Just chillin'

It's been a full and busy week. We fed the missionaries on Wednesday. I made a cake. Here's what was left:

It was delicious. I used/adapted the Pampered Chef Mexican Chocolate Cake from their current Season's Best cookbook. I say adapted because I didn't have any sour cream and remembered that my Mom used to make an amazing chocolate cake that had mayonnaise in it. So I used that. And some milk. As you can see, it tasted very good!

We had a Valentine's party at school. Well, it was really a birthday party for one of our kids, but we had it on Valentine's day, so that counted. We made V-day pouches and brought little treats for everyone. I made Pirate valentine's for C. They turned out well and made him happy, which is really all that matters. The inside was stamped with "Happy Valentine's Day" and I wrote "from C"

I also got to take him to the "Gilbert House" as we call it. That was a lot of fun. I realized that while I spend a lot of time with him (because I take him to work with me) I don't get to be free and unfettered with him. I'm always walking that fine line between "don't spoil him 'cause I'm his teacher" and "ignore him more than I would otherwise because I'm his teacher." This outing made me realize that I need to spend time with him in places where I can just be his mom.

All in all, a good week.

A Resolution Update

The blogging challenge on 2peas for Monday is about how your resolutions are going. Here's a recap:

Exercising more---not sure about the eating less part! (which means probably not!)
*I've been good about Sunday School
*I haven't written any more in my book, but I did name a few characters. That 5 0'clock club is lookin' serious people!
*My "No Caffeinated Soda" (since I only like my caffeine cold!) was going well, but I succumbed on Saturday. WARNING--POSSIBLE TMI AHEAD!!! For the last 5 years I've suffered from really clammy nasty night sweats. Interestingly enough, when I went cold turkey from the Sauce last year, they pretty much stopped. I didn't think much about it. Now I notice, however, that when I have the soda, I have night sweats again. Coincidence? I think not. Just goes to show you that drugs really are bad for you!

I did try to post my "This Year I Will" book in my 2peas gallery, but apparently 2peas didn't have enough memory to do it. I'll have to resize the pictures first I guess. There are a lot of pictures, so that's a lot of time. Time I'm not sure I want to spend right now. But I want to share the book, so SOMETHING will have to be done!

TTFN~!

New Year

and I'm still here! I've had a dozen thoughts floating through my head.....

but right now, I think I'm too sleepy to type much out!

A recap on my goals:
the usual eat less/move more (I'm back to my Pilates 2-3 times a week, plus my playground workout, plus I'm working to walk the dog more...)

Sleep more (I suffer from chronic/inherited insomnia. I sleep sporadically, and where other people just move into a cycle of lighter sleep--but still stay asleep, I always wake up all the way)

Avoid caffeine as much as possible. (I've learned that my chronic insomnia improves exponentially when I am caffeine free. This is hard 'cause for a long time, a diet pepsi was a big treat for me. It's also kind of a huge WELL D'UH!)

Go to Sunday School (instead of socializing in the foyer)

Some of my do's for the year:
Take more pictures

Sew more stuff

Put things in my etsy shop

Learn to use Photoshop CS2

And.....I'm writing a book! I'd love to be able to post bits of it here for you to read, but this is something I'd really like to pursue publishing and making a "real" book. I've thought about writing a book my whole life. I love to write! It's one of the reasons I started this blog in the first place. I will tell you that it's a work of youth fiction, and it's a retelling of the Snow White Fairy Tale. I'm pretty consumed with it. I have the whole thing mapped out in my head. When I take the time to write, it just flows together. Now to find the time to write....that's easier said than done. I'm actually considering getting up at 5am to write for a few hours when the house is quiet. When I was COMPLETELY ensconced in the pink MK bubble, I scoffed at the whole "5 o'clock Club" idea; now I am ready to embrace it wholeheartedly. Kinda ironic, I know.

My "one little word" for the year is FOCUS. By keeping my focus on what I really want to do, and what's really important, I'll achieve what I'm working for.

That's all for now! Go sleep!

So

So I can't really think of anything to say.

I'm busy today preparing for my classes at Stampin'Cat on Saturday. Seems like I'm crazybuzy....I need to create a couple of more handouts, and finish two mini-albums for my Feburary Paper School class. And when I mean finish, well, one of them isn't really started.

I had this fallacy that when I was a stay-at-home-mom, I'd have all of this time. I'd have a clean house. I'd have time for my hobbies. I'd have time to work out every day. I'd take lots of naps because I had all of this free time. Well, I've been a SAHM (well, 'cause of the store more of a Work-at-home-mom) for about four years now, and I've yet to see much of this elusive free time. I know I'm not the only woman in this situation either. Where did all of the time go?

For me, I know that a lot of my time has been slowly chewed up by lots of volunteer work. I work with the youth group at Church specfically the 14 and 15 yo girls. This takes the bulk of my Thursday nights and some of my Sunday as well. Plus there are various planning/presidency/organizing meetings scattered here and there. And quarterly, I chaperone a youth dance. And now I'm helping out with the annual summer Girls Camp, so that's another meeting. I do a lot with my church. I lead choirs, sing, help out whereever I'm needed. It's all good work, but it does take a lot of my time.

I'm also on the design team for the ScrappersChallenge yahoo group. This is a very large group that will be moving to it's own website in the next few months. While I am thrilled with this honer, it does come with specific responsibilities, like writing articles and working with monthly kits, and so forth. I moderate or help moderate a couple of other scrapbooking groups, specifically ScrapbookTalk and ScrappingReflections. More time. Small bits of time here and there can add up to a lot at the end of the day.

I also teach 3-4 classes a month for Stampin' Cat. I'm learning that this realistically needs 10-15 hrs a month prep time, as well as the 6-8 hours of teaching, as each class is 2 hours each. Plus the store is about 25 minutes away from my house, one way, so if I am dropping off samples, etc., that's an hour of drive time alone. If you total it all up, that's about twenty to twenty-five hours each month or 4-5 hours each week of work (or with me, it's 10 hours of prep time the week of my classes or about 15 hours that one week 'cause I didn't spread out my work) not counting any drive time.

Speaking of drive time, my youngest ds has been diagnosed with a Speech Communication Disorder. This is really not much more than a fancy way of saying, "he's a little behind in his speech." Not enough to be very worrisome (especially when you are looking at the long run of things) but enough to qualify for free preschool through the county (Yes! A nice side benefit of paying taxes). Well, his preschool is 25 minutes away from my house as well (the OTHER direction, so not really easy to combine trips) so every Tuesday and Thursday, I get to spend an hour in the car dropping him off. He takes the bus home.

Throw in a little volunteer work teaching music at the elementary school (I'm teaching one Kindergarten class this year), driving for taekwondo classes, scouts, grocery shopping, library trips, and so on, and then add on the demands of keeping house for and feeding five people, and you can see where the time goes. It's also important to me to have time for myself, for reading and scripture study. And for naps. Naps are good.

So where does your time go? Personally I hate the phrase "waste time." Time is too precious to waste. Sometimes we spend it too frivolously as well. I think as part of my challenge to "DO" this year, I'm going to pay attention to how I am spending my time. Maybe through careful budgeting, I can find some more of it.

And that's the other side.