FYI

I am not gone. I'm still here.

I have been preoccupied for a while and haven't had much to say.

I just finished a blog post but decided to give it some prayer before posting it as it could be considered debatable. I'm not sure I am ready to start debates as of yet so I need to give it some thought.

Should I decide to post it I will let you know.

I believe that when using immediate media such as the internet, or texting that one should always think once, twice, three times about what is written before hitting the submit/publish/post button. So this is me practicing what I preach.

Have a good night!

Positivity

In response to my last post...

I have been thinking about it a lot. In fact, I have come to a shocking realization! I myself seem to be complaining more than I ever thought I was. Not so much complaining, but I seem to have started pointing out the wrongs I see more often. (is that complaining?)

Just this past week I have heard myself mention how frustrating it is to drive here, how messy the house is, how fast the dishes pile up, how hot or cold I am, how much I have to do.

So I have come up with a plan. My hopes are to try to catch myself and my other family members in a negative thought and ask myself or them to immediately come up with a "but". Such as, "I can't believe I have so many dishes to wash... but... I am glad we have food to eat on them every day."

or "Boy do I have a lot to do today, (but) so glad the weather is nice and I will enjoy running around out there."

This may sound corny, but I am hoping that it will turn our way of thinking around and maybe instead of starting negative, we'll just start saying good things.

Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. Ephesians 4:29

My challenge is for others to join me in this quest for positivity. Let me know your experiences! I'll keep you posted on mine!

Negativity

So my daughter has become Miss Negativity lately. I have no idea what to do about it but its driving me crazy. I have always been the "look on the bright side" kind of person. I can always find SOMETHING to think positive about in a not so positive situation. I try very hard not to complain much so when I do complain it is usually something I have kept quiet long enough about that I think its about time someone heard me roar for a second. Very rarely does this happen.

But lately my daughter grunts and growls about EVERYTHING. She complains about everything. She is constantly "uncomfortable" Her hand hurts when she writes. Levi is talking too loud, or too much. She complains that she doesn't like her room because its always a mess but she complains when I tell her to clean it, or even go in there to help her clean it. She complains when her homework is too hard. She complains when her homework is too EASY for Pete's sake! Her water is too cold, or not cold enough! SHEESH! I can't stand it anymore.

My fear is that it isn't a phase. unfortunately someone else very close to her, who shall remain nameless can also be very negative, always has something to complain or grumble about, or is just plain blah alot of the time. It's quite a downer for me.

I try and try to stay up and positive and try to make these two laugh and see things differently but these two are so dang comfortable in their own skin they refuse to try to "Come on get happy!"(Insert Partridge Family tune here) They just keep bringing me down man!

So if you are reading this and you have any tips or words of wisdom to get me through what I HOPE is a phase, please please please do share!

My brain took a vacation

On Sunday, (yes I am just now getting around to telling this story) my alarm clock goes off, very loudly I might add. We have not been able to figure out how to get the volume down on the alarm. We have it set to play the radio when it comes on so its not too bad, but when its right above your head it is BLARING!

SO the alarm goes off, I always hit the snooze button to get just 10 more minutes of peace and quiet before I roll out of bed and I notice the numbers 905.

"UGH!" I grumble. John asks me what's wrong. I tell him, somehow the alarm got messed up and it's 9 o'clock. "There is no way in the world we'll be able to get up and be ready for church in 10 minutes. Guess were not going today." So I lay there racking my brain trying to figure out how it could have possibly been changed by accident??????

I decide to text my mom to let her know we won't be there but we're all okay. "NOT GONNA MAKE IT. SOMEHOW THE ALARM GOT CHANGED TO 9. WE'LL NEVER GET READY IN TIME."

She texts me back about 10 minutes later. "IT'S NOT 9 IT'S 7"

WHAT?!?!

I roll over again and look at the clock. 7:12.

Here is my advise to you. Usually when you think there is no possible way something could happen, chances are you are usually right. What my brain failed to realize was that when the radio goes off EVERY morning, I guess it always has shown the numbers of the RADIO STATION (90.5) on the pretty blue screen!

Talk about embarrassing! So we all rolled out of bed and headed off to church 2 hours later, haha!

However for some reason my brain must have stayed in bed that day because ALL day I made silly mistake after silly mistake and words wouldn't come to mind when I needed them, I had my family rolling on the floor most of the day.

Have no fear, I am fine now. Since meeting with my brain on the pillow Sunday night I have been back to normal once again. In fact today I scored a perfect "Brain Age Score" which I have been working on since Christmas! LOL

Good Morning!

So today I am taking care of business! (Are you singing the song in your head? Cause I am!)

I am feeling AWESOME and it's only noon!

Here is what my morning looked like:

I woke up with a smile. Said "Good morning" to my Lord. Iisn't it awesome that the CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE is anxiously awaiting to greet US every morning of every day and I bet when we greet him back right away he gets a smile on his face!

