Monday, October 24, 2016

long time no see (write?)

Well.

It's been awhile, huh? But I'd like to try and bring the blog back a little if we can. Life has been busy lately - we hit the ground running at the beginning of the school year and haven't slowed down since. I've been finding myself feeling a little off-kilter lately, not able to find my center and seemingly heading in five different directions all at once on any given day. In order to figure some of that out, I sat down on Friday, with paper and pencil in hand (I don't do well with keeping track of things with technology) and wrote out a list of all of my commitments. Guess how many there are?

EIGHTEEN.

And that doesn't even count my automatic top two of God and Family. And I didn't add the blog to it because I wasn't sure where we stood on it, though truth be told, I miss it a little bit and am going to try and write at least once a week. So really there are nineteen which works out well with my aversion to even numbers. Nineteen things that I want to give my time and energy to on a weekly or monthly basis. Most of them are work and church and school related, and as I looked over my list, the only thing on it that I wanted to give up was grocery shopping. Maybe this one doesn't seem like a "commitment" but since I have to drive 30 minutes to a decent grocery store and then spend anywhere from an hour to two hours shopping there and at a couple other stores, and then driving 30 minutes back home, it ends up being a big chunk of my time every week. So you know what I did? Yesterday I placed my first "ClickList" order through Kroger and tomorrow, between 10 and 11am, I will drive by the store in between my morning workout with my favorite boot camp girls and a lunch date with one of my favorite people, and I will NOT GET OUT OF MY CAR. They will bring the groceries to my car, put them in, charge my credit card only for the groceries (no charge for the shopping and delivery to the car!) and then I will drive away. It will probably take less than 10 minutes which will end up saving me at least a couple hours, but maybe more since I sometimes drive to several different stores to pick things up. WIN! This will give me more time in the day to work on both of my businesses (yes, I picked up another which I'm hoping I can tell you about sometime in the near future) and work on a couple certifications that I'm adding to the personal training (Youth Fitness and Group Training - I'm so excited!).

So hopefully I am on my way to figuring out how to consolidate my time away from home so that I can work a few more hours each day. Wish me luck!

Since it's been quite awhile since we've posted, I thought I'd just share a bunch of recent photos to catch us all up on what's been going on. Here they are, if you'd like to see...


















Above, you will find pictures of the sweetest little baby boy, a weekend in Charlottesville, a weekend at the beach, a 40th birthday celebration at Camden Yards, the best grandparents on duty for a long weekend, brothers and sisters, girl cousins, boy cousins, a vacation in Charleston, and a family photo at a superhero birthday party. As you can see, our lives are full. Full of craziness and stress and decisions and new beginnings and running around like a chicken with our heads cut off. But they are also full of beautiful and amazing and lovely and hilarious and happy. I hope your days are full of the same, because as I've been reminded lately, if we didn't have the challenges, we wouldn't notice the joy.

Yesterday afternoon, while the boys were doing a booth sale for cub scouts and Annabel was drawing some pictures, and I was sitting next to her working on my ClickList order with a million other things running through my head, I made a decision. I closed the computer, picked up my sweet girl and carried her out to the trampoline where we spent an hour jumping and laying down looking up at the leaves and doing cartwheels and throwing all the acorns out so we didn't step on them. We laughed and talked and enjoyed the beautiful afternoon. And not once did I think of the studying I could have been doing or the house that needed to be cleaned or the overflowing recycle bins that needed to be loaded in the car or the emails I needed to send out. It was just what we both needed at the end of one busy week and the beginning of another. I hope that you can carve out an hour today for "trampoline time" with your family or maybe just by yourself. Don't miss these beautiful October days and nights with the fiery leaves and bright stars.

Wishing you a great week, my friends!

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