What Direction

I'm struggling to figure out what to blog about.  I want to blog more regularly, but then I just feel like I end up all over the place.  What would you want to read about?

Recipes?
Style?
Domestic Skills?
Random Musings?
Infertility Support?

Or a mixture of all?

Take your vote!! 

My Love

To my Valentine:

I love you.  Today and every day. 

Thank you for growing up with me.  I'm so blessed to have met you as a 'kid' and to have grown into adulthood with you. 

Thank you for seeing my faults and loving me through them.  While you see my faults, you accept them and at the same time help me move past them and grow through them. 

Thank you for being a spiritual leader.  You lead our home and truly keep the "God first, family second, career third" model alive and active in our home. 

Thank you for making me feel beautiful.  Pretty, sick, silly, angry, annoyed...it doesn't matter.  You make me feel beautiful, special, loved, and everything in between. 

I'm blessed to call you mine.  I love looking across the room and seeing you all the while knowing that I get to spend every day for the rest of my life with you. 

This year, we embark on 11 years of being together.  If anyone had told me I would be even more intensely in love with you than when we met, I never would have believed them.  I thought I loved you 11 years ago.  I was so wrong.  I loved you then, but I love you even more now.  I cannot wait to see what our lifetime holds. 

Thank you for being you.  You are impulsive, silly, funny, and intense.  I love every  bit of you. You compliment me.  We are so different, but it only helps us grow.

Thank you for loving me.  I am not always easy to be around.  You have never made me feel anything but special and loved.

 Thank you for loving me through the tragedies.  We have faced two major heartbreaks and a life change together.  You have never faltered in your leading of our family and your faith in God that he had a plan.  I cannot put in to words what that has meant to me.  You help make it all okay.  You keep me grounded and you keep me faithful in knowing that God will take care of ALL things. 

Nicholas, I love you and am so thankful to have you.  Words cannot describe the wonderful life we have made together.  I am thankful for each and every day we have together.  

Eating Bonbons

That's what I do all day.

Well, no.

In all seriousness, I get the question "what do you DO all day" every time I turn around.

I can honestly say that I do a lot.  And yes, I do still get stressed.  It feels like my to do list is never ending.  And when you stay at home you never really 'stop' working.  That is definitely not a complaint by any means.  I love staying home and the work I do there.  It can just honestly be overwhelming sometimes.

I probably spend the bulk of my time meal planning, meal shopping, couponing, and ingredient preparing.  When I was working I had no problem paying for already chopped vegetables and fruit.  I just can't justify it now.  Do you have any idea the markup on those?  It's insane.  As a working woman I hated the thought of wasting half an hour getting dinner prepped, not including actual cooking time.  Now I actually make everything in our dinner from scratch.  The time spent on it is so worth it.  It's not only cheaper, but so much healthier.  Throw some coupons on top of that and it's the only way to go.

I also spend part of my day running errands for Nick.  A big part of my 'job' as a stay at home wife is to take care of the needs Nick has and make sure that his errands are run, his clothes are clean, his food is hot on the table, and he always has someone to be his support system at home.  It varies based on the day what he'll need my help to do, but it is typically dry cleaning, picking things he needs for work up at the store, running things to the post office, grocery shopping, getting gas, etc.  Anything I can do so that he doesn't have to run boring errands after work is what I'm happy to do.  I jokingly called myself his personal assistant, but he said that I should use estate manager.  Silly boy. 

Dishes.  And more dishes.  And dishes.  Cooking everything from SCRATCH at home takes up so many dishes.  I probably do two loads a day.  It's insane. 

Laundry.  Oh the never ending laundry.  I could do multiple loads of laundry a day and never finish.  Now that Nick doesn't have uniforms for work he wears way more clothing throughout the day.  Work clothes, after work clothes, workout clothes, pajamas..so much laundry. 

And of course there are the small things that people often forget about.  I write all our thank yous, birthday cards, etc., make necessary phone calls about bills, appointments, etc., take care of the dogs (which involves taking them out constantly it feels), banking, and much more. 

Please know that none of this is said in a complaining manner.  I really do feel fulfilled staying home.  I definitely applaud working women.  I know when I was working full time outside the home it was so hard to get all this done.  When you are working these things still must get done and it is way harder to find the time to do it.  Women are amazing in their ability to multi-task and focus. 

In a nutshell this is what I do with my time.  It is a constant work in progress and I only hope as time goes on that I get even better at it. 

My Life Now

I knew going in to being a stay at home wife that it would be a struggle to stay busy and keep myself from being bored.  Especially since I've always largely identified myself with who I was as a career woman.  And if you had asked me when we first got married what my life goals were, I would have listed career as a top priority.  I know that when I was a manager in retail, I often wanted to stay at home, but that was mostly from the stress of being constantly on call.  It wasn't until a few months ago after a marriage series at Journey Church that Nick and I realized that I really should stay at home.  And not because I was burnt out at work, but because it was what was best for our marriage, our relationship with God, and our future family. 

If you are interested, check out these two sermons.  They are very powerful.  They had the utmost impact in our marriage as well as the life decisions we made.  Not to sound cliche, but they changed our lives.

Happily Ever After? Part One

Happily Ever After? Part Two

So after those two Sundays, we realized that in order to have the home life we wanted one of us would need to stay home.  The laundry, cooking, cleaning, pet care, etc needed to be taken care of during the day so that when we were home together in the evenings we weren't worried about it.  As it speaks about in the messages I posted, your house should be a haven from the world.  It should be a shelter.  While that largely includes a healthy relationship, to us it also includes being clean, physically healthy, stress free, and a place you can relax and be yourself in. 

To achieve this, we knew that I needed to stay home.  In Raleigh it just wasn't feasible.  Too many expenses, I'd built myself up in my career and was pushing forward, and we hadn't built a lifestyle that could be sustained with one income.  When Nick found out about this job in Jacksonville, we knew that it could support us.  Our expenses would be lessened, we wouldn't be using as much gas in our vehicles, more time to coupon, etc.  We spent A LOT of time in prayer about it.  We knew that if he got this job, it would be heart wrenching to leave our families and friends, but we also knew that it would because God wanted this for our family.  It was confirmation that our prayers about me staying home were being answered.   

He got the job and now I stay home.  And it's been the best decision.  And it has been terribly hard to be away from my loved ones, but I'm coping.  I'm trying to make a new life for myself and for Nick.  But what I know for sure is that I'm doing the absolute right thing.  I feel calm and at peace.  I feel sustained, fulfilled, and like I contribute.  And honestly, that's what really matters.  Prayers answered!