Going solo

About a week ago Stephen left to go to Texas for 3 weeks of training.

(Stephen pronounces Texas "Tay-hos" by the way, he's a goof like that)

I have found it interesting how when I tell people he is gone for 3 weeks they say "Oh wow, that's a long time!"

I fear that my response to them may make them think I don't like Stephen very much.

They ask things like "How are you doing with him gone that long?"

And I say "Oh, I'm fine."

And I am.

Sure I miss him.

Sure I would rather he not be gone.

But when your husband is regularly gone for chunks of time you learn to focus on the positive and not the negative.

You also learn to look at things in perspective.

For example, what is 3 weeks when he has been gone for 2 months at a time?

I survived those separations, I can certainly survive this one.

The biggest thing that keeps things in perspective is that most military wives have had their husbands gone for a year.

I have been so blessed to only have to part with him for 3 weeks!

So I certainly have no right to complain.

On the positive side, I can be very productive when he is gone.

I have so much more free time when I am not cooking and cleaning up after him.

So I have a long list of bigger projects that I can get done while he is gone.

This past week it was working on my Etsy shop.

Next week I am going to tackle the yard.

(Which may be a fight to the death, I'll let you know who wins.)

Here is some of what I did over the weekend.

I made a bunch of these cookies for a baby shower at church.



I got my bulk order of embroidery hoops.



These should last me a while!

I went to the farmers market and had this:



It was a locally made strawberry and goat cheese popsicle.

It was good.

I bought this there:



(That's ginger by the way)

And made this with it.



Yep, you saw right, ginger ice cream.

The recipe for ginger ice cream came from this book:



Which is awesome by the way.

And I thought, hmm....ginger, that would be interesting.

I have had chocolate bars with crystallized ginger in it and the flavors together were very good.

So ginger chocolate chip ice cream was born.

How did it turn out?

Well it's one of those things that you take a bite and say "Hmmmm, that's interesting.." and then take another bite, and another, still not sure if "interesting" means "good" or not.

I can tell you is that It certainly doesn't taste bad!

I am hoping to try some more interesting ice cream creations in the future.

Though I am not sure I will ever be brave enough to try the recipes for olive oil, black pepper or parsley ice cream.

(I'm not kidding, those are in the book!)