New Year, New Beginnings

Hey, its 2016! 

What a year this will be! 

After a dismal 2 months following pilot training, I feel like life has started again. I've crawled out of the deep, dark hole that was the end of 2015 for me (dramatic, I know) and come out to a bright & shiny 2016! It truly is a year of new beginnings with a whole lot of new-ness in our lives. 

We bought our second home and closed just before Christmas, and we are so excited about it. We practically stole it, and it will support our family for years to come. If we choose, we never ever have to move again - it's that great! Stay tuned for posts regarding the re-decorating and my little projects going on. Because there will be a lot to do. Think victorian-ish bad, dark draperies - mixed with gaudy tropical decor, REALLY bad wallpaper choices (in a bathroom, huh?!) & a lack of cleaning capabilities makes for a lot of little projects spanning months. My list is long, but nothing is completely unlivable and I'm confident in my abilities to turn this house around and make it shine again! In the mean time, I will try my hardest to pace myself and stop trying to understand WHY somebody would have made these choices in a house that is only 10 years old. I'm stumped. But it will keep me busy and that is just what I need. 

 A mere 5 days after we moved into our house Jordan left again for more training. I know how hard it was for him to leave us in a new house, in a new town, not knowing the next time he'll be home before his training is done. The good news is that he's coming home this weekend, only 2 weeks after he left!! But really, these 2 weeks have been eye opening to me and have re-inforced, tested, and accelerated my skills of stay-at-home-momhood. All while still un-packing and organizing a new house with two little ones in tow. In-between naps and after bed just hasn't been enough time to get things organized in every room, do laundry, dishes & other household chores, while feeding kids and trying to not pull my hair out. I'm not trying to brag or anything, but aside from the unpacking thing, I've done a pretty darn good job of keeping us three girls sane. 

Did I mention we moved to a new town that we literally didn't know one person in? Yup, sounds sort of crazy, except we just did that when we moved to Oklahoma. So we're sort of pros at this whole thing. We're only 2 hours from family, so that is comforting, but sort of nice to have our own space. Don't get me wrong, I would LOVE to live close to our parents, but I'm totally okay where we are. I actually love it. I was nervous about becoming a 'metro detroit-er' (EEEKK did I say, Detroit?!) but I think we found an area that suits us perfectly and will be a great place for our family. We seem to be in a great neighborhood. Its winter in Michigan so everybody is hibernating and its tough to meet neighbors, but the few we've met have been really nice and tell us everybody else is nice too. I found a fun music class for the girls that is weekly, so hopefully through that we can forge some friends for the girls and for me as the weeks go on! 

There are an abundance of places for me to work around here and I'm looking forward to heading back to the workforce in some capacity. Not totally sure what that will look like, and even though I'm excited to engage my brain in other ways than reading Dr. Seuss and singing Daniel Tiger & Elmo jingles all day, I'm more sad than I thought I would be to head back. The hope is that I won't be full time and will still find a fulfilling role for me - hopefully in a NICU! We've found a great babysitter and have started to network some (by some I mean very, very little - but its a start!) which will hopefully lead to job possibilities and more friends for the girls and I.

Every year brings a new start as the calendar changes, but this year we are really epitomizing what it means to start new. I'm excited for just about everything in our new house and city. I'm ready for Jordan to come back home for good so we can really put our roots down and *hopefully* stay here a long, long time!

Happy New Year 2016!!!! 

Things in OK

I have the urge to give a little update today, so here it goes for all who are curious!

We have met some of the most amazing people since we've been here. It was easy for Jordan to meet people while he was at school, but for me I was a bit worried about meeting people in those first few days. Much to our surprise, we have FABULOUS neighbors! Evelyn and I were outside playing on the front patio and our neighbors walked by with their little girl who is the same age as Evelyn! It has been such a blessing to have them right next door. The nights when Evelyn is ansy, we can head on over and the girls can play for a bit. 

