Super Superhero....

So, before I could take today's blog challenge, I had to look up the definition of a superhero. Did you know that donald duck is considered by some a superhero? Here I thought the list was limited to awesome men/women/mutants that could do amazing things. Not true. The duck made the list. :)

I didn't really have a superhero that I fell in love with growing up. If you ask my mom, she'll tell you about the time I showed off my new Wonder Woman underwear to the missionaries who had come over for dinner when I was around 5, but I think Wonder Woman might have been my mom's superhero.

So, I came back to the only superheros I heard ALL about growing up with my brothers. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They are, in fact, on the superhero list (although so is the duck....). My brother's LOVED the TMNT! They played with the figurines, watched the movies, dressed up like them, and always made me be April. While I am not very fond of April (I have no patience for silly humans in Superhero stories...they're annoying), I did like the turtles! I like that they live on pizza (not so much with the anchovies), don't shoot guns, get along well as siblings (for the most part), and always get the bad guy. I love them for the respect and love they have and show for their leader and father figure, Splinter. This respect for their elder and their mentor is really missing in a lot of other superhero stories. The others are more like "lone rangers". Superman didn't have a mentor. Neither did Batman or Spiderman. They tended to took things into their own hands. The turtles actually showed love and respect to their mentor every day. I liked that part a lot!

My favorite turtle used to be Raphael. I mostly liked him as a kid because he had the red eye mask and red was my color code. We bonded over that. But, he's a little too dark and brooding at times. He is hot tempered and quick to his emotions. Much like me. But the one I like the most is Donatello. He's the one with the staff for a weapon and the blue eye mask.

Donatello is the thinker. He is smart and known as the brains of the TMNT. He can fight like nobody's business, but if given the option, he'd much rather talk about a peaceful solution than fight. :) He's quite a Mr. Fix-it and likes to invent things and ponder. I even vaguely remember that I'm pretty sure he listens to classical music. :) No wonder I like him. :)

Donatello is by far my favorite of the TMNT and they are my favorite superheros. Growing up and still today....

Travels

I have been a lot of places. In high school, I had the opportunity to travel with a choir around western Europe. I saw the Eiffel tower and toured inside the Louvre. I rode a bike and milked cows with my host family in Holland and played in the French Alps. It was an amazing experience and one I will never forget. In college, we went on a trip to London, England with the a group of theatre students to celebrate a professor's retirement. We saw something like 14 shows in 10 days. We spent a day in the British Museum and rode on the "Tube". We minded the gap and enjoyed every minute! When we got married, we were able to go to Mexico for our honeymoon. Wonderful! Then we traveled to Ecuador with our choir. We met the indigenous people of Planchaloma and worked with about 100 children that showed up to meet us and say hello. We played in the ocean in Manta in the middle of the night with only a few jellyfish stings. We were stranded in the jungle due to a transit strike and we sat in the highest hot springs in the country and danced the night away in Otavolo. I have been around to see a little bit of the world and I hope to see all of it as life continues. We just renewed our passports so we can travel to a ski vacation in Canada at the end of this month. I am so looking forward to it! I've never been to Big White and it's been a LONG time since I have been to a large ski resort of any kind and I'm pretty sure I have never seen the likes of Big White. I want to explore more of south and central America, take a trip to New Zealand and I'd LOVE to visit Japan!

Yes, I have been a lot of places already for someone who is only 32, but the picture I have chosen for today's blog is of a US National Park in Southern Utah. Our family tries to make a trip to southern Utah every year during spring break if we can make it. We hike, bike, explore, camp and see what we can see. It's amazing how much one can find right out our own back doors if we are willing to take the time to explore it. I am very glad I have had the opportunity to travel outside our country many times. It has helped me to avoid the ethnocentric attitudes of people who never leave our borders. However, there are so many wonderful things to see right here in the good ol' USA in addition to what the rest of the world has to offer. I hope to make my son's life an exciting one full of 2-week road trips and flights to tour our nations historical places back east. I hope to visit down south and see how different life can be just outside the northwest. (then I want to put him on a plane and take him with us to Japan!) :)

Bad Habits...

My blog challenge for day 4 is to blog about a habit I wish I didn't have. Well...there are a lot of habits I wish I didn't have. There are the smaller, less important habits like eating cereal in front of the computer, leaving the wash in the washer too long, and biting my nails. Then there are bigger, more affecting habits like dominating conversations, taking on more than I can handle, and eating delicious food past the point of full.

