Mil Spouse Friday!

So for some reason my computer or blogger isn't letting me paste...lamesauce, I will just type all the questions.

1. What is your favorite Milspouse blog?
I think my favorite is Carissa at Domicillary Artillery. I love reading all the things she does with her daughter, there are always tons of cool activities and healthy food, she inspires me to want to be a really good, involved momma.

2. What is your favorite perk about your s/o being deployed?
Kyler has luckily never been deployed. I can't imagine finding many perks in it, I hate when he just goes to work for 13 hours let alone being gone for a year at a time. I imagine the only perk I could think of would be you get more pay and tax free.

3. How long did you date your s/o before getting engaged and married?
We had been dating for nearly 4 years when we got engaged-he proposed on my birthday. Then we got married almost exactly a year after that, so 5 years before marriage.

4. What do you think your s/o would do if he weren't in the military?
This is an easy one. He would be a computer scientist buddying up with Bill Gates and making a lot more money ;)

5. If you could talk to the Secretary of the Army, what is one suggestion you would like to bring to their attention in order to improve the lives of military families?
Oh I could say a lot about this one. First of all, I don't know how many ladies I have heard have horrible experiences and I have had some bad experiences as well with the medical care. I realize that it's free, and that's wonderful-but please, hire competant people. We care about our health, too.

Second, housing needs major work. Instead of hiring the lowest bidder and letting the military families live in sub par housing (especially what's going on in Fort Bragg homes right now with infants-terrible), please give us some quality homes. When we moved into our new house, first day, there was literally scotch tape holding up our attic, and ripping a piece of paint from it.

MAC Giveaway

One of the top ways I waste time and justify not doing housework is visiting various Army wife forums. Shaka, one of the lovely ladies from one of my favorite forums is doing a giveaway for a $25 MAC Gift Card. I swear I have been hearing about this make up and wondering about it a lot lately, I've heard great things about the eyeshadows.

Anyways, check it out here: http://shakajamee.wordpress.com/

Dear doggie.

Look at our cute puppy. Isn't she adorable?


I call her puppy even though she's not a puppy anymore, but anyway.

Despite her extreme cute factor, she likes to scare the heck out of her momma when daddy is gone. She never does it during the day when the sun's shining and you could see any lurking predators and when daddy is there to protect me. Nope, she does it when it's 3 in the morning and mommy has no company in the house other than a fetus and dog.

I went to walk Chorizo (that's her name-mexican sausage, Chihuahua/Dachshund-get it?) in our backyard so she could go potty. Immediately she focuses to the left, gets her little butt in that "you're in my territory and I'll eat you" stance, looks directly at a bush in our backyard, and starts barking. She never barks. Ever. The only time she barks is when there's another dog around that she wants to sniff, or when there's a stranger. So unfortunately for her she didn't get to go potty, because I hightailed it back into our house, dragged her in, slammed our door and locked it.

We went upstairs, me with pepper spray in tow, and she sat in the entry way to our bedroom just staring down the stairs. Why does she do this to me???? This kind of thing only happens in the middle of the night when Kyler's gone, I swear.

I have 1 hour until he's home...which translates to one hour of me sitting here with my pepper spray, looking over my shoulder every 5 seconds, and getting a huge rise in heart rate every time our house creaks.

Cooking PSA

Before I go to bed...this evening I made some chocolate covered strawberries. I looked up a recipe first because if I was just going by what I thought, I would just melt some chocolate and dip in the strawberries. The recipe I found said to use shortening but others said you could substitute butter for shortening.

So I waddle my happy pregnant butt downstairs, put the chocolate and some butter in a bowl, and microwave it. As soon as I took it out-uh oh...this is so wrong. I thought maybe heating it some more would help. Nope. I was just left with a bowl full of ruined chocolate that was so thick you couldn't even stir it.

Then I decide maybe I didn't heat it for long enough the first time and that it's a good idea to get a new bowl, new chocolate, new butter, and try again....not a good idea.

