Summer Blog Challenge- Baby, you make my heart melt



"What does your significant other do to make your heart melt?"

He surprises me with flowers and butterflies!

The most recent bunch he picked up for me were these beauties:

They are so BRIGHT! He does this because he loves me.

 While he was waiting at the dentist's office, he looked up and saw these and took a picture of them. I love butterflies! They remind me of new life and a new start.

It's the simple things he does that puts a smile on my face and that makes my heart melt.

  

Days Like These Tuesdays...

On Days Like These……

I wish that I could be outside on this most beautiful San Diego morning,

That I had a lot of work to do so that at I could keep busy, so that my day will go faster.

I wish that I could be at home when my husband gets home early, so that I could just cuddle with his cute self!

I wish I was at the beach under an umbrella reading a really good book.

I wish I could take a road trip up the coast to visit a friend or two and say hello!

I wish I knew how to crochet, so that I could make some cute things for friends and family.

I wish I knew where God is going to lead my husband and me in the future.

I wish that I was pregnant.

On days like these, I wish…..

Summer Blog Challeng - When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a couple of things: A nurse and a wife and mother (believe it or not). I think I wanted to be a nurse, mainly because my mother was a Nurse Aide before she got married and I heard here talk positively about her experiences. She was also a Physical Therapy Assistant. She had these careers all before I was born and came into my parents’ life at the ripe age of 22.

I thought I really wanted to be a Nurse but as I got older the desire to be a mother was strong. But in high school I started to hear the girls around me talk about the careers they were going to have, so even though I wanted to be a mother, I started to think of other careers so that when I was asked what I wanted to be when I got out of high school, I could come up with an “acceptable” answer. I thought I would be married by the age of 22.

So I graduated from high school and started community college. Not sure of what I really wanted to do, my dad in so many words told me to pick a Major or find a job. So I picked Nursing. I took all of my prerequisites and then started to look at different colleges for after I graduated from Community College. The colleges that I looked at were way beyond my pay grade as well as my parents, so I started working after Community College.

I have had some pretty interesting opportunities including working in the hospital medical office to working in a drug lab pipetting (using a little tube with a bulb on top) to siphon specimens (street name: pee) into tubes for drug testing.

Now I am in a pretty good job (one those, if I told you, I would have to kill you, jobs) and I like it. I’ve been here for 12 years! Wow!

On the mother end, I just got married last year and we have been trying. So I’m looking forward to what God has for us.



Summer Blog Challenge - Most recent words of wisdom you heard that stuck with you

Recent words of wisdom you heard that stuck with you...

Wow! There has been so much wisdom that I've been graced with from the time I was a child. Now did I always take heed to the wisdom put before me? No...and that's unfortunate and that's for another blog.

In the meantime, I'll share some recent words of wisdom that were spoken to me by my friend, Mark, who works with my organization who along with his wife, lost their son in an unexpected way.

Last year, while Mark and his wife were in Hawaii on a work trip of his for several months, his son was training to become an officer in the United States Air Force at Layola Marymount University. While on his run, he collapsed and died on September 23, 2011, just four days after Mark and his wife left for their trip.

Mark has since started a blog of  his own at http://jonnscottflath.blogspot.com/ if you would like to read more about his memories of his son and his journey through grief.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to talk to Mark since he was helping another gentleman put up some equipment in our office.  I'm so glad that I stayed to talk. Sometimes when a friend or someone you know is going through grief, you don't know quite what to say or do. So from out of his experience, he spoke these words of wisdom:

When a person is grieving, don't expect them to call you to be with them, go be with them. Don't say, "If there is something that I can do for you, let me know." When you are in a state of grief, you really can't think that clearly and please don't expect me to remember which friend is available to call, if I need them now. If you are going to call them, don't do it for conversation sake, because that can be exhausting. If you do call them, do it to make sure that they are home and let them know that you are coming over. Sit with them. Let them tell their stories of their loved one, listen. If you feel after awhile (I mean after spending some time with them over time) that they are staying in their negativity, ask them about some of the happy times they spent with their loved one.

