I am currently writing on the patio of our new apartment with the newest addition to our family chewing my big toe. It has been a long year since I’ve moved to Washington state and I have just now started to find the time to write and tap into my creativity again. In the past year, the bar I work at shut down for a few months and then re-opened, we moved into our own apartment, I started taking clients for personal training and also became a certified nutrition specialist. Bu

I felt really overwhelmed after Taylor left. It is my first time going through a deployment and I had no idea where to start as silly as that sounds. How am I going to survive all these months? What am I supposed to do to pass the time? How do I go back to “normal” life again? Break the time up into smaller chunks: The first thing I did was break the deployment up into fourths. I wrote down the date that we would be a quarter of the way through, half way through and three qua

You’ve just spent this amazing few weeks with your SO filled with lots of love, companionship, laughter, fun-filled plans and parties. Then no sooner do they get back that you find yourself back at the airport waving goodbye with tear-soaked eyes and a snot-filled tissue in your non-waving hand. Then there is the drive home from the airport that you don’t really remember too much because of all the thinking you have done during that time. Then before you know it, you are stan

For two years now, Charleston has become my second home and it wasn’t too traumatic on my wallet most of the time. My airline tickets averaged around $300 and if I couldn’t do that I could drive. The next stop on our military journey, however, is going to be Hawaii, a trip that will most definitely not be too kind on the old wallet. But I have recently put in place some tips and tricks that will get me, stress-free, to Hawaii and back… I might even be able to afford a nice di

I hate my lower stomach. The “pooch” as some people call it. My upper stomach is flat and looks fine but my lower stomach…hell no. My arms are a little chunkier than I’d like. And I don’t like my love handles. They stick out when my yoga pants slip down a little too far or if I wear jean shorts. Sound familiar? In the past two years I lost around 15 pounds or so and I was happy but it wasn’t enough. Once I got hooked on fitness, I couldn’t stop. I’d sit for hours on Instagram

A few months ago, I became familiar with the idea of minimalism or the idea that we don’t need things to be happy. We only need what is essential to life to be happy. So, I purged out my room and got rid of 16 bags of things that just didn’t make me the slightest bit happy anymore or things I haven’t used in months. You can read more about my minimalism journey and how I found it beneficial to being a military SO in my article, “Minimalism and the Military Girlfriend.” This l

Christmas was great and everything but what I really wanted was for it to be December 28th, particularly at 7am when Taylor’s plane would land. Like a kid on Christmas, I couldn’t sleep the night before and I got up at 5 am to go pick up my boy. And then finally, I got him. January 4th will mark one and a half years that we have officially been together so we decided to celebrate a little early. Our first date was at Friday’s and we drank mudslides so it seemed fitting to rel