Christmas Day!

Ok, ready for this??  Our Christmas morning started at 4:30am.  FOUR THIRTY in the morning!  Gavin, even though I explained the night before that the kids were to call for us when the light in Riley's room turned green, came into our room at like 4:00 and whispered, 'Merry Christmas!' Yes, son...Merry Christmas.  Now go back to bed.  So he heads back to Riley's room, and I hear him over the monitor trying to wake her up.  Are you serious, child??  I tried, unsuccessfully, to have them just come snuggle in our bed.  Finally around 5am, I went out to the living room with them.  We got cinnamon rolls ready, took pictures in front of the tree, and they played with the umbrellas Santa brought until about 5:30, when I could no long keep them distracted, and Jarrod came out so we could open gifts.

 Gavin was SO excited to finally get his first video game.  He was thrilled to finally get Skylanders for the Wii!

We enjoyed our homemade cinnamon rolls and started our morning of building Legos, opening gifts, and exploring all the fun things Santa brought.  I honestly thought the kids would crash.  Nope.  Before I knew it, we were off to deliver cinnamon rolls to the fire station and headed to see Big Hero 6 at the theater, one of our newer traditions. (We started that last year!)  The movie was hilarious, and Riley made it almost to the end before she was just done and ready for a nap.  She crashed and took a great nap, but was the only one of us that got to sleep that day.  Craziness.  

We had an amazing Christmas this year.  It just makes my heart happy when I see how magical the holidays are through the eyes of the kids.  And I just cherish every minute of the family time!  I miss see my family at Christmas time, but when I hear friends complaining constantly about all the hustle and bustle of traveling from place to place to place and never getting to just relax and enjoy a quiet moment with their kids, it makes me grateful that our holidays are filled with family memories and not stress.

Alright...more Christmas pics coming when I transfer iPhone pics!

Christmas Eve Traditions

Christmas Eve always starts out like any other day when Christmas falls in the middle of the week because Jarrod still has to work.  The kids and I had our normal morning...nothing spectacular obviously because I can't even really remember what happened!  Ha!  I know I planned ahead this year and made our cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning.  In the past, Jarrod and I have made them together after the kids go to bed, but he always is so tired from working that I end up finishing them alone anyway, so why not knock them out early?  ;) When Jarrod got home, we Skyped with the Ohio fam and let the kids open the few presents they had from them.  We did Christmas in July so they shouldn't have had any gifts, but you know how that goes! :)  It was, of course, great to see them and spend some of Christmas with them. 

We had to do our traditional pictures in front of the tree, and that always includes me messing with the camera, trying to get the settings right.  We have such bad lighting in here, so I ended up saying 'screw it' and used auto mode for most of them.  Oh well.

Our holiday dinner was delish!  Ham with roasted veggies, sweet potato fries, and mac and cheese for the kids.  The kids had to tear through dinner quickly to get to present time!  We exchange family gifts on Christmas Eve. 

Riley got some My Little Pony toys, Lego Duplos from Gavin, new Frozen pajamas, and ballet and tap shoes.  Gavin received Minecraft toys, a TMNT from his sister, much needed pajamas, and a new soccer ball and net for the goal outside.  Both kids got new books, too.  Jarrod wasn't supposed to get much, but I got him some Ellen underwear to match what Mimi and Beepa bought for the kids, a Road ID to wear when he's out training alone, and I 'gifted' him my commitment to running the Half Marathon with him.  What was I thinking??? :)  He did a great job picking out new clothes like I asked - I got leggings, tunics, boot socks and a scarf. 

Another Christmas Eve tradition is a sleepover in Riley's room.  The kids love it, and I do, too.  Something so special about checking the monitor and seeing both of our babies sharing a bed.  I cherish those little things so much!

Can't wait for Christmas morning! :)

Family Photos

One of my 'bucket list' items from 2014 was to have family photos done.  I love taking selfies with the kids, but aside from that, I'm not really in photos and we very rarely have any of all four of us.  But, good photography, while an investment, is so expensive!  The last photos we had professionally taken were in 2012, when Riley was just 9 months old! 

