Another school year bites the dust

1.25 days of school left. It is hard to believe another school year has flown by so quickly. Smoochie's award ceremony was this morning and I stayed home from work since Hubby had to take Sudsy to swimming and I had neglected to inform the extended family in time. I thought it started at 9 so I was taking my sweet time this morning, took a bath, put on a robe and got on the computer for a bit. You know, since I don't spend enough time on the computer at my job. At 8:11, I had just taken my oatmeal out of the microwave when I glanced at my blackberry and saw it flashing red. I checked and that is when I found out I had 4 minutes to get to the ceremony. I threw my oatmeal in the fridge, quickly got dressed, slapped on a bit of make-up so as not to scare small children and pulled my wet mess of hair back and ran out the door. I got halfway to the auditorium and didn't see people filing in so I called home to check location. Library! Then I realized I'd have to check in at the front office so I had to run back home and grab my driver's license. I ran back out the door, waited in line to check in and made it only 10 minutes late. Then I proceeded to sweat the first 30 minutes after my jog to get their in time since we're now at about 80 degress in the mornings with 90% humidity. Lovely.

I'm fairly certain that if there were an intelligence test to have children I would not pass at this point.

Putting the pieces together

I've struggled for years to put myself and my health as a priority. There is always so much going on and it feels like anytime I gain a bit of momentum, something derails me. Fortunately I'm stubborn and haven't given up on the idea.

So, I'm finally feeling back in control of what I eat and I run into a stumbling block. We've had to put him back to the strict phase of Feingold has we've slipped in the past months and his behavior is reflecting it. Luckily, I've done this before and I've learned the fine line between feeding my family and thinking creatively to reduce the caloric content of my meals. Hamburgers? Great! I'll put mine on a salad instead of a bun.

My office opened up a little exercise room a few months ago and I started spending 30 minutes several times a week on the treadmill or the elliptical. That was until I developed plantar fasciitis and had to drop it. However, a friend mentioned that she was doing a boot camp and I jumped at the chance to join her. This morning was a bit cruel with a 4:20 am wake-up call and my foot is aching again, but I refuse to give up. I refuse to give up on the notion that I can one day get healthy and make myself a priority.

Hope and despair

One of my co-workers is like no one else I've ever met in my life. He is absolutely 100% certain of the future. He thinks he knows exactly what is going to happen and is quite frankly arrogant. Which makes him seem a little crazy. Problem is, I happen to agree to a small degree with what he says. And that irks me. One, because I don't like agreeing with people who have the know it all attitude and two because if what he says is true, the future is quite terrifying. Complete and total collapse of the dollar and society as we know it today.

Lost and found

Missing: Motivation

I am seriously struggling at work. I have a bad attitude when I drive through the front gate and it doesn't get any better through out the day. As thankful as I am to still have my job and believe me, I do know how fortunate I am, I just can't seem to shake it. It would be one thing if I could go in, do my job and do it well and go home. If only it was that simple. With the new regime in place and all the 'initiatives' underway, it seems like everything is an exercise in futility. I flounder when I feel my efforts do not benefit anyone. I either need a change of scenery or a giant kick in the butt. Maybe both.

School lunches

Since we started the Feingold program over a year ago, I've packed the kids lunches every day. I always felt guilty about letting them eat the school lunches anyways as they always looked disgusting and were loaded with fat, salt, sugar and a host of undesirable ingredients.

I stumbled across a blog today from a teacher in Illinois who is eating a school lunch every day to bring attention to this very issue. I've read through a few months worth and it appears her school lunches are more appetizing than the ones I've seen at our school, and believe me- hers do not look appetizing! Find her blog here.

I am extremely excited with both the initiatives by Michelle Obama and Jaime Oliver. It's time to stand up for our kids and protect their health!

Census

With the build up and the hype surrounding the census, I had to make a big deal out of the day it arrived in the mail. When I saw it I jumped up and down screaming "The census is here! The census is here!". The kids quickly came running half scared to death. For all the hype, it was quite the let down. I did have one question, what do people do who have more than 12 people living in their home?

Home movies

All kinds of nice viruses have made its way around our house the past few weeks. We've alternated taking turns getting sick and have spent quite a bit of time indoors watching home movies. The kids get such a kick out of seeing themselves when they're younger. Sudsy kept calling out his name while watching Bubby at his age. It's no wonder I mix up their names all the time.

I'm so thankful to have the kids on video to remind us how Bubby used to have a little lisp and how Smoochie crawled while dragging one leg behind her. It all goes by way too fast. Bubby's already heading into the tween years and gets calls from his friends (on their cell phones!!) at all hours. I don't even move when I hear the phone ring now as I know it's not for me.

Sudsy is talking up a storm and we're even able to understand most of what he says. He calls all big animals elephants. The kids are on spring break this week and hubby took them all to the zoo on Monday. We'll see if that helped clear a few things up for Sudsy.

How do you know?

It is hard for us to believe, but Sudsy Pumpkin Pie will be 2 tomorrow. He is such a funny and happy little kid, even his terrible 2's are adorable. Hubby says it's time to start on #4. That sounds crazy to me. Absolutely crazy. And yet I won't completely rule out the possibility. How do you know when enough is enough? Or do some people (uhem, the Duggars) not ever know? We're out of bedrooms- is that a good enough reason to stop? I'm certainly not getting any younger and the risks go up exponentially every year. I think we have a wonderful family and I don't feel like anything is missing. Yet, when I think about the future, I know that we'd never regret having another child yet we might regret not having another one.

Someone talk me down, please!!!!

Getting back on my feet

It's amazing that every time I feel like I am gaining some control over my life I must do something to screw it up. That's how I knew it was time to have another baby each time, life was getting a bit too easy. No, I'm not pregnant :) Last fall, I felt like life was going fairly smoothly so I decided to add a new business to the mix. After all the turmoil we'd gone through with changing our diets and seeing the incredible positive impact of that, I felt compelled to share that knowledge. Fortunately, I found a food company committed to the same and it was an easy way to share my hard earned knowledge with others. It is a joy, a passion, as well as both a source of stress relief and stress gain! It adds to my never ending to do list yet also adds to my sense of personal satisfaction.

In addition to my new business, I was also running a high stress, 6 month long project that just ended a couple of weeks ago. I have a bit of a reprieve at work and I took off a few days last week and finished up accounting for our other two businesses and pulling together all our tax information and dropped that off with our tax advisor. Another huge weight off my shoulders. I've finally started exercising again and am recommitting to putting my health at least on the to-do list. I'd love to say that any additional step I take will be to simplify, but I know myself too well to say that.

Morality without religion

I wish more people understand that the basic assumption that religion = morality and the inverse, no religion = immorality was inherantly flawed and disproved time and time again. Here's an interesting article speaking to this topic.

Happy New Year!

I'm not big into making New Year's resolutions because it usually takes less than a week for my resolutions to go down in flames. I was thinking that this year I could make resolutions that I'd really want to keep- drink more wine! sleep in more! have more sex! Sadly, I probably couldn't keep those either.

I do like the feeling of newness and freshness the new year brings. The anticipation of what the year will bring, what new things the kids will be doing and saying and understanding. There are many things that I would like to do better than last year but mostly what I hope for is more quality time with the family and good health for my family and friends.