Let's Explain....

Just as soon as I posted my first post (yay!) I realized I told nothing about myself or why I chose to blog and the name behind my blog. Therefore, I am going to do blog a second post merely minutes behind the first. My name is Tiffany Dale and I am a newlywed alongside my wonderful husband Clay. I chose to call my blog Southern Adventures because I wanted to log my adventures that I have on a day to day basis. I was born and raised in the south and currently live in the south, so I am definitely a Southern Belle. I like to cook almost anything, and since I am a new bride and wife, cooking means something along the lines of experimenting at my house. Clay is a trooper and eats whatever I fix him with a big smile on his face, which is alot considering he would get spankings as a child for not wanting to eat the foods that didn't look like chicken or hamburgers on his plate. Clay is also a good 'ole Southern Gentleman, meaning he likes fried chicken, hamburgers, steak, and....yeah, that pretty much sums it up. He is a VERY picky eater, and so here comes my quest as the new wife. I am going to get Clay to eat new foods! I cannot tell you how may times we have been out to a swanky nice restaurant and I get a fancy dish that 'expands my horizons' and Clay gets chicken fingers. He promised me when we got married though, that he would try everything I made him, and in return I promised to not make him eat it again if he didn't like it. Fair enough, I say, because at least I'm not having to spank him to get him to eat, right? :)

On the subject of being a newlywed, it is GREAT! We love spending more time together and doing what we want when we want to, but we also miss our families. It is a hard adjustment going from living with your family and seeing your fiance on the weekend to being with your new husband all of the time and seeing your family every other weekend. I have also learned that this is not the only adjustment I am going to have to face. Marriage is definitely about give and take. Lately I have noticed I do alot more taking than giving.
Example A:
Clay and I went shopping (he actually LOVES to go shopping with me!) yesterday for groceries. I was SO excited because I bought the paper and had decided I was going to be one of those coupon gurus who spends less than she saves. Well anyways, I cut out about forty coupons in the paper and off we went to the store. I was so excited to save money and make him proud of my efforts, but everytime we went to use the coupons there was something else that was cheaper, so I didn't get to use my coupons. Then I started feeling bad that we were spending all this money and I look down and there is chocolate milk in the buggy. I go all crazy saying there is no way we can buy chocolate milk when I just bought chocolate syrup to make his chocolate milk with, so he put it back. That made me feel really guilty and horrible, but after I made a big fuss about it, he wouldn't get the chocolate milk. Well, we left the store and ended up using only one of my forty coupons. It was .40 off a bag of chocolate chip cookies that costs $2.49 that we really didn't even need. I was upset that we didn't use my coupons (mostly because I didn't know how to do the good bargain shopping like everybody else seems to be able to do), I was upset because I made Clay put his chocolate milk back, and we spent $118.00. Good gracious alive. So the moral of the story was that Clay was being very gracious about taking me shopping and letting me walk around the store trying to find the best deals to use my coupons, and I should have let him get the chocolate milk. Hindsight is 20/20.

Marriage is not tough to me like everybody said it would be. It is just something I have to get used to. It isn't all about me anymore or what I want, it's about pleasing Clay and making him happy. If he is proud of me at the ed of the day, that makes me happy, so it is a win-win situation.

What I learned thus far-
Marriage is a never ending learning cycle.

Until next time!
Tiffany