Finally I wondered if it was the butter. I melted some chocolate by itself and sure enough, 2 dirty bowls full of wasted chocolate later, I got my chocolate covered strawberries. My PSA for the day? Don't microwave butter and chocolate.

A rise in blood pressure later...

Holy moly! I need serious blogging help. I just spent a solid HOUR making my new banner. Sadly no, I'm not joking. I used paint.net and wow, I could not get anything to work. It doesn't even look that great! Lamesauce. I thought it'd be like a 10 minute thing.

Anyhoo, my blog is all re-pimped out. And now I'm going to try to fit the last 3 months in one post and not bore you (if there are any of you left) to death.

So the last time I posted we didn't even know what gender our baby was. Now I'm nearly 31 weeks pregnant and I can definitely see the finish line (if not my feet...or legs, really).

We took a trip to Atlanta to get a 3D ultrasound and a gender determination done. Apparently the 3D's creep some people out, so if you are creeped out by sharper image of skeleton baby, kindly turn your head for the next few pictures.

Introducing...Keira Colgrove! It's a girl!!!! She is so lady like, she decided to flip us the bird. I see this being a great "embarass you in front of your boyfriend" picture many years from now, along with nakie bathtime." I would have thought it was hilarious though, personally.


And here's a cuter one. She had no fat here-I was only around 19 weeks. I think it is amazing what they can do now, though. It may creep people out but how awesome that you can see your baby before it's born, with this much clarity?


Her name is Keira Jade. Not Kiera pronounced Key-air-uh, but Keira pronounced Keer-uh. We've already had problems with this so she's going to love us someday, with the last name too. Her middle name is Jade-this was Kyler's pick. I got to pick the first name, so he picked the middle name. Her and daddy will have the same initials :) Cute.

So the reason for my super long absence is that in mid December we had to move all of our belongings from Georgia to Maryland, then put our things in storage. For 2 weeks. Nope, not kidding. Then we went home to Kansas for the first time in over a year and it was amazing to be home!!!! I was a pregnant lady in heaven with the Gringo's burritos. Seriously, for such a gross place you would not think they'd have the best burritos ever, but they do, and I had been craving them for a solid 3 months.

But really, it was great to see my family and friends. I really missed them and still do <3

Miss Holly took our maternity pictures while we were home, and she did an awesome job. We got lots of great pictures, but here are a few of my faves:















I was so sad when we had to leave. I felt like an 18 year old venturing off to college again, only this time I don't get to come home every 2 weeks. I'm comforted, though, knowing that I get to see a lot of my family again in just a couple short months when Keira makes her grand entrance! Seriously I don't know how many times I've heard people say how they can't wait to get out of podunk Kansas, and I used to say it too, but now I would give anything to be able to just be home again.

That being said, we are now living in one of the coolest areas of the country (in my opinion). Maryland has so many historical things to see and so many things surrounding it, I can't wait for warmer weather so that we can explore. We did take a trip to DC when we first got here. It was FREEZING and really tiring for my 7 month pregnant butt waddling all over the place, but we did get to see Kumar in a restaurant. I don't have any pictures for proof because he zoomed by really fast, but I do have 3 other people that were there to back me up.

Here's a view looking up the Washington Monument, which we got to go up in and look out over DC.


Arlington Cemetary...I always think it's a really humbling place to see.



Me and the hubs in front of The Honest One.


Pretty cool to have just gotten here, and already be able to see a lot of neat things.

So anyway ever since then we have just been setting up house. This is our first time living on post, and I don't know how I feel about it yet. Honestly, this is the most crappily put together place we have ever lived in, and we lived in cheap college apartments. Our downstairs stays about 0 degrees while our upstairs is roasting, and the first evening I cooked we set off the carbon monoxide alarm because of our lovely gas oven being on for too many hours because it wouldn't ever completely bake a chicken.

