Winners!

Courtsey of Random.org, here are the three winning numbers: 25, 40, 17 which is: Nicole, Lola and Jessie. So girls, if you would, please e-mail your addresses to newgirlonpost@live.com.

Thank you all for participating in my giveaway! I'm going to do my best to start doing one giveaway a month.

I'm a bit worn out from our Military Family Appreciation Day today, so no long blogs from me today. More from me tomorrow!

Time for a New Girl Giveaway

In honor of tomorrow being D-Day, I decided to have a giveaway.

Some of you might remember my Memorial Day post and the book that I mentioned in it. Thomas Childers' Soldier from the War Returning. If you missed me talking about it, it's a non-fiction book that chronicles the lives of three WWII veterans and the struggles they faced returning home after the war. It's an AMAZING book and I highly recommend you read it.

Anyway, after reading my last post about the book, a publicist for Mr. Childers contacted me and graciously offered to send me three copies of the book to give out to my readers. She also put me in contact with Mr. Childers so I can do an interview with him, so once I get that done I'll be posting that on here as well.




So...here's the deal. I've got three books to give away. Leave me a comment to be entered!

Bucket List

I was watching The Bucket List at the USO recently and it got me thinking.

(For those that haven't seen the movie, basically two men that are dying make a list of everything they want to see/do before they die)

I started thinking about what would be on my Bucket List.

Here's mine so far.

1. See as many National Parks, Monuments, Memorials, Historic Sites as possible.
2. Spend a whole summer in the Grand Tetons
3. Sell one of my photographs for a decent amount of money
4. Buy an original Ansel Adams print
5. Meet a President
6. Visit 6 Continents (I'm not that jazzed about Antarctica, so I left it off)
7. Become a certified scuba diver
8. Learn how to sew...well
9. Take my Mom on a just us girls trip to NYC
10. See a Broadway show
11. Go to the top of the Statue of Liberty
12. Ride a mule into the Grand Canyon
13. Spend a year traveling all over the U.S. in an RV
14. Adopt another Min-Pin or two
15. Have an amazing garden
16. Buy a Greek Revival home
17. Spend the night at Oak Alley Plantation
18. Go on an African safari
19. Get my Masters in Library Science
20. Open my own photography business
21. Go on a cruise with my entire extended family
22. Have a belated honeymoon in Fiji
23. Buy a piece of movie memorabilia from Saturday Night Fever

What are some of the things on your Bucket List?

Stay Put? Or Upgrade?

I've noticed lately that a lot of my favorite bloggers have made the switch from Blogger to their own website. I admit that there are times that I'd like to make the switch myself.

However...I always say that I'm not a computer person and the thought of switching to my own website is quite daunting.

I think part of the reason I'm staying put for now is that eventually I want to have my own photography website and I don't want to intermingle my blog with that site. Make sense?

Have any of the rest of you considered switching? Any tips for me if I ever decide to make the switch?

So....I found this little tidbit interesting. I was visiting the Army wives forum that I have a love/hate relationship with this morning and a girl posted asking if she could visit her husband who was deployed, over Christmas, in case he didn't get to come home for Christmas.

Hold up....you want to visit your husband in a war zone? I'm also not sure why she was thinking he would get time off for Christmas. This was not her asking about R&R, this was her asking about him getting to come home for a holiday. From a warzone. It's times like this that I very STRONGLY believe that the Army or any branch of the military should be having a more in-depth class for spouses to answer questions like this or even maybe a mentor. I'm just flabbergasted that this girl asked that in the first place.

Now for a tip from yours truly: A lot of you ask me about the stuff I get on Forever 21 and how you can't find it in the store. You aren't the only one. When I used to shop in the store I very rarely found what I had seen online in the store. My advice to you? Buy it online. It saves you a headache, I swear.

One last thing. I know this is sort of old news, but what do you guys think about this whole Jon and Kate debacle? I've watched the show off and on, but I've never been a faithful viewer. I honestly don't know what to think. From what the magazines say it seems Kate is kind of a fame-hungry tyrant, but who knows if that's even true. Your thoughts?

Addiction

I'd like to thank everyone who commented on yesterdays post about heritage and identity. I really enjoyed reading every single one of your answers.