I think for the purpose of this blog, I will tackle contemplating taking on more than I can handle, although it might be cheating because I think I just talked about this not too long ago in my blog. When I was growing up, my life seemed to often be spinning out of control--in a good way, but spinning none-the-less. When you are the oldest of 9 children, there is a lot of responsibility to be had. Now, before you go judging my mother for "putting things on me", let me tell you that my mom is one of my best friends in the world and she raised me just fine, so don't even go there. Since this is my blog, let's talk about how I fit into this habit of mine.

I grew up taking charge. I took charge of homework time and bathtime. I set examples at school and at church. My siblings, cousins, and friends depended on me. I was the one that could take on whatever I was dealing with AND whatever they were dealing with and learn to come out clean on the other side. I was always composed and in control. Of my feelings, my environment, my entire world. However, I think this need for control came from a feeling of lack of control in other areas of my life.

I feel some embedded need to prove myself. I feel the need to prove myself to my husband even though he doesn't ask me to. I feel the need to prove myself to other moms due to the pressures that motherhood brings. I try my hardest to prove that I am a good teacher, a good listener, a good friend. And sometimes, I go overboard. I take on more than I am capable of completing at an acceptable level. I say yes wanting to impress, when I should respectfully decline to keep my sanity. It all just seems like some kind of juggling game. How much can YOU keep in the air without dropping anything or sacrificing? I think we all have this habit in one way or another. For me, it's always saying yes in order to prove to those around me that I am a well balanced, talented, and educated person. For others, it's the same situation, but maybe for different reasons.

Saying yes to more than I can handle is one habit that I wish I did not have. While biting my nails makes me feel like a tom-boy, leaving clothes in the washer too long makes for more work for me, and eating my cereal at the computer bring missed opportunity for conversation with my son, it's this one big ad habit that causes the most disruption in my life. Maybe some day I will learn to balance and break this bad habit of mine as it really is the one that bothers me the most.

Childhood Pictures...

This is my baby picture. I grew up in Marysville, Washington north of Seattle. I had febrile seizures as a baby and always had bags under my eyes. I was pretty damned cute though. :)And just for fun, here is one of my mom's favorites. Don't know how old I am here...4 maybe? 4 going on 32! :)

And that's all for today's blog challenge. :)

Why "A Day in the Life..."

I had some trouble when I first picked my blog title. There are a million blogs all over the internet about a lot of different things and it was hard for me to decide on one that I liked. It may not be terribly unique, but A Day in the Life is the title of my blog because I think it's the little details and the way one lives their life that makes them who they are.

I've always been fascinated by shows and books that follow the life of a person. Looking back in my blog and in my past journals, I can see that I used to just record my day. I would talk about the mundane. What time I got up and what I did after that and then after that and so on. Maybe that's not interesting to others, but I don't blog for those who read it now. Most of the time I blog/journal because some day, someone will find it.



I recently typed up about 90 pages of typed out paper that were journal entries from my great-grandfather. As I typed (in order to make an electronic copy of the history), I read and learned so much about Hills Ralph Collins. The man I knew as a child was very different than the man on the pages I was reading. He caused trouble! He climbed fences he wasn't supposed to and swam where his parents told him he shouldn't. The great-grandpa Collins I knew (and I was VERY lucky to get to know my great-grandfather as most don't have that opportunity) was a flawless patriarch in my eyes. He had a sense of humor and I loved his laugh, but it was the little anecdotes I read after he passed on those pieces of paper that taught me about how he had become who he was. I read about how he met my great-grandmother. I read story after story about his experiences on his LDS mission. Some of these stories must have seems somewhat mundane to him, but to me, it was fascinating to learn the cost of a loaf of bread or think about life without a flushing toilet and learning in a one-room school house. These were the mundane details of my great-grandfathers life experience, but they don't seem so mundane to me generations later.That is why I chose my title and why I sometimes blog and often journal about the mundane. Ethan's baby book has an entire page of details of life surrounding his birth. How much was a gallon of milk, who was president, the New Orleans Disaster, how much the average cost was for a car, a house, and tuition at a 4-year university. Mundane? Maybe to us living in that world, but later, I am sure that it won't be.

