Christmas Miracles, And Day 3 4 and 5

With all the excitement of the season, I completely for

got to come on here and update my 30 day project! But first I'll talk about Christmas.

This has been the most amazing Christmas ever. As if being with my and J's family wasn't wonderful enough, I got an extra surprise this year. First, on Christmas Eve we went to a party at my Aunt's house. It was great! lots of great food, family, and gifts! My mama got me the Paula Dean cookware set that I have been DYING for for ages, and J gave me a gorgeous diamond snowflake necklace. My Aunt also handmade me a beautiful trinket box, complete with my very own helicopter! (See my 21st birthday post if you dont get the reference!)

Christmas Morning we went to J's Grandparents house for a yummy breakfast. His Grandmother knows how to make a slammin Mimosa! They gave me a gorgeous cake plate (something I have been wanting forever!) and some cute little pot holders that go perfectly with my kitchen! I dont have pictures of those yet, but I will eventually.

Then we were off to dinner at J's parents. Talk about a yummy feast. Ribs, ham, potatoes, fruit salad, a million different desserts...MMMMM! A good time was had by all! His mom got me an Eagles Jersey that says Pebbles, and J a Redskins Jersey that says Bam Bam! And we both got number 7 because it's our lucky number! Perfect!!!

After we got home, is when I got my special surprise. I logged on to facebook as I usually do, and I saw I had a message. I opened it up, and it was from my estranged brother. It basically just said "Merry Christmas, I love you very much. Can you please forgive me for all the time that has gone by?" I started bawling and just collapsed into J's arms. I was so happy. I had been wishing and hoping and praying that someday, somehow, I would be reunited with him. And it truly was a Christmas miracle! I couldn't have asked for a better gift!

Day 3- Favorite TV show: I have too many. Buffy the Vampire Slayer will always be a favorite. And Days of Our Lives will always be my favorite soap opera. But I also love shows like Intervention and Hoarders.

Day 4- Favorite Book: Well, the Twilight Series, DUH! I'm currently reading Decision Points by George W. Bush and am LOVING it. I miss that man so SO much.

Day 5- Favorite quote: A get a lot of my quotes from songs that fill me with such inspiration. I shared one earlier in my favorite song sections. I also love "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return"

Alright, I've babbled on long enough! I have a lot more to update on but I'll save it for later this week. Jeez...Just thinking back to where my life was 2 years ago when I was in an emotionally abusive relationship, had practically no family, and living in Florida in a nightmare house...To where I am today. God has been by my side every minute. I am so blessed.

Day two- Favorite Movie and Christmas Wishes!

Ahhh such a simple yet difficult question. My favorite movie will always be Moulin Rouge.

The movie holds a lot of meaning for me, and it reminds me of a wonderful time in my life. But right now, my newest favorite movie is something similar. It's like a weird crossbreed between Moulin Rouge and Chicago. It is a FABULOUS movie and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys musicals. It's the new hit, Burlesque!

I also just wanted to wish all of my readers a very Merry Christmas, or whatever holiday you may celebrate! Tonight, J and I will be joining my family at my Aunt's home for a Christmas party. Tomorrow morning were off to J's Grandparents for a delicious breakfast, and then we go to dinner at J's parents. Woohoo two whole days of Ashley not slaving in the kitchen, and a whole lot of yummy food! Pictures will follow soon! Have a wonderful day ya'll!

Day One- Favorite Song

So I got this from one of my friends blogs. I guess this is just supposed to be a little fun month long activity to get to know me better (as if I don't spill my heart out on here all the time anyway)

So day one is my favorite song. This is hard. I love music. I love mainly broadway and showtunes. But right now I would have to say my favorite song that I listen to over and over again is.....


It makes me cry every time. It is just so powerful and the melody is so beautiful and melancholy. And the message is beautiful, and honestly how I feel about J.

"Then you look at me, and I always see, what I have been searching for. I'm lost as can be, then you look at me, and I am not lost anymore."

Herb Crusted Pork Loin

So I have decided to not update my recipe blog any longer. It's just too much of a PITA to go back and fourth. Instead, any of the awesome recipes I use I'll just post here.

This is a little gem I stumbled upon while I was sick with the flu last week. I was on the couch watching Ten Dollar Dinners on FoodNetwork. When this recipe was completed, it looked SO scrumptious, I had to try it. It was a HUGE hit. J said this was "Honest to God the BEST thing he has ever eaten. EVER. Even better then anything he's ever had at a restaurant." *pats self on back*. He walked away from the dinner table mumbling "Thank you God for sending me a woman who can cook!" Have I mentioned how much I love him?

You can find the exact recipe here. I tweaked mine a little and will post mine.

