OLW - Check in for March

One Little Word didn't really happen this month, because everyone (except Joe) decided to get sick. With having two sick children and being sick myself I feel like I have lost three weeks of my life. I hardly took any pictures, we only went out of the house, as a family, a few times... Except for making a trip to the hospital and several trips to various doctors. I'm trying to get my world back in order... and the house back in order. Yesterday and the day before have been the first full days that we had been able to really tackle cleaning and organizing. We made some progress, so at least it's a step in the right direction.

On the "enjoy" side of life, the first week and a half of the month was pretty good. Our friends Linz and Matt came to visit from Harrisburg. Linz is one of my best friends... We met online about 13 years ago and have kept in touch all this time. She used to live in Pittsburgh, so we would only be able to see her maybe every other year, if we were lucky, but since she and her boyfriend moved to Harrisburg we have had the luxury of seeing them 2 to 3 times a year now. And, of course, it's always fun when we can get together.

Also this month, The Gma (Joe's grandma) came to visit. She's so fun to talk to. I love when we all get to see her. The whole family got together over the weekend while she was visiting, so there was plenty of board games, Rock Band and eating going on.

Picture courtesy of Jacqi

Also during the get-together photo shoot Jacqi took a nice picture of the four of us

I think I might get it framed

This past weekend things finally felt like they were getting back to normal, in every sort of way. We went grocery shopping, we cleaned, did laundry and dishes. We also drove to a local farm and let Elijah feed the goats and the ducks:

And we hit up Toys R Us because Elijah had a gift card and some birthday money left. He decided on a Little Tykes BBQ food set and a Blue Angry Bird kite. Looks like he's ready for Spring and Summer. While we were there we also took a look at the bikes and the motorized cars aisle (Elijah's favorite). The boys really liked these cars.

Too bad they were too much for my wallet. Maybe for Christmas... Or Caleb for his birthday... Who knows.

Let's hope April fares better than March, in every sort of way. This lack of blog postings is really depressing. :-)

Until next time...

OLW - Check in for February

This will be a rather short post as I only took a couple pictures relating to this post. Still enjoying my family more than anything and organizing when I feel like it.

Organization:

We flipped around some furniture in the master bedroom and are in the process of decluttering and deep cleaning. The rest of the project will continue with putting up curtains and maybe moving around some more furniture. I'm holding out on photos until the whole thing is done... or done enough to my satisfaction.

We brought the computer desk, turned craft desk, into the second bedroom. It is where it is staying and I have already unpacked and put away some of the craft stuffs that I have, but there's tons more I haven't even looked at yet. This is going to be an ongoing process... I can already see it.

Other than that, we have been trying to clean up the play room every evening, so we don't have to take an hour to do it on the weekend. And dinners at home have been touch and go. We lost the dry erase marker that we used to write the menu (thanks to a certain 4-year-old), so this week has been less than successful. Overall, though, we haven't done too badly this month.


Enjoy:

It has still been ridiculously warm this month, so we took plenty of trips to the park and into the back yard. We hit up a few malls on some nights, just to get out of the house. The first weekend of the month Joe and I went on a "date", thanks to my MIL. She watched both boys for a few hours, so we could go to a movie and eat lunch. We saw "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" and then went to Lonestar Steakhouse for lunch. It was a nice afternoon outing.

The next week, we went on a "scavenger hunt" for Joe's birthday ending with Joe and I going out to eat at Kobe's, since my mom watched the boys for a little while.

The next day we also went out to eat with my family, to celebrate. We went to Red Robin. My mom's birthday was the next week, so we went to Red Brick Station then came home and watched a couple episodes of the Dick Van Dyke show.

This past weekend my sister, her husband, Elijah and I attended a thing called Winterfest, where I used to go to college (my sis still attends there for grad school). Elijah had so much fun. I hope to do a full post about it in the coming weeks. Until then, I'll leave you with a taste of what the night entailed

Those were the highlights of our month, in general.

I don't know about you, but February feels like it just started and we even got an extra day this month. Crazyness...

How did your month go?

