The last 10 years

For my 30th birthday in January 2016, we went to Denver for the weekend. I was very apprehensive about turning 30 and facing down 2016 because it was a deployment year. Scott was in Afghanistan from February-November 2016. While I’m “grateful” for the “opportunity” to “learn and grow” that year, it was not easy. I didn’t exactly feel like I was being set up for success and had no idea what the rest of the decade would hold for that reason alone. I had already spent full years of my 20s alone because of deployments. 

2017 was failed fertility treatments and, ironically, pregnancy. 

2018 was having a baby and moving. 

2019 was moving. 

2020 was moving. 

2021 was moving. 

2022 was having a baby. 

2025 was moving. 

I also taught at 4 schools in 3 states in the last decade, and took 4 years off to stay at home. 

Sprinkle in lots of TDYs and a few shorter deployments too. 

One dog passed away and we gained a puppy. 

We sold a remodeled house, bought 3 more, and took on remodeling another house as our family’s personality (again). 

We also traded in a truck for a bigger truck and bought a new SUV. 

Truly, almost everything looks different than it did 10 years ago. There is nothing familiar in my surroundings except Scott and Scout the Dog. Super weird, right? I guess we do have a lot of the same furniture. You only buy new furniture as a must when you know it'll get all dinged up during moves. 

While being a military spouse isn’t easy, it’s never boring. I literally had no idea where I would be at 40 so this last 10 years was a lot of big and little decisions that added up to what life became for my 30s. I couldn’t have planned it or done it any better and have been blessed with much more opportunity and goodness than I deserve. 

So I’m going to be super cryptic and superstitious and prayerful when I say I literally have no idea what’s next because I could not have laid out any of this 10 years ago. 

Memes and meal plans

I'll get to the memes but I wanted to share this first. I have stopped posting recipes on here simply because I stopped innovating and caring in the kitchen. I don't know when that happened...I think it was after Wells was born that I originally fell into a slump. That went away and then when I went back to work in 2021 and was pregnant and had a baby in 2022, I really lost all desire to try. The last two years especially have been survival mode with groceries and dinner and I even used meal kits on and off in order to find any kind of inspiration. 

Now, being home all day with two kids lends to a lot of assembling and cooking of meals and snacks. 

I had a conversation with someone a month or so ago that was about how people literally do not know how to cook anymore. Like, they can't do it because they don't care, no one taught them, or convenience foods are so easy to buy that they never *have to* cook. 

So while I have a lot of thoughts and opinions on how supplemental nutrition programs are working and have worked in the past, I can say that we all, as people in the 2020s, just don't cook anymore. Hopefully, this can give a little inspiration. It's not hard. You just have to think farther than a few hours ahead and we, as a people in the 2020s, aren't great at that either. 

Here's what I spent on food in October and where I spent it: $910 total but I did that in my head so feel free to check the math. 

And here's my meal-planning over the last two weeks:

Here's some links:

Lasagna Soup

Mongolian Beef

Marry Me Chicken Soup

Chicken Taco Soup (I have been making this since 2012 and it freezes super well)

This was the "mac and cheese" up there. 

For what it's worth, the nuggets and fries nights were nights it was just me and the kids because it leaves no leftovers and when Scott isn't here, I spend all my time eating leftovers. (I do not make my own fries or my own chicken nuggets because I hate breading chicken. Everything else was homemade.)

I bought "barrel leg" sweatpants and "stovepipe" jeans last week. We'll see if they work. 

These are absolutely my favorite kind of movies but the description is exactly right.

I'm coming off of 3 weeks of solo parenting and these are spot on:

Wells has, more than once said, "you have no idea how tired I am" which has made me say, "I was tired before you were born and you were ready to be born in the middle of the night, which means, I literally haven't slept a full night since before you were born".

I can count on both hands the number of times I've taken Sutton to daycare and asked them to flip her clothes around and please fix her hair after Scott got her ready for school and put her in the car for me lol. 

Wells tells Sutton a lot: "we wouldn't even be here if it weren't for mom"

I haven't been skiing since high school. Worst experience ever. I actually had better luck at snowboarding but it wasn't great enough that I'd ever try again. 

How I feel at a homeschool co-op: 

Memes with stories

When Scott asks me to hand him his phone, I hesitate. I don't know which end is which, don't know what the side buttons do, and do not understand what any of the icons mean. 

The reverse on that meme that was like "imagine hating me and I'm just over here eating pickles". Like, no. I get it. 

I'm seeing a lot out there about the amazing test scores coming out of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Ohio. And then the people saying schools are responsible for teaching everything which some are arguing that no, parents are responsible. Here's the thing: schools are 100% responsible for teaching children academics. ...Until they're not. You see, a school will do everything they can but they can't get to everyone. It's not possible. When the school fails, you, the parent, do not get to blame the school. YOU are still responsible for your child. You need to advocate, find a tutor, ask questions, pull them out, homeschool, put them in a new school...do something. You are the one who will have to look your young adult in the eye some day and explain why they can't read, write, or do math proficiently. I'm not responsible for any of the kids I taught before or after the 9 months they were in my classroom. I am responsible for my own two kids. I don't know why people blaming schools can't quite wrap their heads around this. 

When I was in 4th grade, my town built a maximum security prison. Before it opened, we went there on a field trip and they locked our class in a cell just to prove a point (definitely didn't work for some of those kids).

FOIL is the extent of my math ability. Wells is moving along really fast in math right now and while I'm eager to push him, if I keep going, Scott is going to have to take over in two years. I can teach to algebra and not a math standard further than that. 

And they drink a lot, I bet.

I'm so behind right now. It's really hard to live far away from everyone you'd just like to sit down and talk to regularly. 

Hoping to upgrade to a 16 soon...

Back when we just had Scout the dog: I will never forget when Scott was at school working on one of his masters' degrees (he had a small apartment that semester during the week, and Scout stayed with him) and Scout woke him up early one morning so Scott fed the dog and then was wide awake so was like "might as well go get some things at Walmart" right down the street. So he put Scout in the truck and off he went. He said it was so empty and quiet inside. He got back in the truck, looked at the clock on the dash, and it was 3am. 

Sorry, I just want whatever temperature is in the picture:

Monday funny things.

 

I do not understand the purpose of the 3D printer. 

I put the peanut butter on the "heel" side and hope they don't notice.

Like, just give me the antibiotics and we'll see if it works. 

I ranted on Instagram about Sharon Says So. She's such a fraud. Her target demo is the women who got 55s in Social Studies and want to learn things now so they need an angled cliffnotes POV about something government adjacent. Or they claim neutrality and follow her because she also claims neutrality but everyone's lying about that. 

"There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan."

I am in a reading RUT. I am reading before bed though every night and trying to make some progress. 

This is one of my favorite de-bunkings. Everyone thinks Ballerina Farm is a trad wife. They are literal billionaires. 

This is one of my favorite memes and it came across my feed again recently: