Finding harmony in family, finance & military life

This past Wednesday we had a wonderful fiesta! Once again I prepared for a larger crowd then what we were blessed with but that is ok. Our goal was simple we catered for about 100 and served roughly 60. So how do you prepare a fiesta? Slow cook 5-7 pounds of chicken tenderloin with some chicken broth and Mexican seasoning in a roaster set at 250* for about 7 hours. It will shred up very easily and taste delicious. Put 5 cans of rinsed black beans with a bit of chicken broth and cumin spice in your slow cooker set on low heat to cook while the chicken cooks. Set 10 cups of jasmine rice to soak in your rice cooker. Do not turn it on until about an hour before you plan to serve the meal. You will end up with amazing sticky rice! When I do this again I will double the rice it was a huge hit. Slice up about 5 pounds of good quality steak and let it marinade in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. I just bought a marinade mix. In the hour before serving the meal I cooked up the steak...

This is a shout out to all the mamas and the papas, the sisters and the brothers, the lovers and the churches who post prayer requests online too! Denial is not a river in Egypt so you cannot go through life thinking oh it will never happen to me, what you post online is seen by everyone! While the American military would appreciate your scaling back on the posts our enemies thank you for every little blurb you make concerning where your military heart throb might be. You've heard the song " every breath you take, every move you make, I'll be watching you" yea the romantically creepy stalker song is being lived out on your facebook page.  Let's say your husband gets orders to --- and you immediately post on facebook a picture of --- with "My <3 is in ---" over top of it. The chatter begins, pretty soon people all over the world know that someone you love is heading to --- very soon. Look I don't care where the hell you think your heart is, do ...

I get asked that a lot, people always want to know just how I do something. Most of the time I don't really know how I did it I just did. How did you teach your two year old to read? I bet you read to him a lot! He was my fourth child. My husband was gone the first 18 months of his life give or take a few visits. I broke my leg when he was eleven months old, yes while my husband was in another country in true military wife fashion. In a nutshell my hands were full, my heart was heavy, unless you count those Harry Potter books I had my nose in every night after the kids were in bed, reading to my baby was not a top priority. Sorry! I knew what people wanted to hear when they marveled at my son reading a book from his stroller but, the truth was he spent a lot of time watching Signing Time and Super Why. Those two shows taught him everything he needed to know in order to pick up a book and start reading it. I applauded the mamas and the papas behind those two shows and gave t...

I have still not gotten used to technically being a "working mom", I still think of myself as a stay at home/home school mom, but it is true I have succumbed to the call of the working world. My official work title is Protestant Hospitality Coordinator. "What does that mean?" you may ask, well I will tell you! I have no idea what that title would mean in your average Protestant Church, I don't go to one bwahahaha, however for the Protestant Chapel on an Air Force base that title pretty much means I am a chef. I love my job! It is tough, too tough and I would not recommend it for just anyone, but for me it is perfect. I am contracted to work 13 hours every week and paid on salary so the extra 2-7 hours I work each week are considered volunteer hours... a new contract will be worked out no worries. Regardless of the crazy hours I still love my job. Onto the spaghetti! Every Wednesday night the Chapel hosts a free dinner for anyone on base who would like to come,...

To the mom who thinks she is doing it wrong, Trust me, you are! It does not matter if you are a first time mom, a mother of three, the mom going for number five, the quiver full mother of ten or perhaps fifteen with three sets of twins, you are doing it all wrong! Who only has one child? That's selfish! Why on earth did you have more then two? God only gave you two hands! Five is too many, ten you must be crazy and fifteen means your uterus must be the equivalent of a clown car. See, each one is clearly wrong. The mother who vaccinated her herd just pumped poison into their bodies, she is doing it wrong. The anti vac mom just put the entire preschool at risk, she is doing it wrong. The selective and delayed vaccinators, well it serves them right if they get the flu, they are doing it wrong. It doesn't matter how much research you do, the choices you make about vaccinations will be wrong. Each new case of measles, flu, Ebola, and autism spectrum disorder will someho...

The 18 year old me had a lot of big dreams, really big dreams. She had this plan all worked out in her head that she was going to join the Navy as a cook and some day rule the world. This naive young woman boarded a bus heading for Peach Tree City, Georgia from Baltimore, Maryland and by the Grace of God after sitting next to a real creep was rescued by an upstanding young man who had just been discharged from the Navy. She told him of her lofty dream, the one about being a Navy cook not the one about ruling the world, and he told her the facts about being in the Navy. The short story was that it sucked being a woman in the Navy and he encouraged her to look into the Air Force instead. Fast forward a few months and that is just what the 18 year old me did. However being a cook in the Air Force instead of in the Navy was not how my adventure went. I was home schooled which meant I enlisted Open General and was given whatever job the Air Force saw fit. I was too smart to go into Securi...

This morning I heard something that made me want to reach into the car radio and slap the girl talking through the speaker. The hot topic being discused had to do with the individuals of Seal Team Six speaking out about their mission. I tuned in somewhere in the middle but from what I gathered at that moment they were talking about the hardships endured by maybe Navy Seals or just deployed military in general. The young woman chimed in that "these guys" don't really have it as bad as we think and that many of them are deployed with roll out posture pedic beds. She suggested that since they are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in training they get hooked up out in the field and the military wouldn't just let them go on the way side ( be neglected). I may have snorted at that point. I later found out she is a military spouse, that really shocked me. I know everyone's deployment experience is different so maybe her husband is deployed with a nice bed to sleep...