I've been pretty busy this week with getting ready for not only my family coming in on Monday, but also our upcoming Military Family Appreciation Day that we are hosting this Saturday. There's a lot to be done for it, so I've been keeping pretty busy at work doing that.

Last night though when I was at home I took the opportunity to browse Forever21 and get a few more tanks and dresses that I felt were imperative for my wardrobe. (Told you I had an addiction)

Here's a few things I picked out.



I'm a huge dress fanatic during the summer. I thought this dress was perfect. White with a splash of color.



Another maxi dress. I've gotten compliments on the other maxi dress I bought every single time I've worn it.



I thought this Paris t-shirt was adorable!

I've been sucked in to the Twilight hype. I honestly thought the movie was crap, but the other day I finally bought the book and finished reading where I had left off listening to the audio tape. Today I bought New Moon and will probably try to read a bit more of it tonight. I wouldn't say it's the best book ever, but it does suck you in. Believe me when I say though that I'm no Twilight fanatic.

I just bought a bunch of books off Amazon though that are travel type books. I LOVE me some travel stories and these should keep me occupied for awhile. I'll let you know if they're any good.

Other than that it appears they are trying to send Sean to WLC in June/July. Which obviously means he'll be gone for our birthdays and anniversary. I'm not ecstatic about it, but I'm hoping we can make up for it and still go to Ireland before he deploys. I just hate the fact I'll probably be spending my birthday by myself. Such is the Army life!

Identity and Heritage

I bet a ton of you out there know where your ancestors came from right?

I do at least. I have German and Norweigan ancestors on my dad's side and Native American on my Moms.

I've been noticing a lot lately how many people really have an intense pride in what country their ancestors came from. I've noticed this is especially prevalent in those that are Irish and Italian.

It's not that I'm not proud of where my ancestors are from, but I've never really felt a huge connection with any of the countries or the tribe of my Native American heritage. Obviously I do want to go to Germany and Norway while I'm here, but that's about it.

In all honestly I identify more with the state I'm from. I'm a fiercly proud and loyal Oklahoman. Besides that I consider myself a Southern girl. I know it's up for debate whether Oklahoma is the Midwest or the South, but I at least consider us to be a Southern state. If any accent in the state has a twang..then I consider it to be Southern.

What do you identify with more? Your heritage? Your state? Your region? What are you reasons?

Careers, Plans and the Future

Every year as my birthday draws closer I sit and reflect about what I've done this past year and what I've accomplished.

For the past few years I've had mixed feelings about each passing year. Somehow I don't feel as if I've reached my full potential each year and that feeling bothers me.

The question is though, how do I reach that point where I do feel as if I've reached my full potential? When I feel like I am doing in my life what I'm supposed to be doing?

I guess what I'm mainly talking about is a career. For the most part it doesn't bother me that I don't have an established career. I've had several interesting jobs and I wouldn't trade those experiences for the world. Yet, at almost 26 years old, I sometimes feel behind the crowd or as if what I'm doing isn't normal.

Granted, as a military spouse I knew it would be harder to have a career or sometimes even have a job at all, but knowing that doesn't make it any easier.

When I got out of college my dream was to work for the National Park Service in one of their museums, I love the outdoors, I love the feeling I get when I visit the parks and I wanted to experience that on a daily basis. Eventually I realized that as a military spouse that was going to be next to impossible, unless I somehow luckily ended up next to a National Park.

My next thought was to become a librarian. Specifically to work as an elementary librarian at a school. I had a job in a public library for a year and a half and really enjoyed it. Plus as a military spouse having a degree in library science is something I could more easily find a job with (hopefully) and in the future would be able to spend summers with my children.

These days I've been thinking about pursuing photography as my career. I love it. I love shooting, I love editing. I just like it all. EXCEPT, I don't love shooting people as much as I do landscapes and shooting people is where the money is at. Not to mention there is a lot of time and money that go into becoming a successful photographer. Right now I don't have any customers either. Something that obviously is very important to be able to make a career out of it.

So I'm stuck. What to do? Get my Masters in library science as a back-up and in the meantime do my photography on the side? That's my plan right now, but that could change at the drop of a hat.

Any advice ladies?