And so, a very popular photographer advertised a mini-session day and I jumped on it.  I figured it would be the best way to get some photos.  I reserved our spot and paid for the smaller package - five images on a disc.  I thought that would be good...one of the family, one of each of the kids, and one of the family. 

But then....the day came, and despite only have twenty minutes with the photographer, I was blown away by how many pictures she snapped.  We got in the car and I immediately told Jarrod, 'I'm going to be really disappointed when I can't see some of those shots she took...' so I emailed her, paid to upgrade to the bigger package, and got all these amazing photos of my lovely family.  I'm so thrilled with them!

Reflections and Goals!

I'm all about making goals and tracking progress, so this time of year is always exciting for me.  I was eager to check back to see what goals I'd made for 2014, what things were on my 'bucket list' and to see how I'd done.  Admittedly, I wasn't very good of keeping those things at the front of my mind this past year.  It seems that 2014 was full of changes for me and I know I spent a lot of time over the last year with my mind spinning with ideas and thoughts and I was just trying to make sense of it all.  It feels really good to have taken time over the past couple of weeks to reflect and make decisions about what I'm looking forward to in 2015.

That being said, first I want to go back to those four goals I made for 2014.  I vowed first to become a healthier person, and I think I nailed this one.  We definitely eat cleaner than ever before, Jarrod and I both exercise regularly and are active role models for the kids, and I even accomplished that goal of wearing a bikini in Cancun!  I took this goal further by starting up as a health and fitness coach with Beachbody and have been blown away by the amount of satisfaction I've gotten from helping others on their healthy lifestyle journey, too.  It's been so amazing to be someone's motivator.  Love it.

Goal #2 was to spend less on groceries, and while I failed to do a good job at tracking that through the year, I'm pretty confident I didn't succeed in that area.

It was hard to make goal #3 because it meant that I was admitting that I'd become a 'yeller' and I didn't like it.  I promised myself I'd be a kinder, gentler mom in 2014.  The dynamics of our family of course are ever changing.  Having a three year old around means a lot of aggravation, if you know what I mean!  But, we definitely have all worked on this goal and we're doing well...still have progress to make, so it will continue to be a goal in 2015.

And lastly, I wanted to be sure to connect with friends and family more in 2014.  Like #3, I know I could do even better, but I am happy with the progress I made in this area.  There are still friends I wish I had more frequent contact with, and I want to do more to initiate conversations with my siblings, but I am proud of my efforts in 2014.

Next comes my 'bucket list' for 2014.  I love making a list to check off through the year....but I didn't do great!  :-/

1. Road trip to Kansas City - YES!  And it was so fun!

2. Read 6+ books - I think so :)  This was one of those areas that I didn't do a good job tracking, but I can remember four books for sure that I read, and I'm pretty confident I made it to six.

3. Earn the consistency bonus every quarter with TS - NO...but that's because of changes I made...more to come.

4. Learn yoga - YES!  And probably one of my favorite things I did in 2014

5. Run a 5K - while I technically ran many 5K, none of them were organized races ;)

6. Make DVDs of my Flip/iPhone videos - NO!  And this will be on my list for 2015.  It's so important to me, but so overwhelming...

7. Overhaul my craft closet - NO :(  Will work on it this year

8. Sew something for myself to wear - NO...I didn't sew much at all in 2014

9. Promote to Team Mentor by the end of 2014 - NO, again because of those changes

10. Redecorate the playroom - Sort of...not as much as I wanted, but we did start

11. Paint something on canvas - YES!  And I loved our Santa painting as part of our holiday decor this year

12. Create and implement an allowance system for Gavin - YES!  And it worked great in the beginning, but he slacked off.  I'll be better about that this year.

