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Happy Mother’s Day!

There are ways you want to be wished Happy Mother’s day and there are ways you don’t. In celebration of Mother’s Day, I’m sharing my most random Mother’s Day wish of the year!

I don’t know about you, but the end of April and beginning of May is just a crazy time around here. With all our end of school year stuff plus beginning of summer stuff, we’re super busy! So, I was actually pretty happy when my daughter’s end of year ballet performance arrived. I’m so ready to be done with lessons for the summer and spend as much time as possible at the pool!

The exciting part about this is that her ballet performance is at one of our downtown theaters. Now, I live in a medium sized city, but more in the suburbs so it’s not that often that I go downtown, park in a parking garage, and have to walk city streets. It’s really not my favorite thing with little kids in tow.

For her performance I end up being downtown 3 nights in a row. The first night, is tech. She’s in two classes and her techs were 1.5 hrs apart. So after her first one she changed and we walked up to the square for some icecream – I will say, I was pretty proud of myself for remembering where it was. Only two blocks away from the theater, but seeing as it’s been about 4 months since I was down here I’m not always certain of my directions. That was uneventful. We were downtown from about 3pm to 6pm so we left right about the time the restaurants started getting busier.

The second night however, was not as uneventful. I dropped her off at 6 and had to be back at 9 to pick her up. It was rather busy when I dropped her off but I didn’t think about it at the time (I found out later that that particular night was the one night out of the month that all the musicians set up downtown in all the storefronts so it’s a really busy night). When I came to pick her up, my 4yr old came along – she wasn’t going to go to bed without her sister since they share a room so why not!

I was glad I got there 15 minutes early. I circled the entire parking garage and there was no parking. So, I decided to exit and try the garage across the street. As I pulled out there was a spot right on the street that had just opened up – so I parked – parallel parked – luckily I was driving my husband’s car, I never would have been able to do this in the van!

After parking I was walking up the alley between where I parked and the front door to the theater (really, it’s a one way street, but it’s kind of an alley because not a lot of people are on it). On the way up I see that I’m going to pass this guy, and I instantly recognize that he’s going to say something to me. Now, I have my 4yr old with me, the guy looks drunk, so I’m kind nervous.

People always talk to me – in the checkout line at the grocery store, waiting at the post office, walking through a store parking lot – people feel compelled to tell me their life story. I don’t know why. But, I can usually tell when someone is going to say something. So, I avoided eye contact because I’d rather not have this random conversation, with a drunk guy, in an alley, with my 4yr old in tow.

But, he feels the need to speak anyways. Right as we reach him, “Happy Mother’s Day!” he says (and yes, he was drunk, because his speech was slurred). “Thank you!” I smile, and continue walking past him. Totally relieved!

Happy Mothers Day!

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3 Thing Im Glad My Mother Taught Me

My mom taught me so much! And there’s lots I continue to learn. Thinking back through this year, there’s 3 things I’m so glad she taught me!

IMG_20150124_1949362231. Cooking – I cannot tell you how often I’m so glad I can cook! And I can do more than follow recipes, if I don’t have the right ingredients I improvise, I add spices as needed, and I’ll just wing it when I feel like it. Having confidence in the kitchen is such a blessing. I remember being at the counter helping bake, cook, and making a mess right along with my mom. Now, I let my kids do the same!

I’ll never forget the time I mixed up this beautiful tri-colored pound cake (in a bundt pan). I was in my early teens so fully capable of following a recipe. That cake was lots of work, and having three colors just made it more complicated. I successfully mixed it, baked it as instructed, and then set it on the rack to cool for 5 minutes. Next, continuing to follow the directions, I tipped it over and dumped it out onto the rack.

Only problem was, it wasn’t done. There were 3 colors of poundcake batter dripping down the counter and making a puddle on the floor. I cried, and I know my mom felt exactly as I did (even though she wasn’t crying). She had to clean up the mess. And then, we had a lesson on how to check a cake for doneness BEFORE tipping it over.

2. Sometimes Life is Hard – But you don’t give up. Life is constantly frustrating, irritating and just downright hard. But that’s all part of life, and definitely part of mothering.

Thankfully, that usually balances out with fun, love, and successes! You just don’t give up when things get hard, just keep going and things will come out ok in the end.

20141211_1316183. My Emotions are My Choice – I don’t mean I don’t have them. I can’t always choose when they’ll strike. But, I can be responsible for them. There are days I count to 10 before answering any questions. And there’s times I’m just tired, hungry, and crabby – and everyone knows it. That’s what coffee and chocolate are for!

