Me and My SoldierMan

Movie Monday: Calamity Jane

2013-06-17T17:30:00.001-05:00

Ready for a blast from my childhood?

Calamity Jane (Doris Day) is a wild and rough cowgirl from the small Western town of Deadwood. She rides shotgun on the stagecoach and is on first-name terms with the local saloon owner. She’s friends with everyone in the town, except Wild Bill Hickok (Howard Keel). The two are constantly butting heads. Calamity is in love with Lt. Danny Gilmartin (Philip Carey), but of course all he can see is her rough-riding exterior.

Through a strange series of events, Calamity is tasked with bringing some female entertainment to the saloon from Chicago. There, she finds Katie Brown (Allyn McLerie), who is impersonating the famous actress Adelaide Adams. Calamity doesn’t know the difference and brings Katie back, thinking it’s Adelaide Adams. Thankfully, the mix-up is easily resolved when it’s revealed, because Katie is genuinely talented, but was overshadowed in a big city with bigger names.

All seems well until it comes out that both Bill and Danny are in love with Katie, and Calamity is in love with Danny, but Katie and Calamity are friends, so how do you sort out who goes with who?

“Calamity Jane” is a simple movie with a quirky story, silly plot twists that are resolved or forgotten about, but that’s okay. “Calamity Jane” is just a fun family movie, and that’s all it wants to be, a vehicle for both Doris Day and Howard Keel to sing and pretend to shoot guns. And really, that’s enough. Doris Day is so much fun as the high-energy, uncouth, loud-mouthed Calamity. And I can always watch Howard Keel. His is one of my favorite voices in movie musical history. He’s not only a great singer, but a fine actor and comedian.

We loved watching this movie as kids. With snappy songs that stick in your head, like “Windy City,” to themes about finding friendship with people who have totally different personalities and not needing to change who you are to make people like you, it’s the perfect movie for family night. Doris Day won her first Academy Award from “Calamity Jane,” for the song “Secret Love.”

“Calamity Jane” will be on TCM on Sunday, June 23, at 5:00 am CST. Be sure and DVR it!

Honorable Mentions:
Broadway Serenade (1939) – Tuesday, June 18, 12:30 pm CST
Bitter Sweet (1940) – Tuesday. June 18, 2:30 pm CST
Maytime (1937) – Tuesday, June 18, 4:45 pm CST
Anchors Aweigh (1945) – Tuesday, June 18, 10:45 pm CST
Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964) – Tuesday, June 18, 1:15 am CST
Romance on the High Seas (1948) – Tuesday, June 18, 3:30 am CST
Holiday (1938) – Wednesday, June 19, 7:00 pm CST
Keeper of the Flame (1942) – Wednesday, June 19, 9:00 pm CST
Adam’s Rib (1949) – Friday, June 21, 5:30 am CST
Born Yesterday (1950) – Friday, June 21, 7:15 am CST
Bells Are Ringing (1960) – Friday, June 21, 9:00 am CST
Double Indemnity (1944) – Friday, June 21, 10:15 pm CST
My Favorite Wife (1940) – Sunday, June 23, 11:00 am CST
To Be or Not To Be (1942) – Sunday, June 23, 4:15 am CST

GoPicnic GIVEAWAY!!

2013-06-13T08:51:00.000-05:00

Recently I was contacted by a representative at GoPicnic to review one of their prepackaged collections of Ready to Eat meals for my wonderful readers. They have created five packages specifically to be purchased as Care Packages for deployed servicemembers! The best part is, if you purchase a Care Package to be sent overseas, there is NO shipping cost!

In order to spread the word about this new offer, they contacted me to test out one of their Care Packages and tell y’all about it. I was thrilled by the opportunity and gratefully received one of their Care Packages to try out.

Before long, this package was on my doorstep. Well, sort of. I’m not sure exactly when it arrived. See, my front porch is fairly open and exposed to the street, and my new, well-meaning delivery guy has decided that just placing packages in front of the door isn’t secure, or something, and so he hides them so they won’t get stolen. Which is great, except he doesn’t leave a note telling me where he’s hidden them. Once I didn’t find a package for 2 days after he dropped it off.

I only mention this say that it specifically said on the package to keep in a cool, dry place out of direct sunlight. And a specific side UP. I can’t really guarantee any of those things happened before I found it, and even so, the product inside was just fine. That’s all just FYI.

Also, note the use of the word “hangry” on the package. Very cute. Already predisposed to liking this thing.

The Care Package contained 12 boxes of individual meals. I requested the Hickory Farms Care Package. They also offer gluten-free, vegan, vegetarian, and Kosher options! All the meals are 500 calories or less.

You very clearly see what is inside each meal box. (They’re all identical, since they’re all the Hickory Farms package, but if I ever handed one to somebody else, no explanation necessary. I like that. And it’s cute.) There’s also some handy nutritional info on the bottom, telling you the calorie, protein and fiber content of each meal, as well as assurances that there are no artificial colors or flavors.

I flipped the little box around to decide which end to tear open, when I saw this:

Lookie there! JG-proof! No demolition required, and if I needed to eat in stages – such as on a road trip or sneaking snacks at work – very convenient packaging. Also, cute. Again notice the logo proclaiming no trans fats, MSG or high fructose corn syrup.

Each meal contains 5 pieces, including a whole grain, protein, dried fruit and “dessert”-y item. This Hickory Farms meal had seasoned crackers, cheese spread, beef sausage, dried fruit and sweet almonds. Again, cute, convenient packages. SoldierMan wouldn’t care that it was cute, but I think it’s a plus.

And look – a sudoku puzzle in the box to keep you entertained as you nom!

The cuteness! I’m overwhelmed!

The meal box also contained an adorable little cheese spreading “knife”, but really, this is cheese. You just want to dive right in.

We don’t need no stinkin’ knives.

I pretty much inhaled the crackers, cheese and sausage. It was legit Hickory Farms-quality. Then I got to the other items in the package:

Now, hear me out. I’m not the greatest judge of either dried fruit or nuts. Neither of these items are things I have ever developed a taste for. And I’ve tried. Believe me, I’ve tried. I can only eat peanuts, and only when encased in honey or chocolate. Dried fruit? Fuhggeduhboutit. But, to give a fair assessment, I tried them. And, for dried fruit and candied nuts, they were good. I imagine someone who really likes nomming on such things would really enjoy them. They were good quality. But still not my thing. Gimme meat.

Now, I know what you’re (hopefully) thinking – SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY! But how much money are we talking here?

First of all, any of the Military Care Packages on their website include free shipping to all APO, DFO and FPO addresses. I want to mention that first because I think that’s really awesome – obviously, it’s not free for GoPicnic to ship anything, but they’re eating the shipping costs for any Care Packages and I think that is noteworthy.

There are 5 variety packages to choose from – Hickory Farms like I reviewed above, Meat Lover’s, Turkey+Cheddar, Best Selling variety, and Gluten Free. And there are vegan, vegetarian and Kosher options also available. Each Care Package comes with 12 individual meal boxes with a protein, whole grain, fruit and sweet thing. And all under 500 calories a box.

Regardless of which Care Package you choose, the cost of each package is $49.99. You math whizzes have already figured out that comes out to about $4 and a quarter a meal, which ain’t bad. When I have sent care packages to SoldierMan this deployment, I guarantee I spent more than $50 per package, especially when you take into account shipping and shipping supplies. (Did you know USPS raised their prices this year? Yeah, the box is free, but it’s almost $20 a pop to send it now! Just to SEND it!) If I had known about this product earlier, I absolutely would have sent one of these to SoldierMan. I think I still have time to get one in to him, and I think I will.

And, truth be told, when I was working, I would have LOVED having a store of meals like this. The nature of the job was such that if I ate, I ate at my desk, and this would have been super convenient for that. So I can even see ordering their products for home use. Much simpler than trying to figure out a healthy, simple, transportable lunch to take to work. And it doesn’t need to be refrigerated, which is a huge bonus.

So, final analysis:
Tasty food - check
Good variety - check
Brand-name quality - check
Easy to send - check
Easy to store - check
Easy to eat - check
Good value (in my opinion) – check

I also want to mention that dealing with GoPicnic’s representatives has been a very pleasant experience. They were very patient with me being slow to get back in touch with them after I went on vacation, and also very quick in answering my many questions. I have full confidence in their customer service if any of you wanted to contact them with your own questions.