13. Have family photos taken - YES!  And I love them.

14. Surprise the kids with a trip somewhere - YES!  Disney was amazing!

Like I mentioned before, 2014 was full of changes.  Jarrod got a new position that made his schedule different.  Getting home early enough for me to schedule parties flexibly became difficult.  Soon, my party schedule with TS became non-existent and I was keeping my business going solely online.  Because of my changes, my sales were not as high, meaning I didn't earn my bonuses, and not being in front of groups on people regularly at party made growing my team extremely difficult, so promoting was not possible.  It took a long time for me to be ok with those changes.  TS has been a part of my life for six years now!  It's hard to make changes.  But I've accepted that my path is taking a new turn and TS can still be part of my life, but in a different way.  I've officially 'retired' from being a party consultant.  I'm not stressing each month to try to get online events planned.  I'm simply going to help my current clients with their orders and continue to enjoy our favorite products at a discount. ;)  And it feels good to be ok with that and be able to breathe a little easier knowing I'm not disappointing my team.

So...after all those reflections, it was time to make some plans for 2015.  I thought long and hard about where I want this year to take us...and my focus on just being happy seems to come up in everything I think of.  (Hence my AIM for Happy adventure...happiness is so important to our well-being!)  Each of my goals will bring happiness into my life in some way.

Goals for 2015

1. Get back to blogging.  It was a sad realization when a friend called me out and made me aware of the fact that I hadn't blogged in months.  I'm promising myself to change that.  Why?  Well, I started this blog for one reason - to keep our friends and family involved in our everyday lives when we moved away from Ohio.  While that's why it started, it turned out to be an amazing way for me to document our lives!  I turned from scrapbooking to blogging and I love my blog books that I print and know one day, I'll cherish having these memories recorded.  So, knowing that I've slacked and missed a lot makes me sad.  Time to amp it up, and I'm going to be sure to schedule blogging time in my weekly plans.

2. Be better with our budgeting and saving.  Nothing stresses me out more than to feel overwhelmed with financial stuff.  We were doing a really good job and then Disney happened and the holidays and several other bumps in the road and I stopped working on our budget weekly like I had been and I feel like I lost control...so I need to get back.  Doing so will also help me work on that goal that failed on in 2014 - spending less on groceries.  I know this will also help us save more, use cash more, and overall, I'll be happier knowing that things are back under control.  Remember that happy theme!

3. Cook more with the kids.  I have a distinct memory of Jarrod and I cooking together in our little house on Carolyn Dr., music playing, and me saying to him that one day, we'd be cooking together with our future kids.  Well, fast forward to the future...we have those kids, and often times there's still music playing when I'm cooking, but that tends to be the time that I let the kids turn on the TV, mostly to keep them out of my hair while I'm trying to get dinner on the table. Better planning and starting to prep dinner earlier than really needed will allow me to include them more in the cooking and having us all in the kitchen together will be a happy time for us I'm sure.  Looking forward to this one!

4. Continue to be a healthy role model and a gentler parent - I think focusing on the type of parent I want to be is key to my happiness.  If I'm not healthy and I'm constantly raising my voice and getting frustrated with the kids, of course I'm not going to be happy.  Plus, when I'm modeling these behaviors, the kids follow.... win, win.

I'm also continuing with my 'bucket list' idea.  I really love these!  And I'm posting this list in my 'life notebook' that I've started using daily so they're always present.

1. Make a DVD of my Flip/iPhone videos (sound familiar?)

2. Overhaul craft closet (hmmmm???)

3. Complete a half marathon

4. Take a weekend road trip to a new place

5. Print another blog book

6. Grow Team AIM to at least 15 coaches

7. Make an effort to have two dates with Jarrod (outside the home!)

8. Back up all my photos and create a system for organizing them

9. Read 10 books (and actually keep track!)

10. Donate my hair to Locks of Love

11. Make a recipe binder/notebook

12. Put cash into my savings envelopes every week, no matter how small

Phew!  That felt so awesome to get all that out!  I'm so excited for this year...it's going to be outstanding.  Let's do it.