Some days it’s really hard, but I can’t blame anyone for how I respond to things – like right now I would really like to tell the girls exactly what I think about them interrupting my writing for the 20th time instead of playing quietly in their room! Instead I calmly gave two choices. They can play quietly in their room until I come get them or they can take a nap like their Brother. We’ll see how long it lasts, but hopefully at least until I’m done writing!

With 2 girls I’ve started teaching emotional responsibility already. It’s ok to be mad – but we do not throw things or slam doors when we’re mad. It’s ok to be upset and it’s ok to cry – but we don’t yell at siblings or say unkind things because we’re upset. It’s not about not experiencing the emotion but it’s about remembering that no matter how I feel I still have a responsibility to be kind and considerate towards others.

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5 Things That I Really Want for Mother’s Day

As a Mom with young kids my wish list for Mother’s Day is pretty simple, and complicated all at the same time. It’s simple because nothing on the list is expensive but it’s complicated because actually getting one of these things is way more difficult to achieve than you might think.

You moms with young kids understand. It’s so hard to get any of these that just one will do!

1. Time alone – And I don’t mean sending the kids to bed so I can clean the house or get work done, I mean time to do something fun by myself, like play a video game uninterrupted or watch my favorite show.

Maybe  my husband could take the kids to the zoo for the day, and I can sit at home and play video games and eat chocolate all day (you know, what I presumably do all day at home with the kids but don’t actually have the time to do). For once I’d like to fulfill a stereotype.

Though, I’m not sure they’d last all day at the zoo without me…

2. A clean house (that I didn’t clean) – I could add that the house needs to say clean for 24 hours, but that actually is impossible unless my husband takes the kids on an overnight trip after cleaning the house for me.

I’m pretty sure cleaning the house, taking the kids to the zoo, and spending the night somewhere with them – all without me – is not a reasonable request.

So we all know that’s not happening! Really, if someone could just clean my house for me. You know, do the laundry, clean the kitchen, mop the floors, scrub the showers. I’m not asking for much!

Honestly, I’d settle for a clean kitchen.

3. Dinner (that I didn’t make) – I would also like to eat it without a small child on my lap and without getting up from the table a dozen times to refill water glasses and such.

And it can’t be boxed mac and cheese. Has to be something actually tasty. Like a steak and potatoes with a side salad and a chocolate lava cake for dessert.

Now I’m hungry!

If I could just get the clean kitchen, dinner, and time alone to eat it. That would be prefect.

4. Chocolate – I love chocolate, it just makes things better. A whole bunch of chocolate, to eat alone would be awesome. I could be happy with that.

On second thought, eating it alone, in a clean house, after a dinner that I didn’t make, would be perfect.

5. To shower ALONE – I do actually get showers, I guess I should be happy with that. But it would be nice to not have the toddler standing there crying about it the entire time or the other kids requesting things (like Breakfast) or bringing containers to the shower for me to open – you know, “here mom, open this peanut butter for me”. “oh, and don’t get it wet”. Huh?

Oh, wait, I did get a shower by myself the other day – I was at the gym. In case you didn’t know, I don’t actually go to the gym to work out. I’m there for the private shower. I just work out first so I have an excuse to take a shower.

Maybe when I’m alone in my clean house, after eating my tasty dinner that I didn’t make, and indulging in some really tasty chocolate, I’ll go get a nice hot shower by myself!

On second thought, I think a spa day would be more practical.

 

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Why Does Every Child Get a Prize?

Have you ever wondered, why is it at children’s Birthday parties, the Birthday child gives away goody bags? I’ve definitely wondered. Those bags and everything in them can end up costing as much as all the food at a party! They didn’t do this when I was a kid.

It’s like we’re compelled to give everyone something (other than food and a fun party) just for attending. I just don’t get it.

Now, before you panic, I’ve thrown my share of kid’s parties and we always give away goody bags. Though, for one summer water party, I gave away pool balls and a little plastic pool toy, each child got to pick their own. I had a few parents confused. Where are the bags?

And then it hit me, my 6yr old was reading me a story the other day. It’s an old Abeka 1st grade reader that I read when I was a kid, so I remembered the story the minute she started reading. It’s called “The Best Loser”. It’s about this little girl at a birthday party, who keeps losing every game. She’s told that at the end of the party there’s a prize for the best loser. She’s upset every time she loses, she loses at musical chairs, pin the tail on the donkey, and a guess what’s in the bag game. At the end of the party she expects the prize but it’s given to another child who had a good attitude about losing.