AND – if you would like to purchase one of these Care Packages, GoPicnic is offering my readers 10% off any Care Package with promo code PR10. Pretty cool, huh?

So, now that we’ve covered all that, time for the fun part! Who wants to win a Care Package??? GoPicnic is letting me give away 1 Care Package to one of my readers! And you can either have it shipped to your house to try out yourself, OR if you’d like to win a Care Package on behalf of a deployed servemember and have your prize shipped overseas, they will do that, too!

Use the rafflecopter below to enter:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Decompression

2013-06-11T14:01:00.001-05:00

Lots of goings on around here I need to blog about, but briefly:

Yesterday I was driving and this song came on my Pandora. Never heard it, just starting to listen to Lecae (and loving everything I’ve heard so far.)

I don’t know what it was, probably still stress release, but within the first couple lines I was hit and started crying. When it got to the ending, I was sobbing.

Didn’t really understand why until I got to the end. Maybe something subconscious recognized something. You have to go to the end to hear it.

Movie Monday: Esther Williams Tribute

2013-06-10T09:53:00.000-05:00

I’m very glad to be resurrecting my Movie Monday series, however it is with sadness I am featuring this special event.

The beautiful and talented Esther Williams passed away last week. Selfishly, I am sad because this means I will never get to meet her. Not that the chances were ever good, but still, she was at least alive.

Of course, she’s most famous for wearing bathing suits, but she really was a great actress, very warm and with great comedic timing. Every movie of hers, even some of the “lesser” ones, are a treat to watch because she is a treat to watch.

I did a mini-bio on Esther Williams a while back, so I won’t repeat all of that here. It really is a Cinderella story and you should go read it. She wanted to go to the Olympics, but wound up becoming Silver Screen swimming sensation!

TCM is doing a mini-film marathon in tribute to her this Thursday featuring some of her best work, including my favorite of her films. You absolutely don’t want to miss it!

7:00 pm CST: Bathing Beauty (1944) – Caroline Brooks (Esther Williams) breaks her engagement to Steve Elliott (Red Skelton) after a horrible misunderstanding. She runs away to an all-female university to be an athletics teacher to forget about her broken heart. But Steve follows her and finds a legal loophole that lets him enroll as one of her students, in an effort to win back her love. Also starring Basil Rathbone, Donald Meek and Xavier Cougat.

9:00 pm CST: Neptune’s Daughter (1949) – My favorite Esther Williams film! Eve Barrett (Esther Williams) is a professional swimmer-turned-swimsuit designer who has devoted her entire life to her career and her younger, man-crazy sister, Betty (Betty Garrett). When a South American polo player (Ricardo Montalban) and a dimwitted masseuse (Red Skelton) get mixed up with the sisters, hilarity and romance put her business on the back-burner.

10:45 pm CST: Million Dollar Mermaid (1952) – The sentimentalized biopic of Annette Kellerman, an Australian swimmer who used swimming to overcome polio and went on to become an Australian athletic icon and a movie star in her own right. Without Annette Kellerman, there likely would have been no Esther Williams, so it’s appropriate she was able to pay homage to her forerunner. Also starring Victor Mature and Walter Pigeon.

12:45 am CST: Dangerous When Wet (1953) – Katie Higgins (Esther Williams) comes from a family of fitness enthusiasts who decide they will be the first family to swim the English Channel. Sponsored by traveling salesman Windy Weebe (Jack Carson), Katie trains under the supervision of Frenchman Andre Lanet (Fernando Lamas). Who will win her heart?

2:30 am CST: Andy Hardy’s Double Life (1942) – Esther William’s big screen premiere, one of the many installments in the Andy Hardy series. Andy Hardy (Mickey Rooney) is heading to college, and decides that being tied down to long-time girlfriend Polly (Ann Rutherford) isn’t something a college man would do. Polly decides to get revenge with a little psychological warfare, and enlists pal Sheila (Esther Williams) to teach Andy Hardy a lesson about taking women for granted.

4:15 am CST: The Thrill of a Romance (1945) – Cynthia (Esther Williams) is a swim teacher swept off her feet by businessman and workaholic Robert (Carleton G. Young). They get married and leave immediately for their honeymoon, but before the honeymoon can begin, he has to leave her for a business meeting, but promises to return in a few days. While Cynthia waits at the resort for her husband-in-name-only, she meets handsome, sweet WWII veteran Thomas (Van Johnson). Who will she end her honeymoon with?

Run to Remember

2013-06-07T18:56:00.001-05:00

The final event of my Memorial Day weekend was the very first Wear Blue Run to Remember on Fort Bliss. My friend Sarah organized the event, based off of the original Run to Remember group which began at Ft. Lewis. Go here to read more about the history of Run to Remember.

Almost 100 people showed up at the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division parade field to run in honor of the soldiers 1-1 has lost so far in this deployment, and other fallen servicemembers. I don’t run, but I was able to participate as the official event photographer (as official as an official photographer can be for an unofficial event :)) in honor of Cpl Gary Moore, Cpl Johnny Porto, Sgt Jordan Tuttle and Lt James Landrum. I was honored to provide my talents to the participants in their memories.

Me with my lovely assistant, who drove me from photostop to photostop so I could stay ahead of the pacesetters:

Even though it was a hot morning, and I didn’t run, and I wore the wrong shade of blue, it was still a great and moving experience. I’m looking forward to seeing the Wear Blue group grow here at Ft. Bliss. All the participants said they wanted to make this a regular event, and I hope they do. Maybe I’ll even walk it in the future.

I love you, Awesome Nerds

2013-06-03T09:02:00.000-05:00

My Memorial Day weekend was filled with all kinds of special. The first part of it was a trip to Phoenix with my Sister for Phoenix ComiCon.

We’ve never done a ComiCon before, even though we’d talked about it from time to time. However, this was one we couldn’t pass up. Mainly because…wait for it…the headline event was the 20th reunion of the cast of the TV show Babylon 5. aka the greatest sci-fi television series EVAR. But that’s a post for another time.

Sister with her fancy “Press” badge.

I made the 7-hour drive to Phoenix solo, which was pretty exciting. Especially because, for the first 3 hours I was able to enjoy absolute, total silence. No music, no conversation, just me and my thoughts and the road. Pretty much all kinds of wonderful since there’s not much time for silence and quiet thoughts in my life right now. Also, I got to hit-up an In-N-Out in Tuscon on my way, which I was looking forward to all week.

I wish I had taken pictures of our hotel room. We stayed at one of the convention overflow hotels, and it was pretty swank. So that was also awesome.

The first night there wasn’t a whole lot going on, so we went to the Galactic Mashup Party, a Disney/Star Wars costume party. I should add, we brought no costumes to ComiCon. I didn’t have the time or the money to put into one, and neither did she. We still had a blast.

Yeah, awkward face. Whoever I give the camera to always manages to FINALLY take the picture in the middle of my instructions on how to use the camera. At least she observed the Rule of Thirds, which is more than I can say for most volunteer photographers.

The next day was an exciting one. It was panel day with some B5 personalities, and a fan panel. For fans, it was a pretty emotionally-intense day. If you’re a fan and care, you can email me and ask about it, but I won’t drag everyone else through the nitty-gritty here.

That evening was Star Trek night for us. We got to sit through the tail-end of Nichelle Nichols’ (the original Uhura) panel in the grand ballroom.

It was pretty cool, but really we were there to camp out for the special event that night. It was the premiere of a new Star Trek episode, which was actually really great. (You can watch it here.) A really great cast, including Grant Imahara from Mythbusters.

There he is!

We also got to meet the cast afterwards, and yes, I met Grant Imahara. He even shook my hand, which only matters because 1) They weren’t really shaking hands because the line was so long and 2) I didn’t offer my hand. Also, Captain Kirk flirted with me. So check that off the bucket list!

The next day, it was all B5. We went downstairs and met much of the cast, which was awesome and totally surreal. We’ve been watching this show (on reruns) for 20 years. And they were all super-nice and mostly pretty chatty. They wanted to talk about pets and tornadoes and basketball. It was really fun.

I took lots of pics of the entire cast, but I’ll just post the one for the sake of load time. Again, totally surreal, and very cool.