INGREDIENTS:
- 4.25 lb Pork Loin
- 2 tbsp. Cumin
- 1 1/2 tbsp. Cinnamon
- 1 tbsp. Cayenne Pepper
(these can be adjusted to how spicy you want your rub to be)
- 1/2 cup Italian bread crumbs
- 1 tbsp. onion power
- 1 1/2 tbsp. garlic power
- 1 tbsp ginger
- 1 1/2 tbsp parsley
(Again, these can be adjusted to taste, but this is about what I used. I also like to use onion and garlic powder instead of the real stuff. I find it less overpowering)
- A bit of Olive oil
- Some Dijon mustard

DIRECTIONS:
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

For rub: Mix together Cumin, Cinnamon, and Cayenne pepper. Rub over all sides of pork loin, generously coating. In a large pan, heat up some olive oil on medium heat. Once hot, place loin in FAT side down, and brown on all sides.

Once pork is browned, remove and place in baking dish fat side UP

Herb Crust: Mix together the bread crumbs, parsley, onion and garlic and ginger. Take a good bit of dijon mustard (Enough to cover top of pork) and spread over the top of the pork loin. Then press your bread crumb mixture into that.

Roast in oven for about 90 minutes.

I also made mine with baby red potatoes which I seasoned with some olive oil, salt, pepper, basil, and parsley. They were delicious! I served apple sauce on the side as well.

This is an AWESOME meal to make for the upcoming holiday, or any other night of the week! enjoy!!

I am cursed.

This is the only sane answer I can come up with. I must be cursed. Or it's good old *my last name* luck striking again!

I was laid off. Again. Totally unexpected and out of the blue.

And I am pissed. I let my former employer know it too.

Today I walked into work roughly 10 minutes before 9 am (I am always early), sat down at my desk and started filing through the new leads that had come in for the day. My boss whizzed past me without even a hi or good morning...Highly suspect. He looked at me and asked me to come into his office. Oh boy.

I was expecting to be filled in on the crisis of the day or something about a client canceling on us. I was WAY off. Instead, in a totally monotone, uncaring voice I hear:

"I have to let you go. Were going out of business. I needed to make a certain amount of money by a certain time in order to stay open. I didn't do it, so today is your last day. You can leave now. Sorry."

The first few things that went through my head were "I can't believe this is happening again" and "I could cry right now just thinking about how J will have to go back to being responsible for all the bills." And then...I really started to get angry. Angry about what was happening, and angry that my boss was so nonchalant about the whole thing. No compassion. No sympathy.

I let him have it. First of all I told him how terrible it was that he would do this the WEEK before Christmas. I had made several comments to him the last few weeks how I had not even STARTED Christmas shopping yet because my last few paychecks went to getting out of debt and paying bills. And then I voiced my opinion on how crappy I thought it was that he did not tell me at the end of the day yesterday, or called me early in the morning. Instead, I had to drive 30 miles and use all that gas to go to work for literally 2 minutes, only to be told to go home and never come back. All I got in response was "Sorry. I'll pay you for the whole day. Your last check will be mailed."

And I walked out. FUMING.

I called J on the way home, bawling, asking him to please forgive me. This was so not fair to him. He has been so amazing paying all the bills while I was out of work for 6 months. I had only been here 2 months!!!!!! Now he was going to have to do it again. He told me just to calm down and come home and we would talk more about it.

Lucky for me....I have a pretty amazing man in my life. I can't even begin to describe how blessed I am. I thought for sure J would resent me or feel taken advantage of. I thought for sure that when I got home I would be met by a grump boyfriend who was going to have dollar signs spinning in his eyes. Not that I think that J is this kind of person... I think anyone would feel like this. But I underestimated him. Instead of the horror I had imagined, I got a big hug and kiss and all the support in the world. "Money is not an issue honey. Don't worry about a thing. I like providing for our family." How did I get so lucky? I still don't get it.

Despite J's reassurance, I still worry like a maniac. The second I got home I got right online and started applying everywhere I could think of. Anywhere that would take me. Even though he's fine with it, I don't want all the responsibility falling on J. It's just not right. If we had kids for me to take care of all day, it would be one thing. But I can't just cook and clean and use our electric, eat our food, and use J's money to go shopping without contributing something to our finances.

The only other thing I can come up with is maybe all these lay offs is God's way of telling me that I am destined to be a stay at home wife. I wouldn't mind it. I like the whole domestic thing. I love seeing J's face light up when the house is perfect, and dinner is on the table. But I can't help but feel those pangs of guilt. I know all too well what it's like to be the only one seeing your money dwindle down while the other person is in a state of ignorant bliss thinking you're made of money.

I'm just praying for permanence. And peace of mind. Right now, the only concrete thing in my life is the love that J and I share. That is something that will NEVER be broken.

Changes.

It's been a while since I updated. Time has been scarce lately. Lots of stuff going on in the Ashley and J household! Some good, some could be better, but overall life has been pretty kind to us.

J and I have been having some issues lately. It's nothing major and nothing that couldn't be worked out (obviously, if were still together). Mainly it all just boiled down to him learning to not get so upset over the little things that in the end, don't really matter, and for me, learning how to be less insecure about myself and our relationship. There was a lot arguing in the beginning, but then arguing turned into just talking, and talking got things resolved! Our relationship is better than ever now. I think we appreciate each other more now that we have gotten everything off our chests.

Work has been crazy busy, and I am still loving it. It's nice knowing that I have a full days work and I am not just sitting around twiddling my thumbs all day long. I feel like I am actually worth what I am being paid, and I am working hard to earn it. There are a few days here and there where the phone just will not ring, and I find myself a little bored. But then, there is always something else to be done!

I have been sick the past 3 days. harumph. J had/has a nasty cold, that I thought I was going to escape. Sadly no. While having dinner at his mother's house on Sunday night I started to get that out of breath feeling in my chest. My throat was scratchy, my head felt like it weight 500 lbs...Ick. On top of that, I was experience excruciating tooth pain. I somehow managed to drag myself into work Monday morning, only to be told my boss to "get out of here because if you get me sick, you're fired!" Obviously he was joking...I think! He also said not to bother coming in on Tuesday either. So I got a little 4 day weekend in! Unfortunately it was spent sick.

Today I had a dentist appointment to figure out exactly what it is I am going to do about my teeth. Eh...it didn't go so well. Basically, I have awful teeth, inherited from my father and mother. My father had dentures by the time he was in his early 30's. My mother has tons of false teeth in her mouth. The outlook was never good for me. However, I did contribute to it as well, which I had no idea I was even doing. Whenever I get an upset stomach (which is often...I have no idea why. Usually every night I start feeling nauseous.) my mouth get super dry, and it always make me want to gag. One night, I was searching my house frantically for a mint or something and I found a honey lemon cough drop. I popped that sucker in and not only did is create some wetness in my mouth, the lemon settled my stomach. That was about 4 years ago. So from that day on, anytime I felt sick, I sucked on a cough drop. There would even be nights I would fall asleep with them in my mouth.

Well, little did I know, that all the sugar in those cough drops would partially cause my teeth problems today.

I'm not going to go all into the problems because they are personal and a lot of my problems has to do with me not getting the proper dental care I needed when I was a child. But I'm not calling anyone out. My next step is to go see an oral surgeon and taking it from there. I also have to cut sugar out of my diet. I mean, a little here and there is fine. But absolutely NO soda (which I have recently cut out anyway) Not a lot of fruit, or candy and cake obviously. Which sucks because I am a total sweets person! And NO MORE COUGH DROPS! To be honest, I'm freaking out about that a little. Just because I hate feeling nauseous, and they really did help settle my stomach. And it's not like mints don't have a lot of sugar either so they're out too. Ahhhh well...Maybe I can go to some freaky deaky health nut green store and find sugarless mints or something.

Alright, it's 3 am...J is snoring so loudly in the bedroom I can hear him from the office. at 10 tonight I was in a nice Vicodin induced sleep, but when J came in he woke me up just so we could snuggle for a little, and I havent been able to fall back asleep. Now with his snoring, I see no hope. Crap...He couldn't have done this yesterday when I didn't have work in the morning? Ahhh but he's too sweet to stay mad at. Good night (morning) all!

Randoms

I have a bunch of stuff to talk about, but I've been too lazy to write about anything.











First of all, Thanksgiving was awesome. We have 2 fabulous dinners in 2 nights. Thanksgiving day we went to Josh's moms house for a yummy feast of turkey, potatoes, corn, and everything else you could possibly imagine. It was so good and we ate so much, that had to make room in his stomach by, you guessed it, upchucking everything he ate. I am seriously concerned about him. He's either bullemic, or honestly just doesn't know when to stop eating! But a good time was had by all!




MMMM! Turkey and My BFF's (Rebecca at http://www.nomoreshouldacoulda.blogspot.com/) infamous sweet potato soufflet!

J being a goof, as usual!

Much better!

J's Dad passed out after dinner

Friday night we went to J's Grandparents house who put out a BEAUTIFUL spread of scrumptious food! It was delicious! Again, we overindulged..but everything stayed in our bellies this time!

J and I have put the tree up and decorated around our home for Christmas! Tomorrow we are going to a beautiful Battlefield Illumination that is held every year. J and his Grandparents volunteer every year and help light the 23 THOUSAND candles for every soldier killed. This year I am going with them =) It's a beautiful sight to see and I am so excited!

I have much more to update on and more picture to share, but it will have to wait a day or so!