That’s how I remember parties, there would be 3 games, usually there’s a specially marked plate (which is totally NOT fair because picking the right plate is just chance there’s no skill required) and then two other party games like musical chairs or pin the tail on the donkey. The winning child for each game would receive a prize – most likely a bottle of bubbles or a jumprope from the dollar store. At the end of the party, 3 children went home with a prize and everyone else went home with nothing. No one thought this was odd or unfair. And the host parents didn’t spend a fortune on trinkets to send home with the guests.

Sometime between my childhood and having kids someone thought, “wow, this is unfair, my child is unhappy that they didn’t get a prize, at our party we’re going to give a prize to every child”. So, they gave out goody bags to every child who came. Other parents thought this was a great idea, and now it’s expected. Just try throwing a party and don’t have any goody bags to hand out at the end, and see what happens.

The strange thing is, it’s not the Birthday child handing these bags out saying “I’m so glad you came” and giving something meaningful to express their appreciation, it’s the child’s parents handing these bags out to every child at the party because it’s expected. Basically, at the end of the party all the kids go, “where are the goody bags, we’re ready to leave”. And these bags are filled with things that you, the parent, discard as soon as possible – tiny bubble bottles, stickers, pencils, tattoos, candy, etc.

When we get home my kids dig through their bags, discuss what they got, and scatter everything around the house. I have to ask a lot of questions to get a description of the party from them.

I think this is just another symptom of overprotecting our kids, we don’t want to let our kids lose or be disappointed because let me tell you, not getting the right plate so you can have a prize is just soul crushing.

I won’t be denying kids their goody bags at parties any time soon (let’s just say I would be considered a bad hostess), but I do think it’s worth considering that just maybe we’re not teaching kids to value disappointment and friendly competition. But we are teaching them to value all the junk that we get to bring home and throw away. Which one is actually going to help them in life?

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New Affiliate Sites

I spent the first couple of years with my blog just figuring out what I want to do. Now, I think I have a system down – a mixture of product reviews, and life with kids including crafts, baking, and thoughts about life.

So now, it’s time to find a larger audience, learn to write better blog posts, and find some affiliates that will work with a small blog.

I found Mom’s Affiliate a few weeks ago and so far, I’m really liking it. You can pick whatever projects you want to participate in and promote. They also have featured articles available but I don’t have enough monthly blog readers to do any of these yet. So I’m sticking with the brand affiliate links for right now. Some pay a flat amount per conversion. For example if you click through my link to Mom’s Affiliate, sign up, and start using them, I get $2. Pretty awesome!

Some are percentage based, so percentage of sale after click-through. I haven’t tried out any of these yet but they have some popular brands on there like Zulily and such.

This Affiliate site is for Mommy Bloggers so there’s a lot of brands and products on here that I love! Which makes it easy to pick a campaign to join. I just have to restrain myself and not join all of them at once, because then you all would get really tired of seeing a gazillion affiliate posts on my blog! So I try to pick only things that I already know I like. Like this Pillsbury Newsletter. I’ve been subscribed to this for a long time and always find it useful!

My biggest issue with the site so far, there’s no dashboard that shows all my current campaigns together so I have to just go to the main list and find them. There’s not that many so it’s not a big deal but it would save some time if they were all listed in one place for me.

A couple of days ago I had my first conversion. Someone signed up for Mom’s Affiliate through my link! WooHoo! I’ll make my first $2. I told my husband about it and he suggested that with all this money I’m making we can go out to dinner this month. I’m so glad he has more confidence in me than I do in myself!

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The second site I’m trying out is Boost Insider. They have campaigns with different types of links. Some are simple click through campaigns like this one inviting people to join Boost Insider. You get paid per click.

Some are conversion based, you only get paid if people actually download or purchase something.

On this site you get invited to campaigns. They look at your social media and blog reach, consider your interests you entered in when signing up, and then offer you campaigns that they think will be a good fit for you.

dress4_1428547379412_800You can reject campaigns if you don’t want them. I rejected one for Game of War because It’s not a game I’m interested in playing so why would I promote it? But this campaign for DHGate prom and formal dresses looks pretty interesting so I joined it. I just love that right at the start of the site I can pick my style so there’s less hunting randomly and more actually looking at dresses that I like. Now, I just need an excuse to order one!

