I had a wonderful youth minister in Jackson who helped me learn that life is full of seasons. I am a sentimental person, so it's hard for me to face goodbyes and change. But she taught me that some people and things come into our lives for only a season, and just because they won't forever be a day-to-day part of our lives doesn't mean the importance of their season is diminished. Rather than looking back and being sad, you can reflect back on what they meant to you, how it changed you, and who you've become now, in part due to that season. It completely changed my outlook on life and, I think, helped me through a lot of changes during late high school, college, and since.

John Piper, in his prayer for women, has a paragraph that refers to chapters, which I choose to equate with those seasons. He says,
"No chapter has all the joys. Finite life is a series of trade-offs. Finding God's will and living for the glory of Christ to the full in every chapter is what makes it a success, not whether it reads like somebody else’s chapter or whether it has in it what only another chapter will bring."

I love that. To me, it encapsulates the beauty of what I've been learning for years about seasons.

Well, come May, Hubby and I will be beginning a new chapter, or season. I have loved our season here in Huntsville. We have found a church home that fits just right and made a great group of friends through it. I have grown so much, both personally and professionally, through my job in the past year, and we've learned a lot about each other in this season, too.

In December, Hubby decided to resign from his job to spend some time studying up before beginning to look for a position in a new, though closely related, field. We were united in this decision and looked forward to the time of re-evaluation and exploration. But then, sooner than we had expected or planned, a job offer came in from a company that fit just about all of his "new job" criteria. In a whirlwind few weeks, we went for an interview, received an offer, and made the decision to uproot.

At the end of April, we will be moving to Atlanta for Hubby to join forces (physically, since he is already working remotely) with a great small software consulting firm doing Ruby on Rails web application development.

(Are you liberal artsy readers still with me? The important part of that sentence is "moving to Atlanta.")

It's hard to think about leaving this nest we have built, but we are also excited. We went a few weeks ago and successfully shopped for an apartment. Especially now that I can envision the actual space, I have been mentally culling our current belongings and laying them out in our new home. I'm sure early summer will bring a flurry of blog posts as I shop, decorate, and acclimate myself to my new surroundings.

In this in-between time, though, I am daily striving to stay here. Yes, I am excited about the changes and the adventure. Yes, I am looking forward to a respite as I reinvent my daily life. But yes, I also still have responsibilities and opportunities for enjoyment here. And I don't want to miss this. I feel like I missed out on a lot during my last semester of college because my brain was months ahead of my body, planning for a wedding and a marriage, and I don't want to do that again.

For today, and tomorrow, and the next month, I am in this chapter.

But the next one will enfold in its own time, and I will be ready.

Homemade salad dressing is something I'm surprised I haven't seen more about in all of the frugality/parenting/yummy food blogs I follow. I don't see how you can beat it: it's quick, easy, yummy, full of ingredients whose names are real food items, and, I would imagine, frugal, since it includes small bits of things you probably already have in your pantry.

I haven't always sung the praises of homemade salad dressing. Growing up, we never had dressing from a bottle. We always used this oozy brown stuff out of a jar that you had to shake a lot before you poured it on the salad. It sometimes sat on the counter on top of a paper towel marked with a ring of brown drip. I never knew from whence it came. I coveted dressing from a bottle: the colors! the flavor options! the squeezy ability! When we started traveling a lot for swim meets, we would often eat at Olive Garden, because when you're in Laurel or Cleveland or Meridian, Mississippi, you can't be too choosy. I fell in love with Italian dressing, and every once in awhile my darling daddy would spoil me with a bottle of Wishbone that made me think I was queen of the world. My parents would eat salad drenched in the oozy brown stuff out of a big bowl, which they would put on their plates TOUCHING all the rest of their food, while I would have my salad drizzled with bottled goodness in a SEPARATE bowl to protect my taste buds from the horrors of touching food.

Oh, what a different story I sing now.

First of all, have you seen how expensive bottled dressing is? My inner coupon-clipping goddess cringes when she stands in front of the salad dressing aisle, calculating cost per ounce and comparing ingredients. And inevitably, all of the fancy ones that sound good to me and might be moderately better for you are, of course, the most expensive. Perhaps frugality bloggers pay better attention to coupons and sales to stock up on dressing, but I seem to only ever find myself seeking to buy it when I need it THAT NIGHT, so frugality loses out.

Secondly, the calorie count in salad dressings is ridiculous. I'm not a crazy calorie counter, and I love the occasional bowl of baby carrots with some good ole ranch dressing as much as the next girl, but when I think too much about it I simply can't give in to dressing my salad with it.

I often found myself buying the "lite" balsamic vinaigrette dressing, which I ultimately realized was exactly what the oozy brown stuff I grew up with was.

So, that said, I finally admitted to my mom last fall that I wanted to start making my own salad dressing. She gave me a cute little mason jar that was once labeled lime juice, and I have adopted it as my salad dressing mixer of choice. Don't let As Seen on TV Ads convince you that you need a fancy shaker to make salad dressing. And she gave me a recipe that looks a little something like this:
3/4 cup or parts olive oil

The first time I made it, I followed the measurements to a T. At Christmas, my mom gifted me with a garlic press after watching me patiently mash garlic into a pile of salt to make the called-for paste. But since then, I've taken to winging it. Sometimes, I just chop the garlic up and throw in the little bits, skipping the mashing all together. I've also gotten loose with the measurements. Last night I made some and I poured some amount of olive oil, some slightly smaller amount of balsamic vinegar, and some even smaller amount of spicy brown mustard into the erroneously labeled lime juice jar, though I did mash the garlic and salt this time. (With a fork. I've actually decided the fork method works really well, though the garlic press is useful other times, too.) I've also taken to adding a squeeze of honey to cut the bite of the vinegar. I've decided that the tiny bit of salt is essential, whether mashed with the garlic or not. Whatever I do, I just always make sure to dip a pinkie in and demurely taste the dressing before I dump it on my salad.</p>

Since it only takes a tiny bit to dress two salads, even when I only make a fraction of a jarful of this it lasts us awhile. If left in the refrigerator, the olive oil tends to harden, so just make sure you take it out a bit before you want to use it to let it re-liquify at room temperature. We have three partial bottles of store-bought dressing languishing in the fridge (hmm, I wonder how many of those are expired?), but this is so quick and easy I have no intentions of going back to them.

And you know what? Every bite of salad with this dressing tastes a little bit like home.</div>

Hubby is leaving at SIX AM tomorrow (gross!) to go camping, and I am looking forward to a day of rejuvenating girliness. I feel like I haven't spent much time left to my own devices lately.

Plans include:

Sitting by the water at Dublin Park in shorts and a tank top reading magazines.

</p>

(Nice weather, please stick around!)

Cooking and baking. (I also feel like I've been flying by the seat of my pants as far as weeknight dinners go, and I don't like that.)

• Martha Stewart's Split-pea soup with the hambone from the ham I got after Christmas on super-sale.
• Lasagna Casserole from Money Saving Mom.
• Bubble Up Pizza and Creamy Chicken Pasta from Plain Chicken.
• and possibly, Sweet Cinnamon Scones from Pioneer Woman.

(Can you tell that I spend a lot of time reading blogs?)

Watching lots of girlie television and movies that Hubby doesn't want to watch with me and that I've found I enjoy much more when he's not around to make fun of, to include:

and
</p>

Doing about 8 million loads of laundry, which I actually enjoy.

Sleeping.

I realize it might not be normal to have such an extensive list for one's free/leisure time, but such is my life, and I am looking forward to it.</div> </div>