Julian of Norwich

It's amazing how much I learn about God in my classes at the university.  A place where most intellectuals try to shut Him out of. I'm taking a women's literature class right now and we are beginning to read works of literature written by women over 900 years ago.  One of the author's Julian of Norwich was a devoted, in our modernized world many consider her a fanatic, religious figure.  To be honest though, I don't find her works fanatic at all.  They describe her visions of God and it is surprising (and not at the same time) that her descriptions of God are extremely similar to the way God is portrayed in even today's modern churches.  "The Trinity is our maker, the Trinity is our keeper, the Trinity is our everlasting lover, the Trinity is endless joy and our bliss…"  (A quote from Chapter 4 of her book A Book of Showings) Is this not what believers today think of when they think of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit?

Sometimes it gives me goosebumps when I get these revelations in my classes.  It's nice to know that God stays near.  He is in our schools, our books, and even in the people around us whether they realize it or not.  It's all about allowing God to open your eyes to his wonderful works.  Letting him reveal to me how he is the same now and he was in the 1300s is a wonderful feeling.

Goodbye 2012 Hello 2013

So 2012 is behind us now and here I am anxious yet nervous for the start of this new year.

2012 had started off badly for me.  The change I sought for in the beginning of last year really wasn't the change I needed in my life but I'm glad I was able to open up my eyes in time to make a turn for the best.  I did end up improving several things though and I'm proud of myself for it.

My marriage has blossomed into something amazing in the last six months and continues to grow healthy and strong.  My military career is evolving everyday.  I received two scholarships last year to help me pay for school.  I am a part of an amazing sisterhood.  My puppies Maya and Hailey celebrated their first birthday and my big puppy celebrated her fifth birthday.  I can't believe how time has flown with them.  

They have been some bad things in 2012 also.  One of my aunts is causing great separation in our family and her two young children suffer from her promiscuous lifestyle.  My family members try to help but she is ungrateful and too prideful to admit she needs help.  It's sad.  My mother's Fibromyalgia condition is getting worse and my little 12 year old cousin has been diagnosed with lupus and is undergoing chemotherapy to treat her symptoms.  

These are some things that have made my heart heavy this past year but I am optimistic for the future.  My older sister will be getting married this year.  My younger sister is going to be 21!  And my parents are still my entire world. Family is the best gift of the year every year and I'm happy to be earning another brother.  =)

  

For 2013, I do have some resolutions I'd like to accomplish but I also have a prayer list too.

Resolutions:

- Keep striving for A's in school

- Score a 300 on the APFT

- Budget my money

- Kick butt at LDAC

- Find a way to surprise my husband somehow

My prayer list:

- Pray that my mom and cousin are healed

- Pray for my aunt to gain focus of her children and not herself

Do you have a prayer list?

Happy New Year everyone.

Winding Down…Finally!

Life is finally winding down!  I've had a VERY exhausting month.  Lots have happened in this past month and the last part of October.  Let's back track…

October
I celebrated my 24th birthday.  It was quiet and spent with close friends and neighbors at my favorite restaurant Carrabbas.  My husband surprised me with two beautiful Pandora bracelets with a few charms and a delicious Tres Leche cake (my fav!!!) to share with all our friends.  =)

November

So you might be wondering who these wonderful ladies are above…well they are my Line Sisters!  Yep!  I pledged a sorority! Lambda Theta Alpha Latin Sorority Inc to be exact!  I might have brought it up a few times before last semester but this semester is when I actually underwent the pledge process.  I won't say it was easy but it was definitely worth it.  I stressed a lot because of how busy I already was before the process but those ladies pictured above helped me sooo much and I love them even more for that.  =)

Here's some pics from our probate which was performed early November:

In cognito!!!  ;-)

Locked up!

Removing my mask!

Finally wearing my letters!

Hubby is so proud ;-)

Whoooooshhhh….let's fast forward now to last week.  Ok so I got into a pretty crazy car accident the weekend before Thanksgiving and what I'm about to explain all took place in just 10 minutes time.  I was on my way to an FTX for ROTC at 4ish in the morning and go figure a deer runs straight into the side of my car.  I can't steer right since the deer hit my right fender so I move to the median in the middle.  I put my panic lights on and call my 1SG and let him know what happened and then get on the phone with USAA.  Another cadet who happens to be my neighbor happened to see me pulled over so he stopped to help me out.  No more than two minutes after my neighbor pulled over to help me another car comes down the road and my neighbor was able to warn me and tried pulling me out of the way.  The car (who was in the lane I was in) rammed straight into my car.  My car hits my neighbors car and then turns into the median, knocks me over and flies straight into the opposite direction of traffic.  Time is now 4:59 AM.  What a way to start my morning.  Two hours later, my car, in pieces, is towed away and my husband is driving me to the ER.  Thank God I had no broken bones or internal bleeding but I am still very stiff from the impact of my car.  If it wasn't for my neighbor I wouldn't be alive today.  I'm very thankful that he stopped.

