go put away some more clothes.

Happy Easter!

~DD

N - is for New Things

The concept of trying something new is hard, it really is. In my experience people like to say that they love new things, but really they have a hard time trying them. So today my post is going to list a few things that my family and I have tried recently that have turned out awesome, and also to issue you a challenge to try something new that you have been avoiding.

1) Asparagus - I love asparagus, and I eat it all the time but I never could get anyone in my family to eat it with me. About 3 weeks ago there was an amazing sale on asparagus at the commissary so I stocked up. The girls thought about sharing a few times (I had roasted asparagus for 5 nights in a row) and then the last night they each tried a piece. They LOVED it, in fact they liked it so much that I didn't get to eat any that night.

2) Zumba - This is a little old for me but I really wanted to share how happy I am that I tried this. I have been hearing about Zumba and being encouraged to go for almost a year. I kept putting it off with my normal "I can't dance, I have no coordination" arguments. Well I finally went right before Christmas and not only did I manage to make it through without falling on my face, or the other end, I love it. I love that it is an amazing cardio workout that is fun! I will not ever go back to only doing the treadmill or the elliptical. I still use those machines on occasion, but it is no longer  a staple of my workout.

3) Spinning - DH tried this one a few weeks ago, and he had the same reaction to it that I had to Zumba, well in his stoic male sort of way. It was nice for him to have an option that broke the run, push-up, sit-up mold that the military had drilled into his head.

4) Water - This one is the girlies again. My girls have insisted since they could make an opinion known that they hate water. They would leave a cup untouched for days, even if they were thirsty. So for years I have been mixing one part juice and 3 parts water for them. About a month ago we put a 5 gallon water filter in the fridge that they can use to serve themselves and low and behold they now drink water all day. I have actually had one bottle of juice in the fridge for 3 weeks, that has never happened before. I guess I just needed to make it fun!

So think about it, is there something that you have dismissed without even trying it? Go and try it, you never know you might find out that it isn't as horrible as you think, it might even become a new favorite.

M - is for Major Freakout!

No matter how many times I travel, it never fails. The morning of the trip I wake up in a panic. Is everything ready and packed? Do I have all of the paperwork that I need? Will everything go smoothly with the connecting flights? Will my children get lost? My sources of panic range from the mundane to the outlandish and hit everything in between.

I always hope that all of my careful preparation will help to calm me down, and it does a lot, but it cannot help with those first panicked thoughts in the morning. I am feeling much better today since I have all day to prepare. We usually try and take the first flight of the morning, but this time we opted to fly the Red-eye so we have until late tonight to check and re-check my packing lists.

I hope that you are all having an amazing day!

~DD

L ~ is for Lists

I love lists. They make my life so wonderful. I make lists for everything. Grocery Lists, meal lists, to do lists, packing lists, wish lists, everything. It's great.

I didn't used to make lists, I used to think that the people who made lists were stogy and over organized. Once I had kids I realized that lists are not a sign of being anal retentive, but a sign of desperation. Lists keep you from forgetting things. Which is really important once your kids suck all of the brains you once had out through your ears. (Here's the proof, not that I needed it)

So what do lists have to do with the travel theme that I have going on this week? I make lists of every single thing that I pack in each suitcase, especially for the kids. This is helpful at both the beginning and at the end of the trip. At the beginning I use it to make sure I don't forget anything. If my list doesn't say underwear I know that I have a problem. When it comes to the end of the trip the list serves the same purpose, am I packing everything I brought to take home? It would be a tragedy if I left the Barbie shirt at Nana's house, the list helps me to avoid the problem. It also make sure I remember things like phone chargers, shampoo and books.

So the next time you travel, with kids or without, try making a list and see if it doesn't help to make you trip a lot smoother.

~DD

Hodgepodge Wednesday brought to you by the letter K

1. Would you rather talk to everyone at a crowded party for a short time or have a significant conversation with two people? This one is actually hard for me. If you know me and my husband well you know that we are party people. We have people over to our house to hang out more often than not, sometimes as many as 4 nights a week. I try to keep my mingling both ways. I try and make sure to talk to everyone and make sure that no one feels ignored, but I also love to use the time to have some real adult conversation with the ladies that come around.
2. What objects do you remember from your parent's living room? Ok, in my first house I remember all sorts of things, I have a great memory for stuff, but the two things that stick out the most are my dad's beer stein collection, it covered an entire wall. My Brother and I share that collection now, well sort of, we both really need to get them out of storage at Mom's house. The other thing I remember is the brick/rock surround on the fireplace. It had a kachina picture worked into the rock it was pretty cool.


