Vote for MJ!!

My cute little guy was entered in a photo contest over at Seams Geeky's facebook page. As you know I LOVE her diapers and here is our chance to snag another one!! Head on over and check out all the amazing geeky entries and "like" your favorite!!

(Then "like" MJ too!)

You can vote here!

Government Shutdown

Now I hate to whine two weeks in a row but, COME ON!? Remember all the awesome good things I had to say last week in this post about being in the military? Well, it all really boils down to one thing: $$$ and if the government shuts down guess who doesn't get $$$. Us. That's right your friendly neighborhood military gets to continue going to work everyday and not get paid for it. Because you know we don't have to worry about bills and things right? No. No, not really. The bills keep coming and unfortunately there isn't a cute little statute set up so we can opt out of our bills if congress forgets to pull its head out of its ass and sign our fucking pay checks.


Okay. Rant over. I needed that.


ETA: Looks like we will be paid. Whew. Still fucking pissed that all this is happening in the first place. Not to mention the 800,000 government employees about to be furloughed. You guys can borrow my rant if you'd like?

Crash and Burn Holiday Plans

We're all a little "down in the mouth" around here today because J's leave request was denied for the Thanksgiving holiday. We were planning on being able to visit our families back home since Thanksgiving is my mother's favorite holiday and the day after is a family birthday.

I suppose it was a little naive of me to think we would have no trouble getting off but with the "real world" stuff going on there just not going to be able to spare him. That and all the guys that are on a deployment right now have already requested their leave for when they return and... you guessed it they'll be back for the holiday.

That is one of the things that's really rough about this job. For all the amazing benefits sometimes it's really hard not knowing what comes next and never being able to make any really concrete plans.

You wont find me complaining about military life very often. The truth is I feel very fortunate. Three years ago when we were first engaged and J was laid off for the winter for the fourth year in a row and we didn't know how we were going to make ends meet and he was fighting tooth and nail to enlist despite medical conditions we learned the definition of struggling to survive. We had to pick and choose which bills to pay and pay for groceries and gas with pennies. I was working full time and going to school full time and digging us even further in debt with student loans. It was brutal. Like we-can't-afford-dog-food-feed-them-rice brutal.

Living in England, not having to survive paycheck to paycheck, having reliable medical insurance, and a steady paycheck is a dream come true. We don't worry that J will be laid off for the winter or that his paycheck wont be enough to buy groceries. Being able to afford to have a baby was a amazing and the experience has been wonderful. We would never be where we are today or have what we have today if it weren't for the military.

Most days that is how I feel. Thankful. And fortunate.

Most days J's job is just a job. He gets up in the morning and gets dressed for work, he kisses me on the forehead and says goodbye to our son, he drives to base and puts in his 8 or 9 hours, and then he comes home.

Most days.

Some days it's harder than that. Some days when there is "real world" stuff going on we ask ourselves if it's worth it. Some days when we are feeling homesick and lonely we ask ourselves if it's worth it. We invariably come to the conclusion that it is eventually.

In the mean time, it's hard.

It's hard feeling like a single parent when I prepare for a deployment or feeling so completely alone and isolated because we literally can't visit our family.

It's hard to watch him put on that uniform and know that someday he might die in it.

It's hard to know that there are so many others just like us. Who feel just like we do.

It's hard today.

Happy 2nd Anniversary!!

Last year on our anniversary some of you may remember I was on a plane, alone. Flying from Sheppard AFB in TX, where J was finishing up tech school, to Wisconsin for the start of my most recent semester of college. I was not quite 3 months pregnant and I still had very little idea what to expect over the next year. It's kind of an understatement to say that the past year has been a roller coaster ride!

I nearly graduated...
We moved half way around the world.
We learned how to cloth diaper!
We had a baby.

This year I am so thankful to be able to share this day with my wonderful husband and our beautiful baby boy. I am looking forward to the exciting things another year will bring!

Here's to another year! 

Oh Baby! Homemade Chocolate Espresso Whip Cream

We took MJ to the doctor this morning because he was acting a little bit funny and I thought he might have an ear infection.

I'm actually trying to get a smile out of him here. No dice. 

Welp. 

No ear infection, just super cranky teething baby, but it did get us out of the house! Which is awesome. I'm pretty happy about that. 

The weather is spectacular here today warm and sunny, just the way I like it! So in order for me to NOT spend my entire afternoon in the kitchen I'm making a simple ham with a sweet glaze for dinner with baked potatoes and... broccoli I think. Or maybe green beans. We'll see - I have both. ETA: we actually had carrots instead. Shhhh. 

ANYWAY

The point is I'm putting my effort into dessert today! We will be having sugar cookie sandwiches with homemade chocolate espresso whip cream in the middle. I'm super excited as this is something I've never made before and I kinda just made it up because it sounded yummy in my head. Here goes.

This is extremely simple and easy and OMG delicious.

Ingredients:
12 Sugar cookies (home made or store bought)
1/2 cup whipping cream
2 teaspoons white sugar
1 teaspoon hot chocolate mix
1 teaspoon instant coffee

Method:
First things first, make sugar cookies! I used an extremely basic recipe which can be found here.

So good warm out of the oven. JP and I almost polished them all off before I even made the cream!

Once you have all the cookies made you can pair them up by size so you're all ready to make sandwiches and that way you know how many are left over you can eat now... 

Next gather the ingredients for your whip cream filling. While you're doing that and munching on some warm sugar cookies you want to put your mixing bowl in the fridge so it's cool when you begin mixing.

Sugar, instant coffee, hot cocoa mix, and fresh cream

Dump everything into your pre-cooled mixing bowl.

Yes, I really whip my cream by hand.

AND WHIP! And then whip some more. And once your arm feels like falling off switch arms and whip some more only not quite as coordinatedly as your dominant arm. Once you switch back because that arm feels like it's about to fall off you should have something like this:

YUM

I like to give it a few more stirs because I prefer my cream to be slightly more substantial when I'm using it as filling. So, I end up with this:

I could totally eat this whole bowl with a spoon.

All you have to do now is assemble cookie sandwiches!

OMNOM NOM NOM!

Easily one of my most delicious, simplest, and quick desserts. I love the way they turned out! Give it a try and let me know how they turn out for you!

TIP: Use a hand mixer. No seriously, if I had one I would have used it for this... my arm still hurts. 

Also, the cream from this recipe is EXTREMELY sweet. If you want something a little less sweet I would recommend using unsweetened cocoa powder instead of hot cocoa mix OR reducing the amount of sugar by 1 teaspoon.