This my car after the accident:

I am walking and on muscle relaxers.  I'm hoping to be healed by the time Spring semester starts.  Unfortunately I can't participate in our Record APFT because of this so my last scores will have to go in my evaluation.  =(  I was shooting for a 290+ for this APFT but I guess a 285 will have to do.  Wasn't my fault you know.

Ok so Thanksgiving!!!!  The best part =)

Due to the accident we didn't go to Orlando as planned but we had a great day with our neighbors.  There was sooooo muuuuuch foooooood lol.  We ate…and ate….and ate….
Everything was amazing.  The apple cake I made was a hit!  I will have to share the recipe with you all soon.

I made the rice and roast pork

My neighbor's husband deep fried a 24 lb turkey!

My first time making pumpkin pie

Uncle Bob's Fresh Apple Cake

After dinner we relaxed and prepared for…..Black Friday.  Now I'm not big on this American event but we did end up going to Wal-Mart Thursday night.  My neighbors were going because they had a 60" Vizio smart TV on sale for $688.  ?!?!?!?!  YES!  We wanted in too! lol So we got there at 6:30 and "camped" out for this TV.  It's a good thing we got there early before the chaos broke out.  Wal-Mart did two releases…one at 8 PM and one at 10 PM.   The TVs were at 10.  So we waiting…only about the 10th people in line for the TVs…got our TVs and were out by 10:35.  Sweet!

Black Friday Camping!

Didn't waste time setting it up haha

And last but not least…always a tradition in my family.  We put up our Christmas tree.  It's something my family has always done back home putting up the tree right after Thanksgiving.  This is Chris and my first actually Christmas tree.  Last year our tree was tiny and that is what we used for the last three years of our marriage.  This year we decided it was time to get a real tree…and we meant it!  My neighbor took me to a local place and we picked out our trees.  It was so much fun.  When I got back Chris and our neighbors taught us how to put the tree in the stand.  My hands were covered in sap lol.  Then we decorated our tree and now our home is ready for Christmas.  =)

I hope everyone is doing great.  I know this was a long blog but I had a lot to catch you guys up on!  Talk to you all soon! 

The Needle That Broke The Camel's Back

I need to vent.  My life has been extremely busy these last few weeks and I'm starting to feel overwhelmed.  My days are all rolling together and my lack of sleep is making me into a very grouchy person.  Last week alone, I blew up on three people.  That is really not the type of person I am.  The hard part is that I am managing my time as efficiently as possible.  I keep a daily planner glued to my hip and yet I still find it hard to schedule in all the things I need to do.  ROTC has been very demanding lately and some of the cadet leadership above me have had me on the verge of pulling my hair out.  Thursday last week I went to bed crying because of how exhausted I've been and dreading going to drill this past weekend.  Luckily, drill was not as horrible as I thought it was going to be and I was glad to see my battles again since Annual Training.  Some of these things that have had my nerves tense I can speak about and the others I can not right at the moment but soon I will be able to share with you all the rewards of all my hard work this month.  I am very grateful for my supportive family, friends, neighbors, and especially my husband for helping me during this month and for understanding when at times I am no more than a distant ghost of the present. 

With that said....I cannot WAIT until October is OVER!!!

A new blog with a different path

I'd like to start off saying my feet and legs are SUPER sore.  This past weekend, I was running around the woods of Fort Bragg for an ROTC Field Training Exercise (FTX).  It was an experience for me that I surely won't forget.  I have to say though as an MS-3 that should have known what was going on, I noticed quickly that I wasn't as prepared as I thought.  There isn't much information out there that breaks down how these things work.

I've decided to create a separate blog just for those types of things.  I know it's in nearly every MS-3's dreams to score in overall E at LDAC.  It's definitely one of my dreams.  But I also want to share my knowledge so that other people don't make the same mistakes as I have.  Or maybe help some new MS-3's that didn't have the chance to learn some things as an MS-1 and/or MS-2.  I'm glad I was able to make mistakes and learn from them early on in my MS-2 year when it comes to Land Navigation.  I did  fairly well passing every event we did.  I will post some pics as soon as I get them from the public affairs people.