That being said, we have a place to live and Kyler is really close to his work, which is nice.

I think that's enough updating for now. I'm sure I'm missing plenty of things but I doubt anyone has even made it this far. I could probably cuss you all out and no one would be the wiser :) I'm going to start posting some recipes as I make ones that turn out really well, and we are crossing every phalange we have that Kyler's bonus will come in by the end of this week so when that happens...I get my sewing machine!!!! I'm trying to decide what my first project is going to be, but I will post about it as it happens, and of course include pictures, because I'm sure it'll be quite a sight.

Happy Valentine's Day!!!! The Mr. and I don't get to spend it together because he has work all evening. Typical Army stuff. So I'm getting ready to go throw some laundry in, change into my pj's, make some chocolate covered strawberries, eat my Olive Garden leftovers, watch some movies, and then read my book later. Hope you all have a good evening!

It's too late to apologize?

This is a blog post simply to say: sorry!

I realize I have not made a post in nearly 3 months. Total blog fail. What with moving across the country, going home for a visit for the first time in a year, setting up our house at 7 months pregnant, etc etc things have been a little bit crazy.

Kyler works basically all evening tomorrow and I swear I will be posting regularly now, what with all the boredom that comes from the long evenings that he works. I'll have some new baby updates, nursery updates as we get that going, and I'm buying a sewing machine soon so everyone will get to read about all the disasters I'm sure will come of that.

Gettin' Crafty.

I made some marble glass Christmas ornaments last night, and they seriously turned out way better than I expected. They are so pretty!!! We aren't decorating our tree this year since we're going to be back home in KS for half of the month, but I think next year I will whip up a couple batches of these to put on our tree. They are seriously beautiful and actually fairly classy looking.

A few people wanted to know how they were made so here's a step by step with some pictures!

This is all you need:


Clear glass ornaments, and however many colors of acrylic paint you want. I am doing all of mine with red, green, and white but you could do any color combos you wanted! I know some people decorate their trees in blue, etc, so blue and white would look really pretty together, too. Then you just need some ribbon to tie around the topper so that you can hang your ornament!

First, you take the topper out of the ornament. Squirt the paint into the ornament...you can do all of the colors at once.


Next, swirl the ornament to get the paint covering every bit. You will have to tap it against the palm of your hand and there will be a couple of spots that don't seem to want to cover. Just keep tapping it until it covers up, and you can add more paint if necessary. It's normal for it not to be marbled yet-you're just getting the paint across the whole ornament right now, so there will probably be big chunks of one color, etc. It should look like this:


You can also see the extra paint that got on the outside of the ornament-don't worry, it comes right off with a washcloth and some water :)

Next, turn the ornament upside down and let it drain out for 10 minutes. You can do this in an egg carton, but we didn't have any so I just propped it against something on some wax paper.

Now comes the part where it marbles. Make sure all the excess paint is drained out, then turn the ornament on it's side. Leave it there for 10 minutes. Still on it's side, turn it a quarter and let it sit for another 10 minutes. Keep doing this until it's set 4 times. After this, you can set it upright, upside down, and on the other side, and do the quarter turns for 10 minutes each...but I didn't. I didn't have that much time, and they turned out just fine on doing it once.

After that I let mine sit overnight to make sure they were dry. Then you just put the topper back on (be careful not to scrape the paint with the wires from the topper) and tie a ribbon through it so it can be hung on the tree! My ribbon was a bit thick and didn't really tie very well without having a huge bow. I stapled the first one just to see the finished look but I don't like the staple sticking out. So I suppose if you have a hot glue gun, that would probably be the best route to go to secure the ribbon.

And this is what you end up with:






Pretty cool, right? I think they would make a great gift if you're making baskets for people, you could wrap the basket and tie a ribbon around it and secure an ornament onto the ribbon. Or make some for yourself to make your tree look beautiful at little cost to you. Let me know if you have any questions!!