Afterward Sister and I had dinner with a friend who was also at the Con, then it was back to the room and the next day I came back to El Paso, accompanied by another friend and her little one.

It was a really awesome weekend. Total once-in-a-lifetime, total nerdfest, total fun. And exactly what I needed. May had been a brutal month. Our brigade was hit hard, including my friend Miranda’s husband that I told y’all about a few weeks ago. Earlier that week, the monster tornado wiped out a good portion of the place I grew up, and many of my friends lost their homes. Plus other stressors going on I can’t post on here…basically I needed to go be surrounded by actors, aliens and something-or-others from Game of Thrones and just forget “real life” existed for a few days. Except the zombies. I will never understand zombie fascination.

It was also a totally perfect trip for me to take with Sister. We grew up watching these shows and got to relive a bunch of fun memories while we were there, and I know I wouldn’t have enjoyed the experience nearly as much had I gone with anyone else. It was also awesome to just hang out together and do something that was just plain fun together, because we haven’t been able to do that in a long time.

So, that was the bulk of my Memorial Day weekend in a nutshell. I was REALLY conservatives posting pics here, too. We had so much fun and I am so, so glad I went. So many awesome memories.

I’ll finish up my Memorial Day weekend recap in another post.

The Land I Belong To is Grand

2013-05-29T12:10:00.001-05:00

Well, my last post promised I would have more to write about soon. I certainly do that.

I was at work last Monday, stuck in the back working on solo projects, when I got a text message from a friend of mine: Have you talked to your mom???

Um, no, why?

Seemed odd and ominous, and then I remembered reading that the Central OK area was developing severe weather patterns. Growing up in Oklahoma, that’s the kind of news blip that sticks in your mind. We call that being “weather alert.”

So what do I do? I pull up the facebook app on my phone. I’m not supposed to access social media sites from work computers, and I figured if there was any real news, naturally it would be on facebook.

I didn’t know how right I was.

For the next 3 hours, I wore my battery into the red refreshing over and over, desperate for news as I saw a massive live-tracking of the tornado all over facebook from family and friends back home. Cell phone service there was patchy, so people posted requests for others on facebook to try and find their relatives for them. “Can’t get ahold of grandma, is there anyone near 27th and Eastern who can tell me if the houses are still standing?” And of course, the elementary schools. I had a friend who was a teacher in Plaza Towers. It was hours before we heard from her. Long, agonizing hours.

Meanwhile, there I am at work, in El Paso, “watching” the place I grew up being destroyed and unable to do a darn thing about it. And I cried. Thankfully it only took about 15 minutes for me to make contact with my immediate family, and most thankfully no one in my family was hurt.

And that’s usually as far as people get with the asking.
“Was your family okay? Is their house okay?”
And that’s it.

And I appreciate the asking. But there’s so much more to it than that.

I got to see, in real time, my home being destroyed. Yes, the house is still there, but my home – my home.

Pictures cropped up of neighborhoods, what had been neighborhoods, now junk piles of shattered picture frames, broken toys and splintered I-beams.

That’s one of my childhood friends holding his son. That pile behind him was their house. They survived by taking cover in their underground storm shelter.

Many, many pictures like this began to fill my facebook feed. People taking pictures of where their homes used to stand. Stills of TV screens showing the path of the tornado through the city as though someone had taken an eraser and dragged it across a page. Pictures of loved ones that couldn’t be located, some weren’t found alive.

People lost homes, pets, parents, and the children – Dear God, the children! And thanks to social media, we got to experience it in real-time, even 700 miles away.

It was traumatic. All I could do was cry, sit in the back room and cry for my home and my friends and count down the minutes till I could go back to my house and give my undivided attention to keeping track of everything.

Slowly, stories of goodness began to pop up, too. One of the local news stations had announced they would be a donation center “if anyone would like to donate items for the victims.” Within 30 minutes, there were hundreds of cars in a line over a mile long, waiting to drop off donations. At midnight they finally shut down, still with a standing line of people, announcing they literally could not accept any more, their staff would be up all night sorting through the donations.

The Oklahoma Blood Institute posted Tuesday that they were flooded with donations, didn’t have room for any more, please stop coming.

Every church in the metro area turned their parking lots into tent cities for displaced Oklahomans – and they had to turn away volunteers because they actually had more hands than they knew what to do with!

Wednesday morning, when the city finally allowed people to enter Moore city limits on-foot only, nearly 1,000 people parked and made the 6-mile trek to the disaster areas, carrying their personal shovels, wheelbarrows and brooms, to help out.

And of course, the night of the storms, hundreds – literally, hundreds – of citizens ran into the demolished neighborhoods to assist first responders in digging through the rubble for survivors, saving dozens of lives.

Every day more and more stories like this come out, and it makes me miss home so much. It also reminds me that the home I remember, in large part, isn’t there anymore.

Anyone who knows us knows that SoldierMan and I spend a good part of every day talking about going back to Oklahoma. We can’t wait. Since the day we left, we’ve talked about going home. It’s so difficult to think about that so much of what we know as “home” doesn’t even exist anymore.

People ask if your family is “okay.” If you mean healthy and unharmed, yes. But unless you’ve lived through a major natural disaster (and this is the second to hit in my lifetime) you know that “okay” is a very, very broad term. It’s not unusual for survivors of disasters to develop PTSD. After the May 3 tornado just over a decade ago, the very next time a tornado hit, several elderly people died – not because the tornado came near them, but they literally died from the stress and fear related to the May 3 tornado. And last week’s was even worse.

There’s an intense psychological toll natural disasters take on survivors. You can’t stop a natural disaster. You can’t fight it. You can only survive it.

And we do survive. Oklahoma will survive. It’s not like this is the first time we’ve been through this. But even still, especially for the families who lost loved ones, everything changes.

We still treat weather forecasting like football season. We still go outside and take pictures of large and funny-shaped hail. We do because it’s just part of life. It’s part of coping. You have to embrace it or you fall apart.

And you rebuild. You stay and you take what was destroyed and you make it better. Several people, even to my face, have blatantly said, “Why would anyone want to live there, in tornado alley? Why would anyone want to stay there?”

To quote a TV show: “Plain, old human stubbornness, I guess. When something we value is destroyed, we rebuild it. If it's destroyed again, we rebuild it again. And again, and again, and again - until it stays. That, as our poet Tennyson once said, is the goal: ‘To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’”

You’re doin’ fine, Oklahoma.

Insert Statement of Shock At How Much Time Has Passed Since I Last Blogged

2013-05-20T11:32:00.000-05:00

I wish I could say I've been gone because I was busy writing the Great American Novel, or because I was on an all-expense-paid tour of the Mediterranean, or because SoldierMan surprised me and came home early.

In reality, I've only been working a lot, and trying to sleep in between. And find some time to play with the poor neglected puppies.

Thanks for hanging around and putting up with my unreliability. This is going to be a short but intense week at Ft. Bliss, followed by what is sure to be a very fun holiday weekend. So I should have plenty of material in the next couple of weeks.

Anyone want to loan me some time???

Meanwhile, enjoy this pic of the laziest puppy in the world. That’s not mid-sitting-action. He stayed like that for 5 minutes. Because, why stand on all four feet?

Be a Miracle!

2013-05-09T22:15:00.001-05:00

Today, I’d like to introduce you to some awesome people:

These are my cousins, Bryan and Michelle. And their two hilarious offspring, who crack me up via facebook daily.

They are moving to Nicaragua. And they have an amazing story.

The short version is, through an incredible series of “coincidences,” they found themselves standing in Nicaragua one day looking out on a community of children living, literally, on a garbage dump. Seeing the great need and feeling a stirring in their hearts, they are now uprooting their family and moving house to Rivas, Nicaragua, to change these people’s lives in the name of Jesus.

From supporting an existing nutrition program, to beginning an education program for the children, to continuing trade skills training for adults, Bryan and Michelle will be working alongside locals (and anyone who would like to visit and help!) to bring a better life to the people of Rivas, while showing them the love of Jesus and teaching the people about God’s amazing grace to humanity.

I am so, so excited for them to start this new chapter in life. I love Bryan and Michelle dearly, even though we don’t get to see each other much anymore. Bryan’s family went to the same church my family did when I was little…then *cough* many years later, he married my cousin Michelle, who I grew up very close to and spent many a summer day and Friday night hanging out at my grandma’s and staying up late watching Nick at Nite and playing dominoes. They are amazing people with an incredible God story I highly encourage all of you to read.

