Long Lasting Marriages

Still doing the 30 days of gratitude.

Today I am grateful for my grandparents!!!

They are such a blessing to me. They have been married 55 years! Such a inspiration and example of an amazing couple!! My grandmother has taught me to lean on God and to trust Him with all my heart!




Aren't they so cute!?!?!? :)

I LOVE THEM DEARLY!!!!!!!!!!

What are you grateful for?

What's for dinner???

If memory serves me correctly, I managed to fend for my "single" self without NEAR as much consternation over meal planning! I ate what I wanted, when I wanted and how I wanted with nary a complaint from my dinner guest aka moi.  But here lately, meal planning is becoming more of a chore!!!  Though I have stacks and stacks of cookbooks, paper clippings and recipe stashes I cannot get into a groove.  I find myself either cooking the same-o-thing or worse, ordering out.

Where or where can a girl find a month's worth of healthy, non-boring, quick-cooking, budget friendly meals????


My latest plan of attack is Pinterest!  I am continually amazed at how much free time virtual Moms & Wives seem to have.  Like seriously, how are you running kids here & there, decorating your house for each season, cooking every night and saving money????  But that's for another post :). 

For now, my plan is to rely upon those ladies to scour the web and lead me to a recipe treasure trove.  I just threw this:

Courtesy of Living Life of Riley!   Ms. Nikki has a ton of crockpot success stories (cause I wanna know that it actually turned out well) that I'll be relying upon in a quest to get my cooking groove back.  To account for the sugar, I plan to serve this with a healthy side that Ms. Giada whipped up this weekend:

Please share your go to Crock Winners!

Lady Hawk

30 Days of Gratitude

Are you all participating in the 30 days of gratitude?? I have been doing it on my personal blog.

Today (Day 13) I am grateful for my husband.

I LOVE ME SOME HIM!!

He loves God! He loves me!! He puts up with all my craziness and is always there for me when I need him. He treats me like a queen and I am honored to be able to treat him like a King!!

 

What are you grateful for?

DCSquared

#1 Priority

 

Is it your #1 priority?

 

DCSquared

Happy 20th Anniversary to the Obamas!!

Happy 20th Anniversary to the Obamas!!

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are celebrating 20 years today. The couple were married on October 3rd, 1992.

The presidential debate is also tonight from 9:00-10:30 p.m. EST. So this is a big day for The Obamas! :o)

Happy Anniversary!

 

DCSquared

A snowballining we will GO!

My new hubbie and I setup a debt repayment plan well before we were even engaged let alone married.  We sat down and had a long heart to heart about our financial ups and downs, lessons learned and hoop dreams.  We walked away with a pretty clear picture of where each of us stood individually and where a merging of households would lead us collectively.  Shortly afterwards, we started our "debt-snowball" and plowed head first into reaching our ultimate goal:

Pay Everything Off.

Having a laser focus on paying off debt can distract you from establishing a sound savings strategy.  In theory, it's really easy to apply every extra penny straight to your debt.  Doing so gets you that much closer to dropping a creditor from your master list.  But that can also leave you in quite a pickle.  Because what happens when the unexpected bill pops up?  How are you supposed to pay for that new expense when you just sent your latest windfall to Visa & MC?  You are exposed.  Adding the new bill to the coals and charging it only kicks it down the road; it's gathering dust (interest  & possibly penalties) along the way.  Let me tell you, nothing can ruin a "Yay! We paid off So-n-so" party quicker than a surprise guest via the mailbox.

Yes, I know Dave Ramsey says "save up $1000 before you start attacking your debt."  But doesn't it seem like there's a $1000 emergency (and I mean a true emergency not a "forgotten" bill) springing up each time you're about to pass GO? 

AHA moment: maybe Dave's $1000 target needs boosting in this new millenia?  Maybe he's right but just lowballing us or perhaps we just need to take some creative license and set our own target....(it never ceases to amaze me when I answer my own question while sharing my thoughts with someone.  Duh!)

So how do you handle shifting focus?  What if one or heck, even both spouses, are less disciplined one month?  There's a fine line between chastising and correcting.  You don't want to come down too hard but you also can't standy by and the let the whole ship go down.  And who likes being the bad guy all of the time?  Worse than that, it's rather uncomfortable when your shipmate points out your own guilt.  Oh, what a tangled web we weave when at first we attempt to build net worth! LOL!

Wish us luck.  We're only 'o-ffficially' 6 months in and the both of us are notoriously impatient when it comes to making progess.  We want to make headway yesterday!  And one mis-step can readily have us calling "Slacker" if we let it. 

Appreciate any wise words you can share.

Lady Hawk

Saving for a rainy day

Hindsight is usually not your friend.  Hindsight is more like a spoiled brat sticking his tongue out at you.  The Obvious is not much better.  The Obvious tends to hide behind Hindsight only peeking his head out right after your watch ticks to "Too Late".

Your only real defense against Hindsight is to arm yourself with as much info as humanly possible.  What did G.I. Joe tell us at the end of every episode?  "Knowing is half the battle."  Yeah, I'm seriously dating myself but he knew that the only thing worse than Hindsight was her snooty cousin, "You Didn't Know That?"