3. Do you hog the bed? Steal the covers? Snore? Me? Nope. When DH is deployed I can slide out of the bed and it looks made. Snore, maybe, especially when I am having an allergy attack or am really tired.


4. Speaking of Easter dinner....what is your favorite way to cook/eat lamb? Or does just the thought of that make you squeamish? If you're not cooking lamb what will be your entree du jour on Easter Sunday? My favorite way to have lamb is cooked by someone else. I have never made it myself because... well I don't know why, but I haven't. I don't dislike it, and I don't have problems because it was once a fluffy white baby. Although when we lived in England I drove past a bunch of lamb farms, ranches, what do you call them? Anyway, they were on our way every single day. On Easter Sunday we do ham, mostly because my husband doesn't like turkey, or roast.


5. Let's throw some politics into this week's mix-oooohhh...Do you know the whereabouts of your birth certificate and when was the last time you had to produce it to prove you're you? My birth certificate is in the front coat closet, in the firesafe in the 4th hanging folder from the front, it's the second birth certificate from the front. The last time I used it.... hmmm. I don't remember. I got both of the girls out last month when we renewed their passports.


6. As a child, how did people describe you? I don't know. Anyone? I was a smart, somewhat shy, non-athletic child. That's how I would describe myself I have no clue what others would say about me.


7. What do you complain about the most? I make an effort not to complain about things I think that it is unproductive. I'm sure that DH could tell you what it is though. I would say probably right now it would be the school systems here where we live. They are horrid, not just bad, horrid.

8. Insert your own random thought here. K - is for Keep it Simple.... As a continuation of the A-Z blogging challenge and in the theme of this week with travel today I will talk about the best packing advice I ever received. Keep it simple. With the cost of checking baggage now days we see more and more people traveling out of their carry on bags. This change has been really hard for some people because they can't figure out how to downsize their luggage. So here is my recommendation. Keep it Simple. Don't pack 3 outfits where 1 will do, having options based on your feelings is nice, but not necessary. Pack your outfits with shoes and accessories in mind. If you are going for a week or less try and keep the shoe needs to 1 or two pairs, you don't need to pack outfits that need black shoes and outfits that need brown shoes, pick a pair that are comfortable that you love and only plan outfits that work with those. Pre plan your outfits. Actually lay them out, underwear and accessories included. I then list everything that I packed on a paper. That way when I am finished with the trip and re-packing to come home I know that I am not leaving anything behind.

~DD

J - Is for Journey

We have another trip coming up, it seems like April is our month to travel. We will be headed across the country to spend time with DH's family and see our new niece. I am really excited for this trip, not only because I enjoy spending time with my husbands family and friends but also because I know that both of us need a recharge.

When it comes to getting ready for a trip I am a firm believer in planning ahead. I have found that taking your time in the week leading up to your departure and really packing and planning thoughtfully makes the trip much easier and more enjoyable.

I will be using the letters this week to talk about the steps that I take to help myself prepare for a trip. Today's letter is J for the Journey. The first step in planning a successful trip is deciding how you will get there and getting any necessary reservations made. Will you drive? Fly? Take a train? If you will be going by plane or train how will you get to the airport/station? What will you do for transportation once you get to your destination? Generally the further in advance you can buy your tickets the better rate you will get. If you plan on driving look for a good selection of hotels along the way and either predetermine your stopping points and make reservations, or have enough hotel names along the way that if your first choice is full you have other options.

Happy traveling!

~DD

I - is for Inconvenience on the Interstate.

This weekend was AMAZING, it was so much fun! AJ and I went to my home town for a ladies tea with a group of my female family members. P-nut stayed home and had a weekend with Daddy. The tea was so well done and I had a great time.

As AJ and I got ready to head home on Sunday we heard about a HUGE accident that had the Interstate shut down, for HOURS. I cannot imagine how bad the accident must have been and I pray for all of the families and people that were involved in that. My brother drove past it in the opposite direction and said that it was miles of over turned semi-trucks. The interstate was actually backed up from the accident all the way to my home town, that was a 40 mile traffic jam.

For those of you, like DH, who are not from the Western United States, closing the interstate is more than a minor inconvenience. There really isn't another way to go. In order to go around the accident, closure, and traffic jam I would have had to drive an extra 5 hours (on a trip that should be 3.5 hours) DH kept asking me why there wasn't a frontage road or state road to divert traffic to, nothing. So while this closure was inconvenient for me I felt for all of the truckers who were stuck for the 15+ hours waiting, especially the ones who are penalized for being behind schedule.

A link to an article about the accident

AJ and I got on the road first thing this morning and made it home almost in time to have her go to school for the whole school day. As it was she only missed the first 30 minutes which I don't think is too bad at all for leaving 18 hours later than planned.

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.

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

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