I’m super excited to have found some sites that will work well with a small blog like mine and maybe one day I’ll get better at this and can graduate to something a little larger!

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4 Tips for a Successful Easter Dinner

I really love Easter, it’s such a fun holiday, and I enjoy the celebration of life, resurrection, and spring! Every year I host an Easter Lunch. With finishing prep as soon as I get home from Church, it’s important that things run smoothly! Here’s the top 4 things I do to make sure my meal goes as planned.

1. Don’t overload your oven or stovetop – You want all your food done at the same time. If you have to rotate items this won’t happen. I have two casseroles and a ham that are standard to Easter Dinner, but, guess what. This fills my oven. This year, my husband suggested a chocolate pudding cake for dessert, which is an awesome dessert but has to be whipped up and baked at the last minute. If I want to make this, I have two options, bake it after all the other food is out of the oven or put less in my oven.

I’m thinking that I’ll probably end up using my roaster for the ham and that will free up that oven space for rolls and dessert. The dessert is best hot so if it’s baking while we eat lunch that’ll work out great.

2. Minimize last minute prep – You don’t want to be chopping a salad, whipping up a gravy, making deviled eggs, and prepping an hors d’oeuvre all when guests walk in. As a rule, I try to only have one last minute item. If I decide to do deviled eggs I’ll make them up the night before. Also, any hors d’oeuvres will have to be made the night before.

I’m already mixing up a dessert and putting the final touches on my salad. So, nothing else can be last minute. You don’t want your guests coming in and seeing you running around like crazy trying to get stuff done.

Also, I usually set the table the night before. It’s tough keeping the kids away from all the pretty dishes so I’m not convinced that this saves me any time, but it seems like it should.

3. Make a list – I love lists! I have a list of items I’m making, a list of ingredients I need to buy, and a list of baking times so I know what to start making when. On the day, I’ll have a list of food that I’m serving so I don’t forget anything. There’s nothing worse than getting to the end of your meal and realizing that your salad is still in the refrigerator!

4. Don’t be afraid to ask for help – Feeling overwhelmed? Ask guests to each bring a dish. Salads, casseroles, and snacks all transfer well.

Just check with your guests and find out if they’re planning to use your oven or stove. I asked a guest to bring biscuits once – she makes great biscuits and I was envisioning baked biscuits in a basket covered with a towel. Nope, she brought the ingredients and mixed them up on my nice clean counter (that was all set up for food as soon as it came out of my oven). Then she needed my full oven to bake them!

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Things I Can’t Live Without

Ok, so, most of these things I CAN live without, but having them makes life so much easier!

Coffee – I’m a mom, really this kinda goes without saying. Baby up all night? Just have an extra cup of coffe, or two, in the morning. One of my favorite brands is Green Mountain coffee. I tried this a while back free from Bzzagent and it’s now my favorite brand! They have some awesome flavors and their coffee is strong but not bitter. The perfect coffee in my opinion. Plus, they sell it at my local Kroger and it’s no more expensive than Starbucks so I have no excuse not to drink the coffee I like!

Dust buster – I can’t live without this thing. My husband helped me research the best one on Amazon and I ended up with a Black & Decker one. The only thing it doesn’t do is liquids, but none of the dust busters that would do liquids had good reviews so I figured I’d rather have a good dust buster that doesn’t do liquids than a bad dust buster that does. This things is awesome! Cleaning under the couch? I bring the dust buster along and sweep up the crumbs every couple of minutes so they don’t end up all over my house. It’s great for cleaning out the car, corners in the kid’s rooms, and any emergency crumb cleaning like the 5 crumbled crackers on the couch this morning and the cool-aid powder all over the floor.

Roomba – ok, so, this is a new one for me, but this saves me SO MUCH time! I actually still use my broom (I have wood floors) but it’s awesome to turn on the roomba and let it get all the smaller dirt and crumbs that I missed. My floors are so much cleaner now. And that’s a good thing being as my toddler spends a lot of his time on the floor still.

Take N Toss Cups – Sippy Cups for when they’re little and Straw Cups for the older kids. The cups are all the same so it’s just the lids that are different. They’re cheap, so when the lids get nasty – my kids chew on them – I just toss them out and buy a new set. They also make baby spoons, that I keep a supply of. The baby use them, and the kids use them for tea parties, stirring drinks, feeding dolls, and just about anything else they want to do that requires a spoon.