(Every person grieves differently. These are just some of the things I heard Mark say to me yesterday.)

Pray the grieving person, that always helps. Don't be so quick to say something that you think would be soothing or comforting to them. Sometimes those well intentioned words can hurt. And please don't say stupid things. He or his wife has had people say to them, "you should be over your grief now, stop crying, pack up his stuff, keep one thing and move on, you shouldn't feel this way still". Enough to want to punch someone in the face huh?

Several months have gone by and he has moments where he just breaks down. Understandable. But he has hope, he knows Jesus Christ and so did his son and they will see each other again. Until then he keeps on trusting God.

Summer Blog Challenge- Picture of You as a Child



I'm sorry to disappoint, not only did I not do a blog entry yesterday, I don't have a picture of me as a child readily available. Boo!
I can tell you of two of my favorite and they are both baby pictures.
Every other year or so, our family would take a drive from California to Texas! On Father's Day, my dad recalled that he made a straight drive and it took him a whopping 24 hrs since my mother didn't drive at the time. He paid for it by sleeping for two days. Poor guy. But he did say, we couldn't afford to stay at a hotel or motel. You do what you gotta do.
Okay where am I going with this? Well, one of those favorite pictures were taken in my Great Grandmother's front yard. It was summer, it was Texas and it was hot! So what do you do to keep your baby cool? You let them go buck naked! So in the picture I am laying on my stomach, in the hot, humid shade of Texas, like a black mini me of the Michelin tire man, laying out there in my glorious rolls of baby fat. It's funny how rolls of fat are not so cool when you get older. Oh well! So that's one.
The second one is of me sitting up on a cloth covered tabled (if I remember well), like they do at JC Penney's for babies. Mom told me, minutes before, I had rolled off the table to the ground. Poor little me! But I still managed to take a picture like a sweet baby girl all dressed up in a little dress and bonnet with my black baby glorious rolls of baby fat!
Do you ever look at your baby pictures and wish that you could go back in time and hold your baby self? Well, since I don't have a baby of my own yet (we're trying!), I can only imagine and hold my friends rolly polly babies!

Summer Blog Challenge- A Recipe that I LOVE

I just want to say that I am so happy to be part of this Summer Blog Challenge.

There are many times that I have all these ideas of what to write running around in my head.  They just need to be lassoed and put into a corral so that I put them on “paper”. 

There are a couple of reasons I start but don’t finish:  1) I’m at work and I have some things I need to do (you think? But that’s when my ideas start coming. I think I might need to change careers.) ; and 2) I get too long winded and then I just want to stop.

So with this new challenge, I get fun prompts to write about!  Maybe this will get the writing ball rolling for me. I love that everybody has a story and I look forward to reading them!

A Recipe that I LOVE



Honey Chili Lime Salmon by Rachel Ray

Before I give you the recipe, I just wanted to say that since getting married in October 2011, I have wanted to make creative and yummy meals for my husband.  Since I work dinner may be later than usual when I make a meal like this, but it is worth it! I’m so grateful for a husband who has a tongue for variety and is not stuck in boring.

When I first made this, I felt like a multi-tasking chef in the kitchen: cutting this, sprinkling this, pouring this, and tasting that. The end result: SWEET SUCCESS! I do have to say that I did tweak the recipe just a little bit. And I didn’t make the Black Bean and Corn salad, though I’m sure that would have been a great addition. I just didn’t have all the ingredients.

My husband loved it and so did I! I was happy and so was his stomach. I’ve always heard that a way to a man’s heart is his stomach. I’m just glad there is more to my husband than his stomach!