Anywho, if anyone is interested in checking out my new blog, here it is below.  I hope it helps some people out there!

An MS-III's Guide to Becoming a US Army Officer

P.S. - I will still keep this blog for my personal use.  I separated them since I want to keep the new one strictly for ROTC advice purposes.

Starting off the semester with a busy bang!

It's been too long my fellow bloggers!  Over a month I believe!  Honestly I've hardly had time to do much of anything besides school and work since the Fall semester started.  I'm actually a lot busier than I expected to be.  Good thing I took three classes over the summer to lighten my load this semester!  I can't even imagine where I'd be right now if I hadn't done that.  Probably ready to blow up.  My brain already feels like a pile of noodles right now haha.

So school started back up on the 15th of August.  I jumped right into ROTC starting as the Platoon Leader and then to make things worse my Platoon Sergeant was MIA most of the time so I pretty much had to do the tasks for that position as well.  This is all on top of getting our fresh new recruits organized, helping my squad leaders figure out the tasks they needed to do, working part-time in the school's IT department, tutoring two students in Calculus, and oh yeah…finding time to get my OWN classwork not to mention tend to my husband as a good wife should!  Talk about a mess. I seriously need to start USING this planner I had bought before the semester started.

So besides being extremely busy, life has been good.  We have 5 MS-III's for the year.  One ADO and the other three besides me are fellow cadets who were in the program with me last year.  I'd say we have a pretty good team.  We work really hard together.  I'm learning more and more as each day goes by.  Way more than last year…not to say I didn't have an awesome instructor last year, but our new instructor is a lot stricter but in a good way of course.  Were currently covering Combat Orders.

I have a great story to tell all of you but I will save it for this weekend if I have time to blog again.  I truly do miss putting my thoughts down in words.

Our first FTX is coming up really soon and I've already gotten word that I will be the Company Commander during the first iteration.  Talk about working up my nerves.  I always get nervous when I have to be in a high position.  Hopefully I do well though.

Classes are doing good.  Data Structures is kicking my butt.  I really don't enjoy the was my professor lectures.  He goes too quickly sometimes to comprehend.  And even when I try and talk to him after class, he rushes me through my questions and tells me he's sorry he can't explain it any better.  He is definitely no Dr. Turner.  I wish he was teaching Data Structures.  :(

My U.S. military history class is amazing.  It's a tough class but I'm loving the challenge and really enjoying all the events we are covering.  The only thing I dislike…is the amount of reading we have to do.  It's not that I don't enjoy what I'm reading…it's just hard to juggle with everything else I'm doing.  I'll definitely be keeping my books after the semester is done to keep on hand for some pleasure reading.  I know I won't have time during the semester to get a full grip on the content but just enough to get me as close to an A as possible in the class.

My human computer interaction class is too easy…sometimes I even forget it's an actual class I'm taking lol.

Ok well you are half way updated with where I am at this point.  I hope to get a recipe or two up within the next month.  I definitely have tons of stuff I want to share with you all.  I just pray I have the time and energy to share it!

School on my fellow bloggers!  ;-)

Rainbow Tie-Dyed Cupcakes!

So back in April I had a little obsession with rainbows.  Last week I was in my rainbow mood.  (Always makes me happy lol)  So I decided to make rainbow cupcakes.  I had seen a video of someone making them and it inspired me to do them myself.

It was super simple.  Especially for many who like to take the easy way for baking and use boxed cake mix.  Here's what you'll need:

1 box of white cake mix (plus ingredients in back)

mixing bowl

six plastic cups

six forks

food coloring (original and neon colors)

muffin pan

muffin liners

Once you mix the cake mix as directed on the box, pour the batter evenly into the six plastic cups.  Then mix your colors appropriately (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple).  After that pour about a teaspoon of each color in each hole in your muffin pan (with liners).  Bake for about 22 minutes.

You might be having trouble getting your red cake mix to be a vibrant red.  If you want to do a little twist on your cupcakes, you can use red velvet cake mix like I did.  You get a beautiful red plus a twist of chocolate on the bottom of each cupcake!

I just love the way they came out too.  I didn't even put frosting because of how cute they looked. They have a beautiful tie-dyed look on the top and side views.

But when you slice them in half…you have a perfect little rainbow.  Enjoy and happy baking to everyone!  =)