And here’s the part where I ask for your support. They leave America on May 31. And they are still short of sufficient financial support to maintain their work through Christmas, their first short-term fundraising goal.

Now, listen, if they were just my family, I wouldn’t be posting this, even though I love them. If they were just random missionaries, I probably still wouldn’t be posting it. I hate asking people for money and I hate putting pressure on people.

But first of all, I’m not asking you to do anything I‘m not willing to do myself. SoldierMan and I have already committed to support them monthly until they move back to the states, whenever that may be. So I’m not asking anyone to “cover” for me, in case anyone has that notion.

Secondly, I really believe that God drew them to these people and this place and time. I can see that they truly have a heart for the people of Rivas, especially for the children.

And third, I know that the money we send them isn’t going to get eaten up in overhead. This is money that will directly help support the people of Rivas, either in buying supplies, food, or shoes for the people of Rivas, or living costs for Bryan, Michelle and kiddos to stay and physically love on the children there. They aren’t going to Vegas. They’re going to the trash heap.

So, I’m asking you – YOU reading this right now – to go here, read their story of how they were lead to Rivas and of the amazing miracle God has already worked in their lives (no, really, a miracle) and prayerfully consider helping them meet their financial needs. If all you can do right now is support them in praying for someone else to donate the funding, that is still fantastic.

I know times are hard all around financially. But I also know that God blesses us in order that we would turn around and bless others. I believe that giving financially to support others to dedicate their lives to teaching people about God is “laying up treasures in Heaven,” (Matthew 6:20-21). So it means less splurging on myself every month. But if it means that little faces will one day be in Heaven, isn’t that worth it?

Please, click the button above to visit their blog and read their story. And ponder and ask God what He wants you to do. I truly believe that God is holding off on fulfilling their financial needs until the last minute so that, when He does fill the gap through obedient believers, we can only say, “God did that!”

Again, He may only prompt you to support them in prayer, and if so, that’s wonderful. Be obedient to that. But perhaps He has other things in mind. Perhaps He desires you – yes, YOU – to play a part in a miracle He wants to work.

With Hope

2013-05-06T21:55:00.001-05:00

“Oh Yahweh, you hear the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them; and you listen to their cry.” Psalm 10:17

I’m writing this with a very heavy heart. You probably have heard the news that 5 Ft. Bliss soldiers were killed on patrol last week in Afghanistan. I learned Sunday morning, before the official list was released, that one of the soldiers was the husband of one of my friends here. I met Miranda towards the beginning of the year when we joined the same weekly Bible Study. I’ve admired her for a long time. She’s transparent, strong, funny, beautiful, a former soldier herself, mothering an infant and a toddler during this deployment. She’s an AMAZING photographer, generous, with a laugh that fills a room.

Now she’s a Gold Star wife.

And I hate it. If “hate” is even a strong enough word.

Sunday I went on to church, because I had signed up to bring the food for Sunday School (Baptists need their food) but also, I just needed to be there. I needed to hear about Jesus. I needed to focus on Jesus. And I wasn’t disappointed. I was blessed to be with a group of people praising God and thanking Him for our hope of eternal life. And I cried, inwardly pouring my heart out to Yahweh and thanking him that James had also had that hope, and asking the Holy Spirit to keep that assurance forefront on Miranda’s mind.

I spent the afternoon searching through God’s Word for comfort. The blackout was still on, and I hadn’t heard from SoldierMan for a while. I was struggling with fear. Even though I knew he was okay now, suddenly I felt afraid like I hadn’t thus far in the deployment. This group were our brigade’s first casualties. And I was afraid.

So I turned to the Word. Maybe for other people, they instantly are consumed with prayer or spiritual music, but that wasn’t what I needed. I didn’t need to talk to God. I needed to hear from God. I needed reassurance of His promises. And I read. And I cried. And I tried to pray but not much came out. I just cried.

“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” Romans 8:26

That evening, almost two dozen of us gathered together to pray for Miranda, for her children, for the surviving soldiers, for our own wounded spirits as we hurt for our friend and feared for our husbands. We prayed and cried and called out to God and poured out our souls and listened for His voice.

I only wish Miranda could have been there so we could have loved on her in person. Lots of love was sent her direction. And God was there. Jesus was there with us. I won’t speak for others, but I felt the Holy Spirit in that room. Out of respect for the others I waited till I was in the car, but by the end of the night, my heart was bursting to praise God. Not because my friend was in pain, not because her children would grow up without their father. But because I knew that, even in the pain, God had not abandoned her. God was not surprised by James’ death. And Yahweh will not forget Miranda, Yahweh will not abandon her children. And in His great lovingkindess and grace, God planned before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1) a way for James and Miranda to be reunited even after death.

Throughout His Word, Yahweh speaks again and again of his love for the widow and the orphan. Yahweh has not left my friend, and Yahweh will never leave her. Thank you, Father God, that you draw near to the brokenhearted, and you rescue the crushed in spirit. (Psalm 34:18) Let Miranda please feel your closeness in a very real, tangible way.

“…you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep…Therefore encourage one another with these words.” (1 Thessalonians 4: 13-14, 18)

My heart is breaking for Miranda and for her babies. And it grieves me deeply that James will never take his son to t-ball practice. James will never walk his daughter down the aisle on her wedding day. I mourn all the days they will never have together. I don’t understand it. “Unfair” seems like an understatement.

And yet…James is not dead. Let no one say he is; it is a horrible lie. James is more alive than he has ever been. He is perfectly happy, perfectly healthy, and able to love Miranda and their children in a way he would never have been able to with his flawed human heart. He will never die. He will never suffer. He will never be in pain, be injured, be sick. And I believe that God, in His infinite love and goodness, will allow James to be a witness on those special days in his family’s life. (Hebrews 12)

And I thank God, that because Jesus overcame death – actual death, was actually killed and actually died, and then actually came back to life – that James has also overcome death. Because he had put his trust in Jesus as Savior and Lord, not only as Savior of his eternal soul but Lord of his life here on earth, we can say with total assurance that he is now with that Savior in Heaven.

I’d be negligent as a blogger and as a friend if I didn’t beg each of you reading this to please, please search your own hearts, evaluate your own relationship with God, and search the Scriptures to see where your faith is really placed. I’m sure that James and the other soldiers in his patrol planned to be sleeping in their own beds that night. Ultimately, none of us has any control over whether or not we will see tomorrow. Don’t wait until tomorrow. Draw near to Yahweh while you can.

I’m adding James’s name to my sidebar in memoriam, but he is very much alive and awaiting an unbelievably joyful reunion with his family one day, because of the hope and power of the resurrection of Jesus. James was a soldier, his job was to identify and eliminate the enemy. Ultimately, he did just that.

“The last enemy to be defeated is death.”
1 Corinthians 15:26

O hai therr

2013-05-04T12:32:00.001-05:00

So this morning the batteries died in my universal remote, and after a brief survey of the house, I discovered we had no backups. After a brief mourning period, I realized, “Hey! I could blog right now!” And so here I am :)

Life has been a little nutso the last month or so. More like a lot. Hence why my blogging and commenting has pretty much gone down the tubes. (Although I’ve been better about commenting, thanks to Bloglovin’s mobile app that I can work from the bathtub.)

Here’s a little of what I mean:

We officially passed the halfway point/month 5 of the deployment. I sort of sailed by it in a sea of busyness and wondering if April would ever end. But yay! Another major milestone!

There’s the man himself. Doing what he does…whatever it is. :)

Meanwhile, I hit a personal milestone – 10 inches lost overall! That was last week. I’ve sort of plateaued this week, but there’s always next week. I have a plan.

I also got to go home for a few days last month, and that was pretty freaking awesome. I miss home so much.

It was fantastic. I got to see some family and friends, and generally relax and not think about stupid things and stupid people. I got to visit the Omniplex (Science Museum) with my friend Brianna and her kiddos, hit Bricktown with my Brother and Sister (I’m the not-blonde one), and even got to swing by and see my cousin Michelle (you’ll be hearing more about her soon!) Man, I miss Oklahoma.

Speaking of Oklahoma, I also become a contributor to an Oklahoma-based faith-centered website, Word Slingers.

