Week in Review!!!

Good morning everyone, hope you're all having a wonderful start to your Friday.

I am starting mine in a very quiet relaxing way, I guess.  I slept in a little this morning, I don't know what is going on but I just feel like I don't get enough sleep and am never caught up on it, no matter how early I try to get to bed the night before.

All I can say is, thank God it's Friday because no alarms going off tomorrow morning.  Yay!!!

I've been an awful blogger this week, it's just been a bit of a weird one for me, not really busy but also busy, does that make any sense whatsoever?  No?  I didn't think it would, it doesn't make sense for me.

Regardless, I thought I would come in this morning and have a good ol' chat with you all, see what you're up to, and tell you a little of what I've been doing, which really is nothing interesting, and may sound absolutely boring to most.

I've filled my week with housework, laundry, homeschooling and basic life living.  Yep, just every day living and surviving whatever comes our way.

I managed to make some appointments, and I also spent numerous hours on the phone with Tricare, military medical insurance, sorting through some issues we've been having.

To say that dealing with them is an annoyance would be a total understatement, it's so frustrating and then you get the run around and stuck on the phone waiting forever, and transferred from here to there.

After Curt retired we decided to stay with Tricare Prime.  Now keep in mind he retired 2 years ago, but since moving from Idaho to Texas we have had nothing but issues with payment, and late payments that we didn't know were there, money not being taken out of the account, not being able to be seen on base etc.

We've always had their monthly premiums coming straight out of my husband's retirement, then back in August they stopped, and truthfully, with everything going on with the move I didn't realize that it had happened, so we were removed from the Insurance.  When I tried to make my doctors appointment in September, I hit a wall, so had to call Tricare back in the west region (Idaho) to find out what was happening, pay them for the month they didn't take out, and get transferred to the South region (Texas) so that I could be seen at this base hospital.

When I went to make an appointment for Jasmine yesterday, again, another wall, apparently they hadn't taken the money out for September and October so removed us from the insurance again.  I sat on the phone for almost an hour and a half yesterday dealing with this, paying outstanding fees, making sure they PUT us back on automatic payments like I requested back in August, and trying to get us back on Tricare Prime so that I can make the appointment for Jasmine, and I have my Annual Women's appointment on Tuesday so need to be sure we are ok for that.

*WHEW*

Anyway, I have to call later today to make sure that we have been placed back on Tricare Prime.

Moving on, we had a crazy thunderstorm come in yesterday, bringing hail and strong winds and some of the strongest rain I've seen in a while.  It almost looked like snow at one point.  I put a video up on Instagram, let me see if I can share it here too for you just so you get an idea.

Hope that works.

After the crazy storm, the skies immediately opened up and left us with some of the prettiest clouds I've ever seen. Isn't it amazing that if you just look up to the sky you will be shown beauty like you've never seen before? When I'm having an especially bad day, I go outside, I don't know but being in the house seems to exacerbate my problems, like I'm in this bubble where all my worries and stress and problems are contained and it's overwhelming and suffocating. I usually step right outside, and walk around the yard a bit, the fresh air, nature, the birds flying above, everything, it just seems to life the load off me and make me breathe and forget. Try it sometime, it really does help.

We are now well into Fall season and the gorgeous trees in my yard are just beautiful.  Everything is turning yellow and orange and red, it's no wonder Fall is one of my favorite seasons.

Speaking of pretty things, I got a book in the mail for review.  I love books and I love receiving books but when they are cookbooks it makes me even more excited and this one is......oh goodness, let me show you.

I'll be reviewing it in a few weeks and I honestly can not wait.  Such a gorgeous cover, it puts me right in the mood for Christmas.

It is written by Ellen Stimson who has a bestselling memoir called Mud Season.  It's filled with stories and family recipes and photographs.  I didn't start reading it yet, just opened it and flipped through some pages and was mesmerized by the beautiful photos, the yummy sounding food and the stories.

Vermont!!!!!  Enough said!!!!

I'll be reviewing it over on the food blog and here on this one because I think it would make a really good gift for a cookbook lover, so be on the look out for that.

Right, now I have got to get started on my menu planning, I need to get groceries tomorrow and I also need to start on my Thanksgiving menu.  We are having family over, quite a few actually, I think as of now 10 plus us 4.  I'm excited folks, we spent most of our military lives away from family and spent all the holidays alone, and then the past two years we got spoiled with having my brother and his family with us, and to think that we would go back now to celebrating alone was kind of sad, so we are so happy and blessed to be near family and be able to have a big get together.

Lots of planning is going into this, I have tons of ideas and been scouring Pinterest, I just want to make this Thanksgiving one of the best ever.

So, yeah, I better get off here and start getting things taken care of, we don't have much time actually, goodness this year has flown by.

Hope you all have the best Friday ever, I will be back tomorrow with another Grocery Haul and Menu Plan and such.  I might just start doing Menu Plan Sunday every week, I know there's a Menu Plan Monday in the blog world, I was around when it first took off with Laura from An Organizing Junkie, but since then it grew so much that I stopped participating, there were just too many people and hundreds of links and it became quite overwhelming, so I think I'll start doing it on Sunday for myself and if any of my blog readers want to join in, that's fine too.

Ok I'm really gone now LOL  See you all tomorrow :)