Our Own Olympic Sport

Its the last Sunday of the month. In our house it means grocery shopping for the entire month.

His first month home, I wanted to pull my hair out trying to shop and think of meals for the both of us on the fly. My only News Years Resoluation...Meal Plan. I am proud to say, I have successfully meal planned for three months so far.

I simply print off a calendar and write in pencil (of course) meals for every single night, except Saturday. I stick the calendar in a sheet protector and hang it up on our refridgerator.

Sometimes coming up with meals every single night gives me a headache. I work late on Mondays and Wednesdays so I have to plan accordingly, either a crockpot or simple 10 minute meal to make when I walk in the door. But grocery shopping has been a lot less painful. The only thing I hate now is finding things on my grocery list.

My wonderful mother-in-law purchased a $25 i-phone application gift card. I'm not that tech savy and wondered what I would ever purchase. Last night, while creating my grocery list, I found this amazing application: The Grocery Gadget.

I can sort by category, alphabetical order, and items already in the cart. This morning with i-phone and these in hand:

...my hubby and I breezed through grocery shopping at two stores in less than 75 minutes. I felt like professional shoppers. The gadget also includes pricing so as our total appeared on the screens, I clapped and laughed to him. Less than $150 at Wal-Mart and another $80 at Sam's Club. In the next month, I bugeted another $6o to pick up any miscellaneous items we may need which keeps us under $300 for an entire month.

I, no joke, high-fived my husband on our way home. I feel like grocery shopping is our Olympic sport and today, we won gold, haha....thanks to the i-phone of course :)

After shopping, six loads of laundry, dishes, and vacuuming, we can both relax and cheer on the US Men's Hockey team.

Blog Realization

I came to the realization today that I am way more exciting when he's deployed...

I cannot blog about reading books. I read nearly 25 during the deployment. Since his return...a big fat goose egg. Now I lost track of how many fitness magazines and journals I have read, but I miss my leisurely reading.

And those crazy stories about me attempting to "fix" the house....I got nothing. When your hubby is Mr. Handyman, the only thing I need to do is stay out of the way and bring him a tool when he asks.

No more crazy puppy stories. For the most part, they have behaved themselves since his return and to my surprised...stayed reasonably healthy. No surgeries, broken legs, kennel cough, or scratched eyes.

I did enjoy cooking and baking these elaborate dishes. Now...I just want to get dinner done as soon as possible after racing home from work.

DO NOT GET ME WRONG, I love life and you bet I am knocking on wood as far as house problems or puppy problems, but my life is quite boring. Between working, cleaning, cooking, paying bills, puppies, and sleeping, I do not have time for much else. And I am struggling to find blog worthy stories about coming home from work and vacuuming up husky hair five times a week.

Yesterday my best friend called and asked what I was doing, my response, "I just got home from work and now I am making dinner, paying bills and watching the news" He told me that if he called me in thirty years, I would probably be doing the same thing, haha.

Oh well. I am not giving up that easy, I will continue to search for things to blog about that actually might catch your attention.

Twenty Something Year Old Punks

Yesterday I attended my first regional meeting as a manager. I learned so much on how to improve our club. Our owner and I could not stop writing down ideas and brainstorming on the trip home.

After only five months in business, we reached 350+ members. We are thrilled, but of course think we can do better. However, while at the meeting I realized (my boss already knew this) the average number of members in our 20+ clubs in our state is near 140. I became conscious of how many things we are doing right. Women who owned these gyms for 10+ years struggled to reach 60 some members. Our regional director wanted us to share some of our ideas.

After sharing, some of them looked at us like we were crazy.

"Give it time, you're still young" or "Just wait" or "When I first started I had as much passion"

It drove me crazy. Ok, granted we are both twenty something years old and know this might fade, but we kind of laughed about their comments in the car. If we get old or tired....Then we will hire someone who is as young and energetic as we once were.