I’m really enjoying the challenge and the community. It’s still a brand-new site, so I highly encourage you to jump over and check it out. I have a couple of very talented friends who also contribute.

Speaking of very talented friends, I also saw to my excitement that a couple of friends that I went to college with have BOTH released books on Amazon this week:

I was fortunate enough to be part of the proofing process for 144:Wrath, the first installment of the 144 books. I was very quick to download 144:Redemption to find out how the story ends.And I’m not gonna lie, I’ve been waiting for Raven’s Hollow to come out for, like, 5 years (or however long since we were in class together and she began the first draft). I am SUPER excited to get started on that next! I highly encourage you to check out both of them!

Meanwhile, I also…got a job. Like, outside my home. I thought it would be a good idea to help us save up some extra money/knock out debt faster, and it is that. It’s also a really big stretching experience, but that’s good I guess. Right about the time I started really feeling comfortable in this deployment, it’s like God decided I needed a curveball to keep me on my toes. Which this job certainly does. I do intend to be vague about what and where the job actually is. It involves being around minors and sensitive information, so I’ll probably never really go into too much detail here on the blog. Sorry if that’s a problem for anyone.

However, along with the job that drains my last ounce of brain power on an almost daily basis, I’m also a part of a fantastic weekly Bible Study, and that’s been my lifesaver. Since now I essentially work when all my friends have free time, and vice-versa, and the couple days I don’t work are taken up with catching up on all the house and puppy and SoldierMan stuff I can’t do while I’m at work, it’s been a real challenge to get time in with friends. I’m not even going to think about the fact that by the time my life slows down a little, most of them will have moved or be moving away. Not gonna think about it. However, thanks to my weekly Bible Study, I get to have a couple of hours every week guaranteed that I get to spend some time with friends, in an encouraging environment that also feeds my soul. It’s been a huge blessing,

Meanwhile, when I do find a few minutes of personal down time, I’ve restarted scrapbooking. Just began the 2010 album. It’s really exciting. I miss scrapbooking. I miss our scrapbooking club we had last year. Before everyone moved. Doom on you. Not really. But seriously. But not. So now basically it’s just me sitting at my table watching old movies, but that’s okay. I still enjoy it and it gives me a creative outlet since I haven’t had much time to write lately (as you know).

In conjunction with that, I took the plunge a couple of months ago and became a Creative Memories consultant.

Creative Memories offers a whole line of traditional and digital scrapbooking tools for just about every scrapping need. While I could easily run down to Hobby Lobby to grab a few pieces of scrapbook paper (and I do) I’ve been using the actual Creative Memories tools for years and they are high quality. Like, the blades and trimming tools I use today I bought…oh geez, almost 10 years ago! They are still every bit as good as the day I bought them. I really do believe in the products, and I think they are worth the investment. Meanwhile, I have a consultant website and I think you’d probably enjoy looking around, whether you like to make traditional scrapbooks, digital scrapbooks, personalized greeting cards…they even sell Cricut cartridges! Oh, and I offer a very nice Friends and Family discount. So if you see something you like, email me and we can work out a deal ;)

And that’s my life right now, minus puppies. Here’s some pics of them for you:

And that’s life for us in May. How are things with you?

Ignore this

2013-05-02T12:42:00.001-05:00

Well, pinterest sure made it aesthetically displeasing to embed their pins, not to mention unnecessarily complicated.

Movie Monday: Arsenic and Old Lace

2013-04-30T00:35:00.001-05:00

Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) is a critic of Broadway plays who has finally been hooked by his longtime-girlfriend, Elaine (Priscilla Lane). They have a quickie marriage at Town Hall and come home to pack for their honeymoon.

Mortimer lives with his aunts, a couple of adorable old maids named Abby and Martha (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair), and his insane cousin, who believes he is Teddy Roosevelt – yes, President Teddy Roosevelt (John Alexander). They are absolutely thrilled that Mortimer and Elaine have finally tied the knot. They want to throw Mortimer and Elaine a wedding dinner before they leave for (where else?) Niagara Falls. While Mortimer is helping them prepare, he finds the shock of his life – a dead body in the window seat.

Turns out, his aunts killed the elderly man in the window seat. In fact, they’ve killed almost a dozen. They’re practically on a spree. It all started when an elderly man came by to look into renting their upstairs bedroom. While he was visiting, he had a heart attack and died. He had told the ladies he had no family, no children or anyone to miss him. And he looked so peaceful in death, they were inspired. There must be hundreds of sad, lonely old men out there just wandering around waiting for life to end. They could help put them out of their misery!

Mortimer is dumbfounded. All thoughts of honeymooning leave his mind as he becomes terrified that his sweet, unassuming aunts will be found out and exposed, and while he knows what they did was wrong, he can’t bear the thought of his quaint little aunts spending the rest of their days in prison. To complicate matters, they are on a first-name basis with the beat cop in their neighborhood. And Mortimer is slightly hysterical, saddled with this new information.

While he’s working feverishly on a scheme to cover up his aunt’s nasty hobby, another twist – his long-lost sadistic brother, Jonathan (Raymond Massey) has returned home with a mysterious companion (Peter Lorre) and a dead body of their own. Mortimer learns about Jonathan’s victim, and Jonathan learns about his aunts’ collection. The hounds begin to circle until Mortimer finds himself caught between snoopy cops and a serial-killer for a brother determined to secure his silence.

Oh, by the way, this is a comedy. I laugh-out-loud comedy. Perhaps my favorite of Cary Grant’s comedies. And I can never get enough of Priscilla Lane. She had a brief but fantastic career. Blonde, adorable, intelligent, emotional. She’s a delight to watch. Josephine Hull and Jean Adair are absolutely fantastic. They played the same roles on Broadway to rave reviews, and no wonder. You really can’t imagine anyone else in the roles.

“Arsenic and Old Lace” will be on TCM on Wednesday, May 1 at 1:30 am CST (Wednesday night)

Honorable Mentions:
High Society (1956) – Monday, April 29, 1:30 pm CST
It Came From Outer Space (1953) – Monday, April 29, 7:00 pm CST
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) – Monday, April 29, 1:30 am CST
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) – Tuesday, April 30, 9:00 am CST
Ransom! (1956) – Wednesday, May 1, 5:15 pm CST
Four Daughters (1938) – Wednesday, May 1, 8:45 pm CST
Ocean’s Eleven (1960) – Saturday, May 4, 1:00 pm CST
Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) – Saturday, May 4, 7:00 pm CST
Footlight Parade (1933) – Saturday, May 4, 9:00 pm CST
42nd Street (1933) – Saturday, May 4, 11:00 pm CST
Bye Bye Birdie (1963) – Sunday, May 5, 2:15 pm CST
Hello, Dolly! (1969) – Sunday, May 5, 4:15 pm CST
Funny Girl (1968) – Sunday, May 5, 8:45 pm CST
Father of the Bride (1950) – Sunday, May 5, 3:45 am CST (Sunday night)

I Get By With A Little Help

2013-04-23T09:04:00.000-05:00

We just passed the halfway point of this deployment (God willing) and while there are many things I could reflect upon right now, instead I’d like to feature some Fort Bliss friends of mine who have helped make this deployment not-horrible.

The One I Don’t Hug

Yes, Sarah, I totally stole this from your facebook. I’m only watermarking it so no one steals it further. It was too cute, I couldn’t help myself.

This is Sarah. We have a Mutual Non-Hugging Pact. One day we were with a group of friends and everyone was hugging goodbye (I still don’t understand that particular cultural norm) and we both sort of looked at each other awkwardly and gave each other a quick hug. Later, on twitter, we both confessed that we hugged because everyone else was there and would have noticed if we didn’t. Thus the Mutual Pact of Non-Hugging was created. I think we’re better people for it.

She’s a blogger-become-real-life friend. She’s also my friendly neighborhood non-judgmental nutritionist friend. She’s a mine of information when it comes to healthy food choices, she’s a fitness fanatic (at least by my standards ;)) but when they break out the cupcakes, she’s getting frosting all over her mouth right there with me. She live-tweeted the Oscars with me and will stay up late talking faith and politics. At least, until work and school sucked our social lives into the dust like vampires. Thank goodness for twitter!