It has been so good for Evelyn to be around more kids her age down here. She is a little timid in social situations when there are a lot of kids (definitely more like her dad!) but she has slowly been getting better and more adventurous. We have been busy with hanging out with our friends and doing play-date activities. Enid surprisingly has a large number of stay-at-home moms and has quite a few {good} resources for us. Local churches have MOPS groups, our pilot group has a large mom group, & there are a ton of parks around! Our days are for now are filled with two naps for Evelyn (still!!!!), parks, homemade dinners & playing with our friends.

Somedays, well honestly most days, I miss working. But these days spending time with our ever-changing Evelyn have been priceless. I will head back into the workplace soon enough and I have to remind myself of that and to enjoy the time I have at home with our sweet girl.

We have been so blessed by everyone we have met so far, and can't wait to continue to meet new people and have new experiences in Oklahoma. I still can't always believe that we live in Oklahoma and are so far away from home. But what they say is true, "home is where the Air Force takes you!" 

Our First House

Today we closed on our first house. I know we moved out the other day, and honestly these last few days our stuff has been out of it has made me disconnect from it. But its still our first house. We put a lot of work & love into this house and we are sad to not finish all the projects we dreamt about. I love these pictures of the changing house now more than ever.

Moving In! May 2011

Fall 2012

Fall 2013

August 2014

 We went back today to drop off our garage door openers and to say goodbye one last time, and I was a little sad standing in Evelyn's room. I spent many late nights and early mornings in that room with our sweet girl. Jordan slaved away putting up the chair rail and we spent so much time in there. Our bedroom doesn't feel the same, and the house just seems like a shell for what it held -  which is really how it should be. But there are still so many memories in that house for us, and we will always cherish those.

Evleyn's Room After! 

Evelyn's Room Before

Kitchen Before

Kitchen After! 

We met the people buying our house today and they seemed like wonderful people. They are just pregnant and will love the house like we did. They were the first people to see the house and are very excited about it and said no other house compared to our house. That made me feel really good that they will enjoy it as much as we did. I guess thats all you really want when you say goodbye to your house and the hard work you put into it.  You want somebody else to appreciate what you did there. And I think they do, and will make it even better.

Walking up those steps today was familiar and comfortable, but now its time to step outside our comfort zone and take an adventure. Goodbye Wheatlands house.

Sunday Project

 We've had this problem in our house. It was the late 90's every fixture craze of being gold. The nasty, tacky, shiny fake gold. Gosh, I can't even explain how much I hate that! Who would chose to put that in a home? Well apparently when our house was built in the early 2000's the previous owners decided it was an okay thing to have. I say yucky. But if that was (one of) my biggest complaint, I could handle it.

Old, nasty light & UGLY faucet! 

When we first moved in 2 years ago, we had to change a few light fixtures first because they were AWFUL!! Our main floor lights were definitely priority. We didn't need anything fancy, but we didn't want anything shiny chrome either. We went with some brushed nickel, and everything looked 100x better! 

The thing we did wait on was our bathrooms. There was nothing wrong with the lights and the faucets, and we wanted to replace much of the flooring in the house first, so we dealt with the ugly apartment style bathroom lights for a while. I can't even explain to you though how terrible our faucets were. They were nasty shiny chrome and the handles were the same, stupid shiny gold! Who combines those 2 awful things in 1 faucet? Yuck, yuck yuck! We finally decided it was time to switch that stuff out. Not some big home make-over project (we've got another project in the works, besides the babies room!), but just a swap. We went to the store and found great light fixtures for all 3 of our bathrooms and got new faucets too. What a difference those things make! I am shocked by how much brighter everything is! 

But then came my next project idea. We have the raw edge, basic mirrors in our bathrooms. Now, I really can't complain about them because they are huge and serve their purpose just fine, but they are definitely not the prettiest. I've been wanting to update them, but don't feel like buying new mirrors and then fixing the wall behind the mirrors if the new ones were different. That sounded like way to much work for me! So, I turned to trusty ole' Pinterest and found a great idea! I would put up tile around the mirror and, BAM, new looking beautiful mirror. I have to say, Jordan wasn't completely envisioning my plan and I'm pretty sure he thought I was going crazy. The guy at Home Depot thought I was some stupid housewife who saw this idea on HGTV and thought I could do it on my own. And I have to admit, I was a little skeptical myself. But I started with our half bathroom because if I royally screwed up, it was a small enough mirror that it wouldn't cost an arm and a leg to replace. 