Okay here is the recipe: (the items that are highlighted are the ingredients that I used)

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium red onion, chopped
2 large cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (more if you desire additional spice) use only if you like it spicey!
1 teaspoon ground cumin
salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 medium limes, juiced
3 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon chili powder
Four 6-ounce salmon fillets (I used only two, one for my husband and one for me!)
1 medium red bell pepper, cored, seeded and chopped
4 cobs fresh corn (corn cut off)
1/2 cup chicken broth
One 15-ounce can black beans, rinsed and drained
2 tablespoons freshly chopped cilantro
6 cups baby spinach (one bag of spinach)

Directions:

1. Preheat large skillet over medium heat with 1 tablespoon olive oil. Add onions, garlic, red pepper flakes, cumin, salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 3 minutes.

2. While onions are cooking, preheat a medium nonstick skillet over medium-high heat with remaining tablespoon olive oil. In a shallow dish, combine juice of 1 lime, honey, chili powder, salt and pepper. Add salmon fillets to lime-honey mixture and toss to coat thoroughly. Add seasoned salmon to the hot skillet and cook until just cooked through, about 5 to 7 minutes on each side. Cover for quicker cooking. (This is where I tweaked it. I actually put the Salmon Fillets in the pan that had Step #1 ingredients. After the Salmon was more then half way cooked as I came to find out, I added the rest of the lime-honey mixture to the pan also. Doing that, depending on how hot the pan is might burn the mixture. But you can play with it or just go straight with the recipe)

3. To the cooked onions, add bell peppers and corn kernels and cook for 1 minute. Add chicken broth and continue to cook for another 2 minutes. Add the black beans and cook until the beans are just heated through. Remove the skillet from the heat and add the juice of the second lime, the cilantro and the spinach. Toss to wilt the spinach and then taste and adjust seasoning. Serve the lime-and-honey glazed salmon on top of the warm black bean and corn salad.

Tips:

*If you don't have access to fresh corn, use a 10-ounce box of frozen corn.
*If you are preparing this recipe as Gluten-Free, just be sure to use brands of chicken broth and black beans that are known to be GF.

Enjoy and Happy Eating!



Changes

Staring at the word CHANGE looks weird to me. It almost looks like it belongs to another language like Spanish or Chinese, two totally opposite languages!

What does CHANGE look like in your life?

In my life, change ebb and flows, but something is always changing! Last year several events caused my life to CHANGE for the better: I got engaged last January, January 1st nonetheless. What better way to start the New Year? My fiancé left for deployment. That caused a lot of developmental CHANGE in my mind and heart. I guess that's what you would call adjustment; adjusting to the reality that he was going to be gone for 7 months. I prepared for our wedding which in turn created a space for me to CHANGE from a non-decisive to a decision making woman. I became a wife in October of 2011 which required me to CHANGE my expectations of how a husband and wife should be (my husband gave me a lot of grace in that area). I want to become a mother but I'm having to CHANGE my outlook from my circumstances to God and trust Him that He does work everything out for the good of those who love Him. My husband has to CHANGE his job from the Navy to the good ol’ civilian world.

So things are a’CHANGING but that’s okay! Change is good J

And as you see, my blog is also going through changes, hopefully sweet looking changes!

I just want to say...

Dear Husband, You looked very handsome this morning in your suit and tie as you were getting ready for your interviews today. There are times,  I just can't help but stare at you.

Dear Uterus, Why do you give me pain during that time of the month? Can you please cooperate with us, so that we can have a baby? I'll be praying for you!

Dear Nala, I am so glad Adam had you first, to train you to be the dog you are. You are such a blessing to have. I have never had a dog and I'm grateful for you!

Dear Co-workers, especially the ladies, please don't believe every piece of gossip you hear. They may just be talking about you later.

Dear Father God, thank You for another day of life, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for You. So thank You for making this life possible to live.

Dear Heart, Please don't lose hope in God. He really does love you and He has a plan for You. Look up, for your redemption draws near!

Love, Mrs. M a.k.a. April