The One I Don’t Clean For

This is Nancy. This picture is a little old. She’s got a daring near-pixie shear now. Not too long ago, we somehow realized that we had almost stopped hanging out because both of us were too embarrassed to invite the other over to their house on a whim – neither one of us (I feel safe in saying) would win Excellence in Housekeeping awards. So I agreed to come to her house on Tuesday and keep her company while she cleaned her house, and she would do the same for me on Wednesday. From that, we created a non-cleaning agreement. Either one of us is welcome at the other’s at any time, in any condition, and it’s perfectly fine to load dishes from who-knows-how-long-ago into the dishwasher while the other one just sits and drinks coffee.

She’s also my main Doctor Who buddy…or, she will be when work lets me watch Doctor Who on a reasonable schedule again. (Seriously, we’ve only made it as far as the first episode this season. Bah!) And my coffee-drinking buddy. And my last scrapbooking buddy (though we may have found a 3rd!) since the others moved away. Doom on you. Not really. But seriously. But not. She also lets me keep my photography hand in chasing around little man up there.

The One I’m A Little Afraid Of

Not really, but sort of :) Amber is my Drill Sergeant. Whenever I need a kick in the butt to do my WOD, she’s always more than happy to oblige, via twitter usually :) She is also my angry friend. I’m waiting for the perfect moment to point her in a direction, push the button and unleash the AMBERSMASH monster, but it really has to be the perfect moment. I’m still waiting.

We also like to sit around and make fun of stupid people, which is always awesome. And eat too much fried food. And laugh. A lot. And quote Pitch Perfect to each other on a moment’s notice. And hate the Army together. She talks me into buying things after SoldierMan tells me to treat myself. She’s the perfect friend to go clothes shopping with, although she can run circles around me at Target. Not that she actually runs. Please, we don’t run. :p

There are more, of course. I have been blessed with many friends here in El Paso/Fort Bliss. Church friends, Bible Study friends, Army wife friends. Truth be told, I have more friends today than I think I ever have at any one time in my life. And that’s just people that I see in person on a semi-regular basis. Once you include the wonderful support system we have back home and around the world…God’s put a lot of wonderful people in our lives.

And I do have a lot of great friends here in El Paso and by no means intend to exclude anyone in this post. But these are a few special people I wanted to introduce y’all to.

Even though some of you are pretty thin,
I think that you all have fat hearts, and that’s what matters. :)

Movie Monday: Fort Apache

2013-04-22T09:17:00.000-05:00

“It’s a blasted ungrateful war department that sends a man out here.”

Lt. Col. Thursday (Henry Fonda) is being sent to Cavalry outpost Fort Apache in the dead of the Southwest Desert with his teenage daughter, Philadelphia (Shirley Temple). He’s to become commanding officer of the post, but rather than feeling honored with the responsibility, Thursday feels like he’s being punished with obscurity. He arrives to find that Fort Apache is a small, tight-knit post that has found a way to bloom where they were planted, even the arid desert near the border.

Once at Fort Apache, Philadelphia meets Lt. Michael O’Rourke (John Agar, Shirley Temple’s real-life husband), freshly arrived from West Point. This is Philadelphia’s first experience with Army life, having just left boarding school. And this is Philadelphia’s first chance to be around soldiers who aren’t her father or father figures to her.

Of course it’s love at first sight between the two. Unfortunately, Col. Thursday has no desire for his daughter to get mixed up with anyone at Fort Apache. Adding more complications, O’Rourke’s father (Ward Bond, amazing as always) is Sergeant Major of the post, and while O’Rourke himself is a Lieutenant, his father being an NCO, even the Senior NCO of the post, is too high a hurdle for Col. Thursday to overcome.

While Philadelphia and Michael’s relationship has its own challenges, Col. Thursday and Fort Apache have to deal with difficulties involving the nearby Indian Reservation. A tribe of Apaches has gone on the warpath, and Thursday sees his opportunity to make a name for himself in the history books. Captain York (John Wayne) tries to explain the political lay of the land to Col. Thursday, explaining that the Apaches are trying to find a way to live alone, in peace, and that the ones attacking their troops are acting independently. Most of the Apaches trying to make their way across the border are wanting to find a way to preserve their people.

Thursday hears none of this and only sees the opportunity for a major military victory that will get him the notoriety he needs to get out of Fort Apache and to a more prestigious assignment. His officers and NCOs try to convince him that he is in over his head and taking on an adversary that far outstrips him, but to no avail. Finally he leads them all against the Apaches, and Philadelphia and the rest of the families are left waiting back at Fort Apache, not knowing if any of their soldiers will survive.

One reason I love this movie is I relate to it on several levels. There are definitely a couple of people who come to mind when I watch Col. Thursday bluster his way around an established outpost, complaining that troopers riding through the desert aren’t in full regimentals but rather in modified “field uniforms.” Part of Thursday’s irascibility is due to the fact that the War Between the States had only recently ended, and in the movie the combined Union and Confederate armies had been reconstituted so that few military leaders maintained the same ranks they did before. For example, Thursday was a General in the Union Army, but is now a Lt. Colonel. Many officers from the South were brought into the US Army, then demoted to enlisted ranks. We see an understandable restlessness from a few of the characters, but most have accepted their new careers and intend to make the best of them. Not Col. Thursday.

Also the premise of being sent to an outpost in the middle of the desert, against your wishes, and being faced with the decision to either whine about it or embrace it is all too familiar. The families at Fort Apache weren’t sent there for 2 or 3 years, they were sent there until they could justify and wrangle a transfer elsewhere, which could be 5, 10, 15 years. You really have to decide to bloom where you’re planted, even in the desert.

One of the frequent criticisms with old Westerns is that Indians are always portrayed as mindless bloodthirsty savages. I’ve always found John Ford’s Westerns to break that stereotype, and “Fort Apache” is no exception. He displays the relationship between the Cavalry and the Apache leaders with nuance. No one is solely in the wrong, no one is solely in the right. It’s a bunch of humans doing what humans do, surviving. I can agree with positions both sides present, and I get incredibly frustrated with both sides, too.

Chock full of John Ford alumni, “Fort Apache” is a wonderful showcase of talent. I have to start with Ward Bond, who plays Sergeant Major O’Rourke. Ward Bond will always be one of my favorites. He has a commanding presence but a gentle spirit. Of course, Ward Bond has to accompany John Wayne, and he does. I don’t think of this as a “John Wayne movie” because he is a central character but not the lead. Even so, he is his fantastic self. I’ve yet to see Henry Fonda do ANYTHING I don’t love, and Shirley Temple is adorable, simply adorable. There’s also Victor McLaglen, Pedro Armendariz, Guy Kibbee, Anna Lee and Hand Worden, among many others.

“Fort Apache” will be on TCM on Tuesday, April 23 at 12:45 pm CST.

Honorable Mentions:
Leave Her to Heaven (1946) – Monday, April 23, 9:00 pm CST
The Little Princess (1939) – Tuesday, April 23, 5:00 am CST
The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947) – Tuesday, April 23, 8:15 am CST
Wife Vs. Secretary (1936) – Thursday, April 25, 9:00 am CST
Too Many Husbands (1940) – Thursday, April 25, 12:00 pm CST
The Great Race (1965) – Thursday, April 25, 12:00 am CST (midnight)
The Girl From Missouri (1934) – Friday, April 26, 11:15 am CST
Kitty Foyle (1940) – Friday, April 26, 9:00 pm CST
The Palm Beach Story (1942) – Friday, April 26, 11:00 pm CST
The Women (1939) – Friday, April 26, 12:45 am CST (Friday night)
Ball of Fire (1942) – Sunday, April 28, 7:00 am CST
The Tender Trap (1955) – Sunday, April 28, 1:00 pm CST

Recipe Post: Frozen Breakfast Burritos

2013-04-17T08:49:00.000-05:00

Confession: I’ve never been a big fan of breakfast. This is mainly due to the fact that I’m not in any shape or form a morning person. The last thing I want to do when I get up in the morning is do anything more complicated than turning on the coffee maker, let alone cook a decent breakfast. No, cereal doesn’t count. I don’t like milk.

Part of my journey to healthier eating was facing the fact that having only coffee and orange juice for breakfast…wasn’t breakfast. I was already getting sucked in to freezing meals for dinner, so I thought, why not for breakfast, too?

And the frozen breakfast burrito was born! With some tinkering and a little time, I’ve found my new favorite morning treat.