The tile before

MOST amazing product! 

Jordan and I spent some time picking out the tile and of course, we picked out one of the most expensive ones. It was still only about $10 a sheet, but compared to some other ones, it was a bit more pricey. We found some awesome tile adhesive at Home Depot and bought a package of that and headed back home. This adhesive stuff is my favorite thing ever. You literally peel off the back side, stick it to the surface you are tiling (counter, backsplash, in my case a mirror) and then peel off the other side that has a different adhesive and stick the tile right onto it. Again, I was a bit skeptical, but it was soooo easy and worked out perfect for this project! I highly recommend this stuff, turns out its what my parents used on their backsplash in their kitchen! 

Up close of the adhesive sheet

I cut each tile out separately and chose not to get and grout, for many reasons. First, I've never grouted before. I wanted this to be a "me" project and not something that Jordan had to help me with, he has enough stuff to do around the house. Second, the example I found on pinterest didn't use grout and it looked fine. And third, how was the grout going to reflect in the mirror? The edges are exposed and you can see the back side of the tiles reflecting. 

So, here is my finished project! 

After cutting the adhesive paper, pulling the tiles off their mesh backing and sticking them all together, I think it looks pretty darn good! The whole thing only took about an hour to put together. We haven't hung it back up yet because we need mirror glue to stick it back up on the wall, with the bottom brackets still in place. 

I can't wait to do this with our other mirrors. I just have to find the right tile and go for it! It is so super easy and I think it will make such a difference in our room, along with the new lights and faucets of course! I really want to go show that Home Depot guy how silly he was for underestimating a lady on a mission! 

Baby Prep

Jordan and his guns!

Jordan has been working so hard on getting our nursery baby ready! It was a pretty boring room, and from the beginning before I knew what kind of theme, paint color, etc I wanted for the room, I knew I wanted a chair rail and maybe some wainscoting. So my wonderful husband had to get started on building it! I am against buying things straight off the rack apparently, so we had to "create" our own chair rail. So many things in the store are too traditional, or too ornate, or too frumpy for a nursery. We like simple, clean lines, so thats what I was going for. Easier said than done. But this is what we came up with! We still need to paint the new chair rail all white, and what is below it white also, but its coming together! The color on the top half of the walls I am still not sure about, so I've got to test out some paint colors once it gets a little nicer and we can have the windows open to air out the house when we are painting!

Our animals "helping" out

One of the best days so far in this baby prep is when we got our furniture delivery! Our animals were all about "helping" out when we got the furniture and couldn't stand to be out of the room as we were figuring out where to put it! I'm sure we are going to change it all about 90 times before the baby comes, but for now, we are just going to keep it where it is and see how we like it! Jordan had a fun time putting together the crib! It is so much better in person, in our house than it was in the store! I absolutely love the clean lines and simplicity of it! It will be perfect for a little boy or a little girl and that makes me so incredibly happy!

Our beautiful crib! 

There are so many more things to think about when it comes to getting a nursery set up and ready for a baby. I'm probably over-thinking it all, because after all, its just a baby's room, right? With all these perfect pinterest nurseries and blogs about how to make the best, most chic baby room around, its hard to keep up - especially when you don't know if you're having a boy or a girl! Its even more frustrating that all the stores sell stupid, tacky, themed bedding sets. I mean, people actually buy this crap! There are some seriously hideous themes, and the sad thing is, there are people that think they are cute! I don't want a specific theme and that makes it 100x more difficult to find things I like. I'm finding myself piecing together parts of different sets to make a simple and clean baby room! I have to keep telling myself that all this stuff won't really matter, but I still want it to be perfect and put together and wonderful for our sweet baby!

Its time for me to just take a deep breath, relax, and go with what is simple and easy to put together and make our baby's room perfect. It may not be "pinterest perfect" but who really cares? I don't have to prove anything to anybody, and my baby won't ever know a difference!

Yummy's on a cold night

Tonight Jordan returned from being gone for 5 days on a trip to California for the military. I was feeling bad that he had to  leave the 90 degree days to head back to frost covered Michigan (no not really, haha!). I was actually feeling very cold all day and decided to warm up with some chili, cornbread and pumpkin cookies! My chili is a little unconventional and is the chili my Nana and Mom made me many times while I was growing up. It is one of my favorite things to make and it always lasts for days after I make it. Jordan also happens to love it, so I never need to convince him that it sounds good for dinner. I wanted to give him a little warmth as he came back from gorgeous perfect weather, to our chilly November days.


Yum. So here is a picture of my wonderful Chili. Little unconventional, but so, so tasty. This is how I make it:

1 can diced tomatoes
1 can hot & spicy beans ( I sometimes add more beans)
1 jar tomato juice
1 lb ground turkey (or beef, venison, etc)
Noodles (I use spaghetti cut in half this time, but any type
                will do)
Jalapenos (as many as you want!)
Onion
Garlic (because everything is better with garlic!)
Chili powder
1/4 cup sugar
salt & pepper

I take the meat and onion and start getting that cooked up to add in. I get a small pot of water boiling for the pasta that I will add. While that is cooking, I add the tomato juice, beans, tomatoes, and jalapenos into a big pot. I add in the salt & pepper, chili powder, garlic, and the sugar. I add those to taste, depending how how I am feeling. I add in the meat & onion when they are cooked, and the pasta when that is ready. I let it all simmer and cook for 10-15 minutes. It is important to let all the flavors marry and get happy with eachother. I usually cook up some cornbread or just add some crackers while I'm eating it. As you can see, it does resemble goulash, but it has the flavor of chili. It is a big more soupy than other chili's, but it is so yummy!


These yummy cookies are pumpkin chocolate chip cookies!
3 ingredients!

1 box spice cake
1 large can of pumpkin
1 package of chocolate chips

Mix them all together and bake at 375 for 15-20 minutes. They are so, so yummy! They are super moist and delicious!




All this yummy-ness in one night means that Jordan is one lucky man. No I'm kidding, he is lucky for lots of reasons, but I do enjoy and get a lot out of when I can cook for him! He is on the road al the time and eats out everyday he is gone, so it is nice for him to have a home-cooked meal. This is one of my favorite meals, and I can't wait to share it with my daughters some day!

Yearly Traditions

Since we moved into our house just over a year ago, I have been thinking about traditions to have for our family as we continue to grow. Sometimes I feel like some people have too many traditions and all they do is all their traditional activities and never do anything new. I don't want to get stuck into always doing the same things just because its tradition. And sure, some traditions are good to continue. I think we may have continued a great tradition earlier this week.

When we first moved into our house, my friend took a picture of us as we were moving in. We were in our front door and it was really cool. Last fall we planted  a tree in our front yard and thought it would be cool to photograph the tree growing each year to see how much its grown. Last winter I took a picture of the front of our house to document the tree being in our front yard. This week we decided to take a family picture out by our tree.

So here it is. Our dysfunctional family photo by our tree! Chloe (our dog) is licking her lips (an annoying habit she always does) and our two kitties are in the doorway looking left out. We sort of planned it that way. Anytime we go out front, the cats come to the door and look jealous that we are all outside and they are stuck inside. But I think its great. Its our perfect family! 

But thinking about this as a tradition. How many traditions are worth it? When do you know when you over-do the tradition of traditions? I feel like every family has to have some and there is deep meaning in doing something that reminds you of family or certain happy moments. Can you try too hard to make those memorable moments? I feel like you can, but how do you know you are? I guess there can't really be clear cut guidelines, but hopefully you just know. I think a good judge of over-doing the traditions is when every family trip, dinner, or holiday is stuck with only one way to do it because of the tradition. The best memories tend to come when nothing is planned and when true memorable moments can naturally happen. Just let things happen. I guess thats a good way to  live! Maybe that should be my new mantra...