Just a little basic, basic history if you're just now joining us...

I am married to my best friend, Joe. We met online in July of 2010, met in person at the airport two weeks later when he came home from his job working in the Gulf of Mexico, and we were married six months to the day after we met in person in January of 2011. We like to joke that we had at least 50 dates before we actually met because of the sheer amount of information that we were exchanging through emails, phone calls, texts, and instant messaging on Facebook. And it's pretty true. We had worked through all the normal/major relationship issues before we ever met face to face. It was a short courtship, but wonderful. I could not have designed someone better suited for me, and I know exactly how lucky I am to have him. For his part, he thinks I'm pretty great (his actual words when we discussed getting married were "you're perfect so there's no worries there") and loves me for who I am. That's absolutely priceless to me. Together we have six awesome kiddos, 3 are mine and 3 are his, but they are all ours.

Joe has a unique job that takes him out of the country (currently to the North Sea off the coast of Norway) every other month. He loves what he does and is compensated pretty well for his time away, but it changes the dynamic of our home and our family everytime he leaves. This is in part because his three kiddos don't live with us full time. Two of them live in the same town but we only get to see them when he's home. The other one lives in Florida and I have yet to meet him. Regardless, we both love all the kids like they belong to both of us. Joe is a fantastic father...that's really all I have to say about that :)

Several years ago I was married to someone else and was a stay at home mom. When that ended I elected to go back to school and finish my bachelors degree instead of trying to support my little family on a paycheck from someplace like Walmart. I met Joe after completing my first 4 quarters back at school and had only one year left. On June 11, 2011 I graduated with highest honors and have officially retired my school career in order to return to being a stay at home mom. I am very grateful that Joe feels as strongly as I do that the mother's place is in the home...especially while the kids are small. I am looking forward to playing hard with the kids this summer. They are very excited that I'm done with school too.

And that's kind of it for now...I've got a lot more time on my hands than I have had for the last couple of years, so this might actually get updated every so often lol