Wooden Spoons – They’re good for absolutely everything in the kitchen, from mixing recipes to cooking on my non-stick pans. I also have a set of wooden salad tongs. Just don’t put them in the dishwasher. but you can scrub them without harming them so washing is easy.

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Love

As I sit here reflecting on soon to be 9 years of marriage, I think back to what started it all. Love. Yes, the warm, fuzzy, “I’m in love”, kind of love.

Nine years later, I’m still in love, there’s just a lot more than warm fuzzies to back it up. We’ve made it through 3 pregnancies and 3 births (the third one we delivered 5 minutes before the Midwife arrived), we’re in the midst of raising 3 little kids – some days the house is clean, other days it looks like I just didn’t care.

Not too much sickness, though there was that one time we were both sick with the flu at the same time. Never do that, especially when none of the kids are sick and you have a nursing infant. Apparently, my husband feels worse than I do when he’s sick, he got to lie in bed all day, I got to sit on the couch (or floor, depending on how many children needed lots of space on the couch) and watch kids tv shows all day. Yup, that was fun. Somehow I still love him.

The truth about love is you’ll do anything for it. You change your entire life for love, you marry someone, move in together, and make a gazillion changes to your life just for love.

Then, you add more kids to love. Speaking of adding kids, fun fact, our second child was born on our 5th anniversary. Good thing we celebrated the weekend before! She’ll never forget when our anniversary is.

So, nine years and three kids in, there’s so many things that have changed. We can no longer just go do whatever we want whenever we want to. Someone has to watch the kids. We’ve had to choose to focus on our marriage and on us. And we have to learn to agree on household rules so the kids know what’s a rule and what’s not.

The thing about love is all the hard work is worth it. It just grows the more you put into it, and the more you do for each other the more you love each other. So, after nine years of marriage, we’re more in love than we were the day we married.

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I Should Have Known Better

So, we all have them, those parenting moments, when we just should have known better! Really, I have no excuses, I’m the oldest of 8 kids and with 3 of my own now, I have plenty of experience with young children. So, when I say “I should have known better”, I really should have known better. So, here’s my top 5, “what was I thinking?” items.

1. Styrofoam – Guess what I just attempted to clean off the entryway steps? Yup, styrofoam, otherwise known as “static cling white snow”. It sticks to the broom, it flies up and sticks to my socks, and then it floats down to a few steps below just taunting me as I work my way down the stairs with the broom.

How did it get here? Well…the other day I was assembling a new shelf. And, like all packages, it came packed with styrofoam. Nice, long pieces of styrofoam, perfect for swords. Well, I felt that the kids would be better off playing outside (since the weather was beautiful) than they would be inside, on the couch, playing the iPad – it should be noted that this decision was a good parenting decision, I am getting my kids active. So, I suggested that they take the styrofoam outside and have a sword fight. Like children often do, they eagerly took all the styrofoam, only, they didn’t take it outside. They first had a sword fight in the kitchen, up and down the stairs, through the basement, and finally outside. I’ll be cleaning up styrofoam for weeks.

2. Glitter – I really could just say here that “I should have known better” and you would agree. No explanation needed. The other day at Hobby Lobby, the girls found a big bottle of glitter that was on sale. They love anything that sparkles so I got them some glitter. After we got home, I showed them how to put glue down on some paper and sprinkle a little glitter on. Of course, within minutes they had dumped out the ENTIRE bottle of glitter. Not wanting things to go to waste, I actually put most of the loose glitter back in the bottle for later. The next week, they did it again. This time, I threw it all away. I’ll still be cleaning up glitter for a month!

Not to forget the Christmas decorations that shed glitter everywhere. You’d think I’d learn and just throw them away! But, nothing beats glitter on everything for a month, right?

3. Pom Poms – you know, those things with the long strings that shed off when the kids breathe – or shake them or pull them off to use as confetti. I’ve been digging those plastic pom pom strings out of the wash for WEEKS! They’ve also managed to wind themselves around every vacuum I own and there is still somehow a hidden supply that produces a few new pieces every day. Who thought these were a good idea for children?

And after FINALLY getting all the pieces out of my house, someone gave my children 4 more for Christmas. I must think up a truly awful gift to give their child next year. Maybe a styrofoam house, or something with lots and lots of glitter!

