It's ICLW Time!

Happy ICLW!!

If this is your first visit to my blog, welcome and stay tuned for a bit of info about me. If you've been by before, well, welcome back!

The break-down on me:

I'm a 33-year-old, married, PCOS suffering, slightly retro, slightly metro Georgia girl who's been trying to start a family for 8 1/2 years. My other half (conveniently known as The Hubs) is British born and bred, but made the sacrifice to move to the States with me 6 years ago. We've been married 9 1/2 years and spent the first 3 years of our married life (and the preceding 6 months) living in England. My homesickness and dad's ill health precipitated our move to the US.

The last year has held a lot of changes for us. My dad had a stroke last May and spent the following 5 weeks in the hospital. He was home for 4 weeks when he had a massive heart attack and passed away. I've always been a total Daddy's Girl, so his death has left a huge hole in my life. Following my dad's death, The Hubs and I moved to a new home, as did my mom (we had previously lived next door to my parents). And, after much discussion, The Hubs and I decided to procede with adoption through foster care and are currently in the middle of our training and home study.

In addition to those huge changes, I am in the final 5 weeks of my Bachelor's degree. I will be traveling to Iowa (from Georgia) for my graduation at the end of April. I also work full-time. So, right now my head feels as if it's spinning with everything I have going on!

Did I mention that, in the midst of all that change, my best friend (apart from The Hubs) abandoned me to move off to Afghanistan for a significantly higher-paying civilian contractor job? Yeah, a tough year.

All this has helped to contribute to me being terrible over the last few months at ICLW. So much so, that I actually skipped last month because I didn't feel my failure on commenting was fair to the other participants. I have decided, however, to give it another shot this month.

I've also been atrocious at blogging consistently over the last couple of months, so I really need to work on that as well. Fortunately, the Blogging From A to Z in April Challenge begins in 10 days and I've signed up again this year. Hopefully I'll do as well with it this year as I did last year. If you haven't signed up yet, you should definitely head over and get your name down!

Other things that might interest you about me?

I love to read! I'll read virtually anything and I feel out of sorts without something to read.

I enjoy crocheting but it's been one of those things that have become a casualty over the last few months. I'm hoping once I finish school I'll get back to it since I owe someone an afghan!

I absolutely love singing! It's my greatest passion in life. I actually submitted an audition to my university earlier this week in the hopes of singing the National Anthem at graduation. Want to hear/see my audition? You can find it here.

The Hubs and I are major movie buffs and we try to go to the movies at least once a month (which usually equates to more like 2 or 3 times a month - this is what I waste my free time on).

I am a huge, Huge, HUGE Hunger Games fan! I cannot stress to you how much I love this series! The Hubs and I (naturally) have tickets for the midnight showing tomorrow night and I can hardly wait! It's going to be epic!

I have developed a huge (but harmless) crush on Josh Hutcherson who plays Peeta in The Hunger Games, which my amazing husband indulges gleefully. If he goes shopping without me and sees a magazine with Josh or anything relating to The Hunger Games on it, he'll buy it for me. He also informs me when JHutch is going to be appearing on the David Letterman Show (tonight!! Eek!!) - he really is a fantastic guy! Who finds my crush on a celebrity 14 years younger than me humourous =D

There are two socially concious organizations that I support and cannot sing the praises of highly enough. As an aspiring teacher and Social Science major, these are my pet causes. The first is To Write Love On Her Arms, "a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery" (definition taken directly from the TWLOHA website). The second organization is Straight But Not Narrow, founded to encourage teens who are straight to support their LGBT peers. Both these organizations help to prevent bullying and to offer support when bullying does occur.

Well, that's pretty much me in a nutshell! I hope I haven't sent you running for the hills! Got any questions? Feel free to ask!