It's the mundane, the moments, and the everyday living that make us who we are and help us develop into the people we want to be. I would do anything to have more of those pages of stories from my great-grandpa Collins. What did he do when his kids lied to him (like mine did yesterday?)? How did he manage being a husband/father/firefighter? I'm luckier than most in that I got to ask him many of these kinds of questions while he was alive, but only from the older-wiser grandpa. I want to know what he thought and did when he was 30. :)

15 Interesting Facts...

Today is the first day of my blog challenge. Here is a recent photo of myself followed by 15 "interesting" facts. :) The photo is one of my most recent headshots taken by Amberlee Harder and I LOVE how it turned out!

1. My favorite time of the day is right after work and right before dinner.
2. I love when things do things on their own. For instance, I plug in my phone at night and in the morning....viola! it's charged! I start the dishwasher and go to work and when I come home...viola! the dishes are clean. :)
3. I think it's beautiful when I pour creamer into my coffee and watch it swirl around.
4. I have worked as a wrangler on a ranch and used to spend summer after summer riding/training/caring for horses, using chainsaws, and driving a backhoe.
5. I tend to want more for others than they want for themselves.
6. I love the feeling of being somewhere safe and protected. Ex: a tent when it's raining, my house during a blizzard, etc..
7. I am usually willing to try anything once.
8. I love to do laundry. Wash. Dry. Fold. Not so much putting away.
9. I once drove across the country to train in Tennessee and live in Massachusetts trying to be a door to door encyclopedia salesperson. After about 3 weeks, I rode a greyhound all the way home having sold not one.
   
10. I don't listen to music at home and I am a closet country music fan in my car. :)
11. I have kept a journal pretty consistently since I was 4 years old. My friends gave me the super power of "able to reminisce about something before it even ends". I love memories.
12. I grew up LDS for the majority of my life and went through an amazing journey of leaving the church. I still have a deep love for the members of that church and it's ethical and morality teachings are very much ingrained in me. I love to tell my story to anyone who has the time and the interest in hearing it.
13. My husband and I spent 18 months working to get out of $23,000 in consumer debt. We are now free from the constraints of credit cards and car payments and have never felt so amazing before.
14. I am very happily married to my high school sweetheart.
    
15. I have traveled to Italy, France, Belgium, Austria, Germany, Holland, England, Mexico, and Ecuador.
    

Interesting or not, those are 15 facts about me that I could come up with while sitting here thinking about it. It's been interesting sitting here thinking back on my life. I've lived a pretty full one already and I'm only 32! :)

A blogging challenge-Day 0

It seems that a lot of my friends have been doing these challenges. I am pretty sure it started with the new year. I have seen 365 day photo challenges on facebook. 30 days of reading. list of 100 books to read in 365 days. And a friend posted this list of a blogging challenge he gave himself (great idea, Ryan). I am a journal keeper, but I haven't been a great blogger lately, so I think I will take the challenge from Ryan. I have altered a few of the days to reflect things I would like in my blog. So...here goes 30 days of blogging. :)

day 1- recent picture of you and 15 interesting facts about yourself
day 2- the meaning behind your blog name
day 3- a picture of you as a child
day 4- a habit that you wish you didn’t have
day 5- a picture of somewhere you've been
day 6- favorite super hero and why
day 7- a picture of someone/something that has had the biggest impact on you
day 8- short term goals for this month and why
day 9- something you're proud of in the past few days
day 10- songs you listen to when you are happy, sad, bored, hyped, mad
day 11- write a bucket list of things you want to do before you die
day 12- 3 things that people are always shocked to learn about you
day 13- your 5 favorite books and why
day 14- a picture of you and your family
day 15- what do you consider your biggest success so far in life
day 16- a picture of yourself
day 17- someone you would want to switch lives with for one day and why
day 18- plans/dreams/goals you have
day 19- write about a sweet memory from your past
day 20- write a letter to someone
day 21- a picture of something that makes you happy
day 22- what makes you different from everyone else
day 23- name something you love about each season of the year and which is your favorite
day 24- post your favorite quote or verse of scripture and why
day 25- what I would find in your purse
day 26- list 10 things that you are thankful for
day 27- my day job verses my passion
day 28- what kind of books you read
day 29 - favorite tv shows and why you like them
day 30 - movies you can watch again and again.