Riding in on his white horse

On our way home from the mountains today L and I started planning out our Spring Break trip. He runs an organization that works with high school and college students, and I work in the school district so we now get the perks of living on the school schedule and get to enjoy Spring Break 5 years out of college. 3 cheers for never having to grow up! Hip Hip Hooray!

So, over Spring Break (in 2 weeks), we are going on a backpacking trip in Utah. He has done 3 backpacking trips through Utah but I have yet to do one in that beautiful state, and I am super excited for this trip. Well, mostly excited, partly terrified.

Maybe 80% terrified, 20% excited.

We are discussing things that could go wrong and he is trying to talk some sense into me. I was telling him my fears of drowning in a flash flood in the canyons... being eaten by wild mountain lions... boulders falling on one of us and having to saw off our arms to escape... being overtaken by robbers in the middle of the night...

In the middle of my Freak Out Session, with his uncanny sense of perfect timing L says "Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you that quicksand is actually a pretty common problem where we're going."

My mind works in Worst Case Scenario Speed at all moments in time, so I immediately flash forward and envision myself as Princess Buttercup being sucked up by quicksand in the Fire Swamp and fighting off Rodents of Unusual Size.

It is at this moment that I am now sure that my demise won't come from a falling boulder on this backpacking trip. No, it will come from quicksand.

L took this opportunity to reassure me in his sweet way: "You wouldn't sink more than waist deep so before I rescue you, I would have to take some pictures and maybe laugh at you."

Awesome. My knight in shining armor.

Happy Friday!

I am about to eat my words. Remember my longings of warm weather and spring? Remember my loathing of snow, freezing temperatures, and all things cold?


Well. This morning L and I are packing clothes, boots, food, hats, gloves, the kitchen sink, and our dog to go up to the mountains for the weekend. They have gotten snow this week. It will be beautiful.


I will love it.


I will let L and friends go to the ski resort and do their extreme sports thing in the cold. I will drink coffee, do me some yoga, write, read, nap, go on walks.... yes, it will be a great weekend.


For now though, I just discovered something fun. It's called the Friday Follow. Check it out! Yay for new friends!

My magic trick

I love cooking. I think it's just the coolest thing to take all of these separate ingredients and make something beautiful and delicious out of them. It's a life-giving thing for me.

I do always think it's funny though, around 5:30 or 6 each night I'll call L into the kitchen and he'll sit down at the table without asking any questions. The food just magically appears!

Take for instance the yummy meal I made last night. I tried my hand at making spaghetti squash for the first time and it was a smashing success, if I do say so myself.

You first have to roast the thing for 45 minutes in order to cut it in half:

I do have to say, this is one of the weirdest foods I have ever cooked. It literally looks like spaghetti. But it's squash.

People are so creative when naming their vegetables.

So you scoop the squash out after roasting it, and can eat it like that. But I got this brilliant idea from The Tasty Kitchen: Saute some onions in butter, add the squash, some parsley and parmesan cheese and voila! Delicousness is served.

This was the meal that resulted: My yummy spaghetti squash creation; roasted potatoes/peppers/onions tossed with EVOO, garlic, S&P, and parsley; then throw on some fresh greens on the plate and... Dinner!

I was bracing for cries of "Seriously... where's the meat! No, but really, did you forget it on the grill?" when L walked in but he didn't even miss it. My bacon-cheesburger loving, steak consuming, never-can-have-enough-cow carnivore of a husband ate a totally vegetarian meal, got seconds, and told me to put this at the top of our "Meals to absolutely cook again" list.

And so, Ladies and Gentlemen, if I hadn't already wowed you enough with my magical Make Food Appear On The Table trick stay tuned for my final act:

Make My Millions of Dirty Dishes Clean Again trick!

He doesn't even ask how it happens. I guess magicians really never do reveal their secrets!

Come back, I miss you!

I LOVE Colorado and will forever think that it will win the #1 Greatest State Ever Contest. And the Gold Medal goes to..... COLORADO!

However. Living in Georgia for 4 years basically made me a wuss. I can't handle the cold like I used to and I am BEYOND ready for it to warm up.

I have been waking up to scenes like this:

Let's play the Find Sophie Game. It's fun!

Can you find her? Hint: She's behind the fence to the right of the satellite dish.

Well, that wasn't so much the hint as it was the answer, but

I've always loved shortcuts anyway.

And this:

The Find Sophie Game is a bit easier in this one.

When all I have really wanted to do is wake up to this:

This is my backyard pre-Freezingness That Lasts Forever. Seriously; the view from my back porch. Be jealous.

(And, if you're on your toes and a smarty-pants and are thinking that the mountains in Colorado are to the west, thus making this the sunset and not the sunrise and I wouldn't technically be waking up to this, you would be correct. It's still purty though, huh?)