You’ll need:
Sausage, 1 lb
Bacon, 1/2 lb
8 eggs
2 cups Mexican rice
Queso, 1 lb
Refried beans, 1 lb
White corn tortillas

I don’t have an ingredient pic because this batch was made in stages over a couple of days.

Brown your sausage. I used maple sausage because I love it. One day I’ll be brave enough to use real chorizo.

While that’s browning, dice up your bacon. I freeze mine and let it thaw just enough that it’s sliceable. Then I make nice 1/2 inch slices.

Like so.

Brown them up good

The bacon most likely won’t get all dark and crispy at this stage. That’s okay.

Now, I like to push the meat off to the side and leave a hole in the middle of the pan. Reduce the heat to medium/low. Don’t drain. That’s the flava.

Scramble up all your eggs.

Pour them in the middle of the pan

Get it all scrambled together. Yum.

Now for the adventure. Gather your components:

Mexican rice (recipe above)

Refried beans and queso. I could make these also but living near a stellar tortillaria means never having to make my own beans.

Also your tortillas, spoons and plastic cling wrap.

Roll out a piece of plastic wrap, mine are usually 8-10 inches long. Layer your burrito conservatively:

Just small spoonfuls of the beans, then protein, then rice

I put beans on the bottom and queso on the top for binding.

Constantly at my elbows

Wrapping is tricky and pretty darn impossible to photograph solo. Basically I carefully roll the tortilla as tight as I can without breaking it. I don’t even try to tuck the ends (I know, I know, but I still call them burritos.) Then I carefully roll the burrito and plastic up, folding the ends of the plastic wrap in halfway, until it’s sealed.

And voila! Breakfast burrito!

Then I just keep wrapping and wrapping until all my materials are used up. I usually run out of egg and meat first, and then treat myself to a beans and queso feast before I clean up.

I get about 18-21 burritos from this size batch, depending on how much I fill them.

Oh, tip of the day, make sure your corn tortillas are fresh. Like, same-day fresh, if you can. Otherwise they get too dry to roll and they will fall into pieces when you try. And maybe you might cry, and we don’t want that.

Now you can just throw them all in the freezer as-is, and pull one or two out at a time as needed.

To heat them up, I lay a paper towel in the microwave, unwrap the plastic wrap on the burrito until it only has one layer of wrap around it.
Microwave 1 minute.
Flip.
Microwave 30 seconds.
Let sit for a few minutes.
Nom.

Instant breakfast.

Meet My April Sponsors!

2013-04-16T11:39:00.000-05:00

Hi, I'm Chantal! I blog at Scattered Seashells. I'm wife to Brandon, an Army Apache pilot, and mom to Penny, a young toddler who keeps me on my toes. My blog is about parenting, marriage, healthy living, and everything else about our life.

Blog: www.scatteredseashells.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/cshels
Facebook: www.facebook.com/bcbabyblog

A Girl is a 20 something, self proclaimed semi-professional blogger who began blogging in 2008 as a means of coping with a deployment. She is a Veterinary Technician by trade and loves her work in Emergency and Critical Care. She is married to a 11 year veteran of the USMC reserves, whom she meet shortly after he returned from a deployment. They have been married for five years, have three, very bratty dogs, and are currently trying to muddle through the aftermath of a difficult deployment for both.
Blog: http://aboyagirlandthemarinecorps.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ABoyAGirlandtheMarineCorps
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BoyGirlUSMC

Ciao! I'm Jessica, the gal behind Jessica Lynn Writes. My little humble abode is a hodgepodge about life, love, and everything in between. When I'm not swooning over my newborn baby girl, you can find me sharing snapshots, travel adventures, military musings, and tales about life in Italy!
Blog: http://jessicalynnwrites.blogspot.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JessicaLynnWrites
Instagram: http://instagram.com/jesstagirl

Trials & Triumphs of Loving my Sailor is a very open & personal blog. I talk about my life as a Sailor's wife, the roomies we have, our dogs & different personal topics that arise. My personal blog touches a wide range of topics & my goal is to engage my readers in conversation. I'd love for you to follow me along through the Trials & Triumphs of Loving my Sailor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmyMichele81
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TrialsTriumphsOfLovingMySailor?ref=hl
Bloglovin: http://bensgirl10.blogspot.se/

Thank you to all the lovelies who sponsored Me and My SoldierMan during April! They are all fabulous bloggers, so be sure to give each one a visit!

Would you like to be a May sponsor? Check out the Sponsor tab at the top for details on the perks of being a sponsor!
Join NOW for May and receive 15% off ALL sponsor options by using the code “pilgrims”!!

Jiggity-Jig (and giveaway winner!)

2013-04-15T09:32:00.000-05:00

So I got home late last night, later than I expected. By “home,” I mean “home,” as in El Paso. Home is Oklahoma. It will always be Oklahoma. That was confirmed to me all over again on this much too short trip.

The only thing missing was SoldierMan. Well, and the puppies. But really, SoldierMan.

I’ll have a real recap post with pictures later. But right now, the exciting news!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Yay, Shanna! I will be emailing you shortly. Please reply within 48 hours so I can award you your prize!

That Time I (Sort Of) Did a Mud Run

2013-04-09T09:21:00.000-05:00

So, this post is WAY overdue. Back a few weeks ago, some friends of mine signed up for the local Dirty Girl, and asked me to come be their team photographer.

I’m not going to lie, literally until I got there I was really skeptical. I was in the midst of my 90 Day challenge but like I said, I didn’t run once. I didn’t even do any distance walking (something I would like to change this next 90 days). I really didn’t know if I could do it. That’s me, with the backpack full of lenses, which I came to really hate by the end of the day.

Of course, it helped that Amber and Charla are really fun, and Amber isn’t a runner (to put it mildly…hey, she’d say it too!) So the pace stayed reasonable. They also didn’t take it personally when I bowed out for the central 1/2 where there was only one obstacle.

The course here had obstacles concentrated at the beginning and the end of the track, with the middle mostly just track so they could get their full 5ks in there. I didn’t join them on the middle part, which is why I only “sort of” did the “run.” But I did about or a little over half, all in all. With the backpack!

We had a blast! These two kept me cracking up the whole time and helped us all keep our energy up. It was also perfectly overcast with a soft breeze – a rare day this time of year in the desert – so we made it out without sunburn, which is an outdoors win!

Sludgemonsters

You can make it!

Gettin’ good and dirty in the last mud pool!

Finish line! We made it!

Also, Dirty Girl allows team photographers to accompany their teams for free – that is, I didn’t have to pay any kind of registration fee or anything to walk the course and take pictures, and I get to maintain ownership of all my pics. So, major props to Dirty Girl for giving an independent po’ non-self-sustaining photog a break!

While they went the long way around, I made my way to the back 1/3 of the track with the last obstacles and took the chance to get some shots of the surrounding mountains. I absolutely love the desert landscape. Something about the bare, exposed earth with the myriad of colors rising up into the sky, dotted with the variety of cacti and other vegetation strong enough to survive unaided in the desert…I just love it.

Serenity.

So, I can now check “race photography” off my list! I had a fantastic time and I am so thankful I’ve got fun friends who invited me along on this adventure!

Movie Monday: So Proudly We Hail

2013-04-08T08:58:00.000-05:00

How many times do I start one of these saying, “This was a really hard choice this week”? But it’s SO TRUE. This Friday, TCM is having a mini-marathon of WWII movies that feature strong female main characters. I had to fight with myself to narrow it down, but the one that won out really is amazing, is rarely aired and is absolutely worth having permanent residence on your DVR (or DVD library, TCM also sells it).

A group of recently commissioned Army nurses is setting sail for a dream assignment – 2 years in Hawaii! But while they are still in the water, the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. Now they destined to become combat nurses and their careers take them around the Pacific as they “follow the fleet” and go wherever they are needed, facing challenges that push them to their physical, mental and emotional limits.

Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard and Veronica Lake lead the ensemble of about 10, with steely Colbert at the forefront. It’s hard to pin down a central story since all three of the nurses have their own story arcs, plus the supporting characters, and the movie as a whole takes place over many months and is set in multiple locations. But the actresses are masters and pull you along through the movie so that you don’t get lost in all the characters and stories.