I woke my daughter, something I have to do 95% of the time. Not my favorite thing to do because she milks every second she can get before getting out of bed, but I have to remind myself as much as I can that someday I will miss these mornings with her in her room.

While my kids got ready for school I cleaned out a huge mess of a game closet. Now it's all purty-ful and organized!

I have done 3 loads of laundry and will soon be starting the 4th.

I have read my bible for a few minutes and I will be returning to that in a bit as well.

I ate a small but healthy breakfast, something I NEVER do! I mean NEVER! My breakfast usually consists of either chocolate fudge poptarts with a tall glass of milk, last nights leftovers or a bowl of cereal. Well I guess maybe sometimes my cereal can be healthy.

Then I worked out this morning with my husband. I am feeling sooo good!

We have started doing the Power 90 workout. A lot of people we know are all doing it and so we thought we would do it too so we feel like we're not alone and we have people to spur us on and keep us rockin! I can't wait to feel the changes! I am already on a high from taking care of myself in every aspect i can possible thik of this morning. I can't wait to do it again tomorrow, Ha Ha!

Organizing Chaos

I have a tendency to be afraid of throwing away paper. I keep my kids school papers way too long. I hold on to all bills way too long. I keep receipts way to long. And I keep scraps of everything else in between way too long. When I accumulate a pile of paper on a counter that I need moved and I don't want to deal with I have a set of plastic drawers that I usually stuff them all into so I can "deal with them later".

Later usually never comes until I need that one teeny tiny bit of info and then I have to sort through all of them in one day just to find it, of course throwing at least 75% of them in the trash.

I blame all of this on my easy going lifestyle. I choose to play now and work later. Everything goes on the back burner until I need that back burner for something important, LOL.

My goal is to be better at this in the near future. But if you read my after Christmas post, you can already guess that this will most likely never happen. :}

So anyway for some reason I had to prove to our insurance company that my children do indeed belong to John and I and should be covered under his insurance. So I had to look for all documentation that proved this and then fax it to them. Of course not all of this was in one place. Too easy! I spent most of the morning going through that plastic drawer of paper and I now have 20 piles of paper on my kitchen table waiting for me to get back to.

But of course I am incapable of doing only one job at a time. Once I had those drawers emptied I came up with a brilliantly stupid idea of using these drawers for my 1000 craft supplies I have been storing in a huge ugly cabinet in my dining room! Now I needed to run out and buy more plastic drawers to match the first set to complete project number 2! Now mind you, number 1 is not done yet. So... by dinner time I had paper pile project sprawled all over my kitchen table, and now ON TOP OF THAT art supply chaos project again ALL OVER THE KITCHEN TABLE!

Somebody shoot me!

Yep, you guessed it, my kids come home and have no place to sit for dinner. So "YAY!" They got to sit in the living room at the coffee table eating their spaghetti tonight.

And why am I telling you all of this? Well I have no idea now, I was kind of hoping I could turn this into some wonderfully uplifting message somehow but now I only see it as an opened door into my life that maybe I should have thought twice about sharing.

Now to get back to project #2 so I can find project #1 again before midnight.

Part 2...

Just another tid bit of info..

Here is what I taught my daughter to do when it rains...

Snow Day in Las Vegas

My number one goal in life is to teach my kids who God is, how much He loves them and I pray that they grow up to have a healthy relationship with God that they will take with them wherever they go and through every moment of their life.

My second goal is to make sure they know how to have fun, live the best life they can without being stupid about it and to take time to enjoy the littlest of things.

We live in a desert. We see snow every year, on a mountain where I have always considered it to be at the back of our city. If you want to see snow you look at the mountain, you drive to the mountain, or you can pray every year that we will get a storm at Christmastime that will bring the White Christmas down to the valley. I have lived in Vegas for over almost 30 years now and we have never had a White Christmas. But this year we got pretty close. The week before it rained and the week after it rained with a few snow flurries here and there.

Well this morning we got a good strong amount of snow that fell starting about 7:00 in the morning as far as I could tell. About 8:00 is started sticking to the ground.

So in my attempt to teach my kids goal number 2, we declared today a snow day even though Clark County didn't. Which in my opinion when you live in a desert and we actually get RAIN we should get the day off of school. If that doesn't make sense, okay I'll let that go, but when we get snow that STICKS to the ground long enough to make one snowball to throw at the neighbor kid across the street we definitely should have a snow day! It's a rare treat that should not be ignored!

On the other hand, because everyone must go about their normal routines on these very, very special days, and my family knows what's really important in life, we were the ONLY people in an entire park playing in every spec of snow we could touch! When we got to the park there was not one single footprint in the snow! When we left there was barely enough snow in any one spot to make a snowball! AWESOMENESS!

This is the second opportunity we have had to do this. It is the best feeling ever! We did the same thing 2 years ago when it started to snow I took my kids out of school to not waste the day! Had the whole park to ourselves the whole time!

In the future I hope that you take the time to enjoy the little things in life. Don't let life get in the way of your LIFE!