Come back to me Springtime! Bring with you your perfect-above-70-but-less-than-80-temperatures! Bring sundresses and sunblock. A jetski or two to play on the water would be a nice gift as well.

The Backstory

This past fall, L was still Active Duty in the Army serving with an incredible unit and was finishing up his final deployment in Afghanistan. We had already done two other deployments to Iraq along with a doozy of a 3-month training school, and too many other training trips I couldn’t even count. All of that to say, we have said a lot of goodbyes. The deployment goodbyes were the most gut-wrenching moments I have ever had to experience in my entire life. They’re awful. Absolutely heartbreakingly awful.

So, last August I knew that L would be coming home soon, thus beginning our transition out of Active Duty and into the National Guard. Out of Super Crazy Army Life into Minimally Crazy Army Life.

And I started thinking. And wrestling. And processing what happens to a marriage when the first four years of that beautiful relationship coincide with four years of military and war. Figuring out how my faith had been transformed because of the battles I fought with God when my husband had to leave to go fight physical battles of his own.

So I wrote. And kept writing, using those words and my laptop as my own personal counselor as I debriefed the previous four years of my life. Initially, it was simply a really long journal.

Our marriage had been rocked because of the burdens we were having to bear. It is a difficult, difficult life to sustain and we absolutely learned the meaning of having to fight for your marriage. My faith was rocked as I had to learn the true meaning of trust. I had to come to terms with the fact that there are some things in this world that just simply don’t make sense and learned that having hope despite suffering is the definition of faith. Believing that there is more to this world than meets the eye.

Our relationship developed an unshakable strength despite the struggles and as I wrote down our story, I had the feeling that this story is much greater than us. It is the story of a marriage that went through hard times and emerged stronger. It’s the story of today’s military and what deployments are like through the eyes of a soldier’s wife.

So now I have this document on my computer that I’m hoping will eventually leave this laptop and make it onto the shelves of your local bookstore. I’m hoping that our story will resonate with other couples, military or not. I’m hoping that it will give people hope despite the heartache.

It was because of this book that I got my contract to write for CincHouse so if my opportunities end there, I am forever happy. However, I would love for it to go further and am going to do everything in my power to make that happen.

You elude me, perfection

I have been telling myself for months that mid-February is going to be my personal deadline to send out queries to agents about my manuscript. Well, it’s looking to be on the later side of mid-February to me and have I sent out a single query?

Nope.

Not one. Why? In my head I blame it on perfection. The wording not being just right, L hasn’t been able to set aside the time to proof-read them for me this week, I want to make sure that I don’t contact them at a time when the rest of the world is, and the length of time it takes to octuple-check the submission guidelines to make sure I’m doing this thing correctly is just ridiculous.

But in reality I think it’s fear. Because once I hit the ‘send’ button it’s out of my hands and out of my control. And into somebody’s hands that just might say ‘You know, this just isn’t right for us.’ Ugh. I’m going to get rejected. Hopefully (!) not by all of them, but rejections will come because that’s just the nature of the beast, and that just doesn’t sound like fun to me. So I procrastinate. And now I’m telling myself that I’ll get them sent out by next Tuesday. Surely that will give me enough time to ensure 100% perfection.

Why do I hold myself to such ridiculous standards? I know that I have missed out on so many things in my life because if I know I can’t do it up to the standard I hold myself to, I don’t even attempt it. I guess I want to make sure I feel success with it. I’m a bit ridiculous like that.

I know I’ve done some talking about my book, about my writing and all that jazz, but I haven’t yet fully explained my whole journey with it. How this crazy idea came into my head, why I followed through with it, or what the result was. It might take me a little bit to gather my thoughts on that, but I’ll do some soul-searchin’ tonight and let you know tomorrow.

For now, L and I are off to see Brian Regan. He’s just about the most HILAROUS comedian. Ever. It’ll be a good night.

I say tomato, you say Roger That

I was talking a little earlier with L about a project that needed to get done around the house. He told me that he has a pretty crazy week & probably won’t be able to get to it so if I want it done I will just have to do it ‘Sua Sponte.’ Literally. Those were the words he used. For those non-military speakers out there, Sua Sponte means of one’s own accord. That you can do something without another’s prompting or help.

The military is weird. It changes how you speak and L just can’t shake it so I still continually have to ask him to translate 5 years in.

Last week I got lost while driving in our new town (forgot our Garmin at home, thus defeating the whole purpose of buying the thing!) so I had to call L to look up directions on the internet.

He told me he found it, so be prepared because he’s going to ‘talk me on to our target.’

Oh, Army.