“So Proudly We Hail” is a composite work of fiction based on official records of actual Army nurses. So while the specific characters are fictional, the events they endure are all based on actual events. And as such, it completely covers the emotional gamut: there’s romance, there’s humor, there’s suspense, there’s tragedy. It also takes us around the Pacific. Once upon a time, I used to know a lot of Pacific and European geography because I grew up watching all these WWII movies.So that’s a double-bonus, in my opinion.

So the narration is a little melodramatic, but the essence of the movie is well-represented here. And I absolutely LOVE this cast. Claudette Colbert is amazing, was a staple in WWII movies that needed a strong female lead and doesn’t disappoint here as the leader of this band of ministering angels. Paulette Goddard is one of my Top 5 Favorite Actresses, and this role is a perfect example of why, even though it’s not my favorite of her roles. I like her more in “Reap the Wild Wind” or “Unconquered.” Veronica Lake isn’t one of my favorites, but she has the most emotional character here as Olivia (IMO) and carries it very well. She will tear your heart out.

“So Proudly We Hail” will be on TCM on Friday, April 12, 7:00 pm CST.

Honorable Mentions:
Anatomy of a Murder (1959) – Monday, April 8, 12:15 am CST (Monday night)
Sleuth (1972) – Wednesday, April 10, 7:00 pm CST
Bunny Lake is Missing (1965) – Wednesday, April 10, 4:15 am CST (Wednesday night)
Johnny Belinda (1948) – Thursday, April 11, 1:45 pm CST
The White Cliffs of Dover (1944) – Friday, April 12, 12:15 pm CST (Friday night)
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) – Friday, April 12, 4:30 am CST (Friday night)
Murder at the Gallop (1963) – Saturday, April 13, 11:00 am CST
Unfaithfully Yours (1948) – Saturday, April 13, 9:15 pm CST
The Lady Vanishes (1938) – Sunday, April 14, 7:00 am CST
To Sir, With Love (1967) – Sunday, April 14, 12:30 pm CST
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) – Sunday, April 14, 7:00 pm CST

Day 90: Round 1

2013-04-05T10:18:00.001-06:00

Today was a my first major fitness milestone: Day 90.

No, I’m not filling in the blanks. And no, I don’t have any Before and After pictures of me looking all beastly. Mostly because I forgot to take any “before” pictures (oops!) And also because I didn’t do the full P90X program, so it wouldn’t be a fair representation of the program.

Result: Down a total of 8.75 inches!

I’m pleased with the total number, even if I didn’t reach all the individual goals. (*thisclose* though) However, I fasten my bra and my belt on smaller clasps, I’ve got visible definition in my arms and legs, and I’m no longer afraid of clothes shrinking in the dryer. Peace of mind is a beautiful thing.

What about weight, you ask? Well, I gained weight. Yup, gained. Which is exactly what I expected since I was focusing primarily on weight training and trying to stick to a protein-rich diet. So I decided at the beginning not to track my progress by weight. Plus, I bloat a LOT, regardless of the lunar calendar, so I knew weight wasn’t going to be a good motivator for me.

I did P90X M/W/F, and Rockin’ Body Dance T/T/S. I did not run once. I don’t intend to ever run again. Not even if my life is in danger. That’s why I carry a gun.

If I’m honest, I really averaged 4 days a week of working out, not 6. And I sure didn’t go by the P90X diet plan. I like food too much.

So, basically, 90 days of modified P90X and a more conscientious diet that still let me enjoy foods I love. That was my #1 rule going into this – don’t be miserable. Yes, if I had cut out XYZ foods completely or did the full P90X Plus 3-hours-a-day system or something I would have gotten more radical results. I just know some well-meaning person stands ready to point that out. But as a whole, I’m satisfied.

Now I’m starting on Round 2. I have way more confidence going into this round. I already have a good system worked out. I’ve got better habits all around. And I can already see progress and that keeps me motivated. Day 90: Round 2 happens to fall on July 4th. Great day for After pictures, amirite?

Oh yeah, I‘ll take a picture tomorrow, which is Day 1.

See you in July!

All the Children of the World

2013-04-04T08:30:00.000-06:00

For those of you who don't know, April is the Month of the Military Child.

All the reminders started flashing around facebook this week, and I tried to think of something I could do personally to support military children. There are always events and things to volunteer at or spend money on, but I didn't really feel led that way.

Also, I spend a lot more time in general with military children now, so it seemed like I'd already checked off the "give up some of my time" box.

Then I thought of my prayer journal that I told you about. Part of that exercise is learning how to pray more globally, not just for myself or my family and friends, but for God to move in big ways among groups of people I may not know.

Bingo! Military children! So I've committed to pray every day this month for military children. Somehow different each day - for their health, for their education, for their friendships, for the children of Wounded Warriors, for children who have to grow up with a Gold Star instead of a Mom or a Dad.

I'm not telling you this to pat myself on the back. I'm hoping that by sharing this it will encourage you to also take at least one day this month and pray for all the military children around the world. They are an amazing group, thriving in a life they didn't chose for themselves. And I have great confidence in praying for them. Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, and I know He will honor prayers made on their behalf.

When Jesus saw it, He was indignant and said to them, "Let the little children come to Me. Don't stop them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." ~ Mark 10:14

And whoever welcomes one child like this in My name welcomes Me. But whoever causes the downfall of one of these little ones who believe in Me-it would be better for him if a heavy millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea! ~ Matthew 18:5-6

It’s Been a Great Four Years! (Giveaway)

2013-04-01T07:59:00.000-06:00

Today is the official anniversary of the day I started blogging, 4 years ago!

Can you believe it, 4 years?? I can’t.

Blogging is more common now than it was then. At the time, I was just looking for a creative outlet and a way to investigate military life as SoldierMan was still considering joining the Army. I had no idea the wonderful relationships and opportunities I would find over the years.

So many of my BBs have become great friends in real life, and I know even more will be one day. I’d list them but I’m too afraid to leave someone out. So let me just say to all y’all, you’re the reason I keep coming back.

And because I love ya (Pioneer Woman shout-out) I want to have a special blogaversay My Favorite Things giveaway!

First: My Favorite book trilogy -

The Mark of the Lion trilogy is set in 1st Century Rome and follows the lives of three people: a slave, an aristocrat and a gladiator. Each one gets a book that focuses primarily on them but their stories are all intertwined. It’s rich with historical detail and emotional depth. These were the books that made me want to write novels. And I’m giving away my personal set.

Also: My favorite movie -

Yup, this is my favorite movie. SoldierMan likes to tease me about it, but it is an amazing movie. And before anyone wants to pull that “Well, but the Seven Samurai…” hipster line on me, let me remind you that Kurosawa made ‘Seven Samurai’ because he loved American Westerns and wanted to bring those themes and archetypes to a historic Japanese setting. So technically The Magnificent Seven is the ultimate realization of Kurosawa’s vision. So there. Made with literally an all-star cast and with some of the best characters in movie history, I can watch it again and again. And I have :) You’ll get a nice new DVD of this one.

And finally, it wouldn’t be a My Favorite Things giveaway without -

Pink OPI polish! Exact shade of pink will depend on what Ulta has available.

The lucky winner will receive all of the above items! My little gift to you to say Thanks! for following me these last 4 years!

Enter using the rafflecopter below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

March Who Madness Day 30: When Did You Become a Fan of Doctor Who

2013-03-30T07:55:00.000-06:00

Well, this is it. Tonight is the big night. The return of Doctor Who. It’s been a fun 30 days and now we hit the climax!

When did I first become a fan of Doctor Who? (I’m sure it means “did,” not “do.”) Last year, when SoldierMan was gone so much for training. It became my nightly routine. Popcorn and Doctor Who. I started at the beginning (of the reboot) and got addicted immediately.

Thanks for joining me on this 30 day journey through Doctor Who! For those of you watching the season premiere tonight, hope you enjoy it as much as I know I will!

When did you become a fan of Doctor Who? Write a post, grab the button and link up below! And don’t forget to share the comment love!

March Who Madness Day 29: Favorite Guest Star

2013-03-29T08:33:00.000-06:00

Oh my goodness, so many choices!

Source: Sadie on Pinterest

But I think I mostly love whenever they have a Harry Potter actor cameo!

Who is your least favorite actor? Write a post, grab the button and link up below! And don’t forget to share the comment love!