Over the past few weeks, I have spent more than enough time with these partners in crime.  They have really worked my last good nerve. 

But that's A-OK.  I.AM.NOT going down easily.

Did you know that there's a super simple blood test that measures your fertility?  Yep, you can measure your chances of having a baby with little more than a finger prick.

Did you know that as of 5 years ago, fertility experts have perfected the art of freezing eggs?  Yep, before that, the process was largely unsuccessful.  The eggs did not thaw well and so were unusable.  But all of that has changed now.

Did you know that armed with those two bits of information, you have the potential to A) track your fertility by having your gynecologist administer the Anti-Mullerian Hormone (AMH) test annually and B) set aside some of your eggs while they are younger and fresher? 

I seriously believe the AMH test should be offered along with our annual Pap Smears to any woman of childbearing years.  The final decision to take the test should be the patient's but our gynos should make it common practice to make us aware of this test.  If you agree, please sign my petition.

Yeah, it's a long shot but I have to do something.  I have to tell somebody.  I wish someone had told me.

Friends: save for a rainy day!

Lady Hawk

Time keeps on ticking...

Ahhh, the ever-present biological clock!  Mother Nature keeps time like no other.  You can lollygag about life if you want to, but you may end up on the short end of the stick!

That's where I am, friends.  On the short-end of the stick.  All reports point to our having a very narrow window to get knocked up.  Even then, we're gonna need "assistance".  My long battle with the broids has left my uterus a bit, shall we say, bumpy?  Actually, the fert specialist said it was "distorted".  He confirmed that the mass on my left fallop tube was not a fibroid...it was 4 fibroids.  Awesome.

While last year's UFE took care of my symptoms, the broids have not completely disappeared.  So to decrease my chances of a miscarriage, he has steered us towards a top-notch uterine surgeon in hopes of smoothing out the landing strip.

Yay!  Another surgery :) 

I shouldn't say that.  There's no pity party over here.  Seriously.  I've had so many that it really isn't a big deal anymore.  Sad, but true.  Plus, it'll totally be worth it ifWHEN our prayers are answered.

From what I've learned so far, this is all a numbers game.  How old are ya?  How many eggs do you have?  How many good eggs do you have?  How many other chicks like you wound up preggers?  So after the surgery, we'll be sipping on an "ovulation stimulating" cocktail.  And the odds say that if this is gonna work for us, the magic will happen in one or two cycles.

I should have dubbed this the "Amazing Race"!

Lady Hawk

QOTD: Quote of The Day

One of the first keys to a successful Marriage, is Communication; The first key to successful Communication, is Listening.

-Husband and Wife for Life

I HEART MixBook

I often joke that my family is forever looking for a reason to bake a cake.  We celebrate something just about every weekend.  Unfortunately, I miss a good deal of these simply because I do not get back to TN as frequently as I'd like.  I average about once every two months or so and A LOT can happen between my visits!  But I do try to make it home for our "big" holidays.  One of those is definitely Easter.  After church, we all gather in Granny's front yard for "PICTURE TIME!"  I literally run around singing "It's picture time, it's picture time, it's time to get your ready for your pictures!" sung to that "Crayons and your pencils" ditty.  After the pics, we try to have our annual Egg Hunt just before sitting down to a proper Southern Sunday dinner :).

In recent years, the popularity of our Easter Egg hunts have tapered off a bit simply because we didn't have any younguns.  But thanks to a recent baby boom that has us blossoming with new babies, we've been able to bring back the family tradition.  This year marked the first hunt for one of our youngest grandkids.  Here he is just after getting caught stuffing eggs in his pockets!

After the hunt, two of my all-time faves snuggled up on a lawn chair for a chat:

 

I absolutely love this pic of my Sweetie and my Granny.  After I took this, Granny got to fussing about how much she hates digitial cameras.  "I never gets to see pictures since they came out with those thangs.  Y'all don't never print pictures off anymore!"  I cracked up!  But she's right. The most we'll do as far as sharing goes is to post them on Facebook.  So she does miss out.  That got me to thinking...

Ding! Ding! Ding! 

I'll make her a MixBook of these pictures for Mother's Day!  She'll love that!  Since not all of my own pics turned out well, I collected pictures from my relatives who were there that day.  I even snagged some off of Facebook.  Two of my uncles couldn't make it home, so I had them email me pics of their families.  Once I had all of those together, I used the "Classic Easter" template to build a photobook and had it shipped directly to her.

It arrived a week early and before I had a chance to tell her it was on the way.  So when it arrived, it just had the shipping address with no indication who sent it.  She was blown away.  She told my mom, "Look at what somebody from CA sent me!  I don't know how they got a hold of these pictures or how they put this picture book together but I sure am grateful they did it.  I just love this!"

After a good laugh and some splaining, Mama tolder her that I was the culprit and that the book was her Mother's Day gift.  She was tickled pink.

Major. Score.

I highly recommend this as a surprise for your older or less-than-tech-savvy relatives :).