4. Play-dough – so I usually have good success with this stuff but the last time the kids had it out it ended up everywhere! Probably because the baby felt that since it wasn’t good for eating, he should throw it. Fortunately, once it dries, it’s easy to sweep up and throw away. We’re just almost out of play-dough. Horray! And when we run out, I’ll probably buy more even though I know better!

5. Legos – I love the little things and I hate the little things. They’re constantly on the floor like little spikes for my feet. It doesn’t seem to matter how many of them I pick up, there’s always one more down there! I like that the girls enjoy building, but then baby boy comes along like Godzilla and smashes them all. I’m looking forward to the day when he wants to build instead of destroy!

It doesn’t help that we have my husband’s lego collection from when he was a kid, so there’s this endless supply of “new” kits to build. And don’t forget the giant tub of random pieces that I picked up at a yard sale last year. To top it off, I’m seriously considering creating a lego room for my son when he’s a little older. I probably should know better, but what would be the fun in that?

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Happy New Year!

I love new things! New toys, new clothing, new furniture, new towels, new movies, new books, new phones, and well, you get the idea. New Years are also fun because they’re a great time to reevaluate your plans, where you’re at in life, and what you want to achieve in the next year.

I try to avoid random New Year’s resolutions, you know, things that maybe I’d like to do (like make it to the gym at least once a week) but don’t really have a good plan for accomplishing and focus more on making plans to accomplish what I want to do. Like, how can I make it to the gym once a week, with a toddler who naps, homeschooling a 1st grader, preschool, dance classes, music lessons, and a few other things like grocery shopping thrown in there, who has time to go to the gym.

Honestly, my motivation for going to the gym is so I can put the kids in childcare and enjoy 1 1/2 hours to myself without answering a thousand questions, pretending like the sky is purple, saying the correct words for “Elsa’s” coronation, toting the toddler around, and trying to clean or cook all at the same time – oh and, keeping the 6yr old focused on school work too. An hour and a half a week to myself to just exercise and take a shower undisturbed really would be nice – but factor in that it takes all that time and more to get everyone out the door, drive there, and then return, it makes for an all day affair for me just to go to the gym! I really am going to try to go more often, I just haven’t figured out how to work it into my school and activity schedule yet. I’ll figure it out eventually…

Anyways, back to new things. Which reminds me, New toys – the next person who gives my child a new toy is going to die! I’m kidding…kind of. After Christmas we now own FOUR child’s cash registers. Four! And a whole new bucket of play kitchen food – I think that makes 3 buckets total in my house! Today, I was working every single child’s puzzle we own so I can throw away all the puzzles that don’t have all their pieces, because, we received NINE new puzzles for Christmas. Nine! and I don’t have room for nine new puzzles, so the old ones must go! On the bright side, I also organized all the uno and skipbo cards back into their appropriate places so next time I want to play uno they’ll all be together – not sure when that’s happening. And I tossed a whole bunch of random cards and card games that I just hate. Now to just hide candyland and monopoly…

So…new things, new goals, for this new year, I have a few. One for each area because I need to keep things simple.

18 month old: He will learn to ask for water this year – currently he just goes around the house crying when he’s thirsty, some form of pointing or word for water would be greatly appreciated by all. I handed him a cup of water this afternoon and he just sat there and chugged the entire thing like he was dying of thirst. And then he was no longer cranky.

3yr old: She will learn to read – I’m thinking just the preschool hooked on phonics. She’s dying to read like her older sister so I’m going to order it for her and we’ll work on it every day. Maybe 3 letter words by the end of the year. She would be so happy!

6yr old: She will learn to write legibly – why is handwriting the most difficult subject ever? I have no idea! Reading and math are a breeze so I guess something had to be difficult. I can barely read it even when I know what she’s writing, so you know it’s bad!

Me: I will go to the gym once a week – just kidding, I know that’s not going to happen. Though, it would be nice! I do need to get a new exercise routine going though before we start trying for child number 4 later in the year. Pregnancy is way better when I’m active.

Parenting: With 3 there’s a tendency to let them get away with things that they shouldn’t because I’m busy and tired, just being more intentional and focused even if I don’t feel like it.

Marriage: I want to spend more time doing fun things with my husband. We’re actually making good progress on this already and we have a few things planned for next year so I just need to keep the ball rolling and we’ll be good here.

And that’s all the new stuff for this year. Plus the usual, you know, doubling my facebook and twitter followers, updating my blog regularly, cooking more meals from scratch, and figuring out how to make a milk gravy and biscuits that are actually edible!