I am not trying not to be arrogant, but we work our butts off, case and point, I just sat down for the first time today after being on my feet for 14 hours, where even my $100 tennis shoes feel like $15 high heels. I just want our club to be successful.

Afterwards, my boss and I talked to our Regional Director, she could not be more thrilled about our progress. My boss even made the comment to her and another owner..."Not bad for some twenty-something year old punks".

I couldn't agree more. We do not know everything, but we do know that we absolutely love our women and love our job. And there are talks of opening up another club. I love that not only did I find something I love, I found something I could make a career/living out of now.

Our Valentines Day...

...was just another day in paradise.

No roses, spa packages, chocolate, or fancy dinners. I didn't feel more loved yesterday than the day before, but I think he does a great job of making me feel loved everyday.

We stayed in our PJs all morning, watched the Olympics, accomplished a lot of wedding planning and enjoyed a night out with some good friends.

I am sure down the road with life, careers, kids, and dogs, we might need Valentines Day to reconnect, but right now I think we're doing ok.

Ah, Organization...

I realized man cannot survive by i-phone alone. In the past 24 hours, I organized BOTH of our checking accounts, cleared out 100 emails, caught up on blog comments, and uploaded pictures for our families. Its weird how amazing it feels to be caught up on "life".

So what has been going on with me?

Three things....Army Wife, dog hair, and working out.

I attended my first military formal. I danced the night away and as a result, the only picture I took of the two of us is us sweaty after 2 hours of dancing. Oh well

Winter has brought snow and melted snow, which in our house means mud.


And working out? Not only is it my job, but Dave and I started P90X, so my body hates me and sleep has slowly crept into one of my top priorities. I am still waking up around 4:45am, 3-4 times a week and as a result I pass out between 8-9pm.

And its not only a pass out, but my love calls me a drunk mess. Some 1opm highlights:

• He says "Goodnight babe, I love you you"...My response "I am not drunk!" and then throw the remote at him.
• Walking into our door
• Him waking me up on the couch to go to bed and me yelling as loudly as possible and repeating over and over again, "You do not need to carry me"

I have a new found love for the weekends. Sleeping in until 7am never felt so good.

I cannot complain. I am loving love. I think we are both still suffering a little seperation anxiety. We absolutely hate being away from each other and race home after work to be with one another. I guess its not a bad thing, especially since another deployment is looming ahead in the near future.

Welcome Back Internet

My hubby just lifted his arms up in the air and said:

"What a glorious day, you can blog again"

He may have been mocking me, but I couldn't agree more. 2+ months without internet at the house was too long. But I am back. I do not know what exactly to blog about just yet so I have a lot to catch up on, but I will be back.

Back on the Wedding Bandwagon

We do not fight or argue much about big things. Now do not get me wrong, we have our fair share of bickering and eye rolling, but the tone of our relationship is laughter.

Our upcoming "wedding" in August might be the death of us. So much so that at the dinner table at Christmas, I told his family it was not happening.

We share our opinions on everything. We discuss everything.

When I ask him about invitiations or pretty much anything, his response, "I do not want to talk about it now". When I told him our wedding budget would run around $12,000, he almost fell off his chair. And actually did fall off his chair when I told him they consider this "cheap" these days.

After telling his family and my family that I didn't want a wedding because I do not want to either 1) kill him or 2) divorce him, I become convinced it would not happen.

His mom took the afternoon off of work and asked me to run a few errands. She took me to a bridal boutique to try on dresses and a stationary place to look through invitations. She told me she wanted to help out anyway she could money wise, decoration wise, anything wise.

She said, "I wanted your heart to smile again in regards to your wedding day".

I am beginning to realize he will not have much of an opinion in regards to our wedding and I am ok with it. However, tonight I mentioned no need for a honeymoon and he chimed in that he wanted to go somewhere and he would want to take care of that.

Looks like the show will go on afterall, but it will be a long seven months.