OLW - Check in for January

I've never done this One Little Word thing before, but like all things I do at the beginning of the new year, I always start to slip up some time around Spring. I don't know what it is about Spring that makes me lose my mind. I think it's the warm weather, but I digress... I decided that since I want to keep this going the whole year that I should have some sort of tally at the end of each month to see what I accomplished the month before.

It was my intention of posting individual posts about "Enjoying" my time and "Organizing" my life, but that same life got away from me this month. I could have sworn that just yesterday was Elijah's birthday party... but I have gotten some things done this month.

I have been enjoying my time with my family.

We even kind of implemented "Family fun night" (a post about this will hopefully appear in the next week), where we spend the evening together doing something fun. Hence the name. Right now it's any random night we happen to have time, but I hope to start having it on a certain night of the week and scheduling things around it, instead of the other way around.

We also just do things together. We play with Elijah more, instead of watching TV and at night, instead of shutting Elijah in his room to fall asleep and me having some "me" time, I hang out with Elijah for about a half an hour. We chat, we sing, we read... just to chill out and I think Elijah really likes this time together, as do I.

This past month we also went down my in-laws to remember Joe's grandfather who just passed away in November. It would have been his birthday, so we had his favorite meal and remembered some funny and touching times that were had. There was some sad, but overall it was a happy time of game playing (Smart Ass and Dominoes) and story telling. That is the way he would have wanted it.

(Picture borrowed from my Mother-in-law's blog)

Along with those fun times we also did a little bit of organizing. We are trying to get into the whole "eating dinner at home most nights" thing, so I am proud to say that this past week we stuck to it every night. Thanks for Joe who started most of the dinners before I got home from work and one night we used the crock pot. I hope to be able to keep it up.

We also organized baby clothes. Caleb was busting out of his 6 month stuff, so we went through all the storage bins and organized them by size.

Now when he decides he ready to go into 12 month clothes, we'll be ready.



The last thing I did, this month, was organize my pictures.

I really want to start scrapbooking again this year and with the pictures grouped, I feel like it will be easier to get a page going. I'm even thinking about putting "Quick Pages" or sketches in the folders, as I get time, so when I get the urge to scrapbook it'll be easy to throw some stuff together. I guess we'll see how that goes.

Lastly, my goal this year is to organize my entire house, room by room, to be the way I want it. If I work really hard and some people (mainly Joe) help me, I should be able to get it done by the end of the year. I also hope to get my second bedroom in some sort of order so I might be able to participate in the "Where Bloggers Create" this summer, if they are going to do it.

I have no official plans for this coming month. That's the way I seem to roll these days, but there are always things that jump out at me to do, so I'm sure there will be no lack of things to be organized or things to enjoy.

How is your resolution, One Little Word or plan for this year panning out?

One Little Word... Ok, Maybe Two...

For years I have seen people pick their One Little Word(OLW) to focus on for the rest of the year. I have never really picked one before, but a few times I might have thought "I wonder what my word would be" then 6 seconds later I was thinking about something else.

This year I think I'm gonna try it. In fact I'm going to break the rules and have chosen two words... to make up for lost time. ;-) But seriously, I thought of the first word and to tell you the truth, it did not sound fun -at all-. It was one of those words where I was like, "This is going to be really hard, but it -has- to be done."

That word is

I feel like my life is almost haphazard. I never know what the day is going to bring (to some degree). That used to be exciting, but now that I've reached middle age(hah), it is not that exciting anymore. In fact I feel like I need some sort of structure. Along with that I feel like I need to organize the house and my time better also.

See how depressing and tedious that sounds? So I picked another one. It the kind of word that makes you want to put a pep in your step. It is 



I want to enjoy life. Enjoy my kids while they are little, cause they grow up too fast. Enjoy trips, enjoy hanging out with people, enjoy crafting, enjoy everyday life, enjoy everything. After 2011 being so tiring, it will be a refreshing change.

I have lots of plans involving these two words. I hope to share some of them and their progress as the year progresses. But, for now I am going to go back to organizing my list and prepping for Elijah's birthday party, so I can enjoy myself as it is going on. :-)

Until next time...