So, yesterday's blog challenge was something I've felt proud of in the past few days. I guess the easy answer is that I've been proud of my students. I feel proud of them often. I am proud of those I have taught that have worked hard and had their hard work pay off in their lives and their jobs. I'm proud of Erin Wunz, my current EOU senior. Not only is she making great progress on her voice and her senior recital, but she is doing it while playing "Christine" in the Phantom of the Opera and being active in her church, an active participant in choir, having a job, and operating a voice studio. I am not sure that she knows how proud of her I am, but I feel very happy when I see how far she will go and how much she wants it.
I am proud of my husband. He has been working overtime almost every day for the past few weeks. He's out the door by 6 and home around 5:30 to be a WONDERFUL father to our kiddo. He plays games with him, wrestles with him, and entertains his silly "I made you say 'what'" games.
In general, I am proud of those around me. Proud of the students who work hard. Proud of the wonderful parents of La Grande in my Kindermusik classes and the wonderful work they do to raise their children. I am proud of my son who makes good choices most of the time and works hard to be a great kid.
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Monday, January 31, 2011
Short term goals...
So...today's blog is coming to you after what finally felt like a successful rehearsal of Stephen Sondheim's "Assassins". We worked for 3 hours and the cast really worked hard and we got a lot of stuff done tonight. It finally feels like it might come together. Hopefully we can pull that pace for the next 4 weeks and be right on schedule to peak at opening. :)
Today's challenge is to list a few short term goals for this month. I found this thought to be a little daunting until I realized that I already have some...they just aren't written down.
1. finish out this blog challenge by truly blogging every day. I chose this goal because I truly love to blog and there are times that I NEED to blog in order to process through my thoughts and feelings, but I have gotten out of the habit.
2. Stay on-budget and still have a GREAT time on our ski trip and get to do whatever we want to, but with cash! After paying off $23,000 in consumer debt, we are sitting in a MUCH better position these days, HOWEVER, it still takes WORK to stay on track and in-budget and live within our means.
3. Do a little house cleaning every day so it's not so daunting on the weekends. I am a bad housekeeper. I am. I always had a messy room and I don't mean "lived in". I mean MESSY! and now I have a house with 2 other people in it and it's always messy. I spend my entire weekend cleaning. I don't want to do that anymore. I am going to try for this month to see if I can do a little bit every day and find a balance.
4. Get the computer room cleaned out and ready to be gutted. Our house project is never ending (at least it feels like it) and this room is next on the list. Ethan will be moved in here once it's complete and then we'll start working on the living room and one side of the house.
5. spend my evenings home in quality time with my family. Since I pick up Ethan at 3 and have rehearsal most days at 6, I only get until about 5:30 in the evening with him most nights. I have tried and will continue to try to make that time count with puzzles, reading, legos, and other one-on-one time. Oh...and date night once per week is a must! :) We've been doing pretty good at that so far and this week we are headed to an art opening, dinner, and EOU's production of "All My Sons" on Friday. Should be some good quality time with the hubster. :)
and for kicks, I will add:
6. hand-write and mail 2 letters to friends and/or loved ones. We forget about this in our day and age. We are instant. Email. Text. Chat. Facebook. There is NOTHING I love more than getting ACTUAL mail in my mailbox. Although...it rarely happens. I will work to make someone's day by sending them a hand-written snail mail letter because who doesn't like getting mail? :)
Today's challenge is to list a few short term goals for this month. I found this thought to be a little daunting until I realized that I already have some...they just aren't written down.
1. finish out this blog challenge by truly blogging every day. I chose this goal because I truly love to blog and there are times that I NEED to blog in order to process through my thoughts and feelings, but I have gotten out of the habit.
2. Stay on-budget and still have a GREAT time on our ski trip and get to do whatever we want to, but with cash! After paying off $23,000 in consumer debt, we are sitting in a MUCH better position these days, HOWEVER, it still takes WORK to stay on track and in-budget and live within our means.
3. Do a little house cleaning every day so it's not so daunting on the weekends. I am a bad housekeeper. I am. I always had a messy room and I don't mean "lived in". I mean MESSY! and now I have a house with 2 other people in it and it's always messy. I spend my entire weekend cleaning. I don't want to do that anymore. I am going to try for this month to see if I can do a little bit every day and find a balance.
4. Get the computer room cleaned out and ready to be gutted. Our house project is never ending (at least it feels like it) and this room is next on the list. Ethan will be moved in here once it's complete and then we'll start working on the living room and one side of the house.
5. spend my evenings home in quality time with my family. Since I pick up Ethan at 3 and have rehearsal most days at 6, I only get until about 5:30 in the evening with him most nights. I have tried and will continue to try to make that time count with puzzles, reading, legos, and other one-on-one time. Oh...and date night once per week is a must! :) We've been doing pretty good at that so far and this week we are headed to an art opening, dinner, and EOU's production of "All My Sons" on Friday. Should be some good quality time with the hubster. :)
and for kicks, I will add:
6. hand-write and mail 2 letters to friends and/or loved ones. We forget about this in our day and age. We are instant. Email. Text. Chat. Facebook. There is NOTHING I love more than getting ACTUAL mail in my mailbox. Although...it rarely happens. I will work to make someone's day by sending them a hand-written snail mail letter because who doesn't like getting mail? :)
Sunday, January 30, 2011
...and some leave footprints in our hearts forever.
Today's blog challenge is to post a picture of someone or something that has had a large impact on me. I am going to choose my mother. I was an "only child" until the age of 4 when my dorky brother was born (love you, Ross! :). My mom and I hung out all the time. According to her entries in my journal from those days, we did a lot of wonderful things together and were the best of friends.
I think everyone goes through a stage at some point in their lives where they don't like their mom. So did I. I thought my mom was crazy and stupid and that there was NO POSSIBLE WAY that she could understand where I was coming from. We had some pretty big arguments those days and I think what I did to hurt her the most was stay away. I did a lot of things to stay distant from my mother when I was growing up. Not to say we didn't have GREAT times as well...we did! I have many fond memories of time with my mom and times where she surprised me with how she reacted to my behavior....like when she caught me kissing my boyfriend in the hall at my high school where she had come to pick me up unannounced. :) It was a wonderful talk from a place of understanding and it was times like those that I realized that she was a person too.
I talk to my mother every day. Some people don't understand that and think maybe we are TOO close, but she lives 7 hours away and I love her more than she could possibly know. Both of us sometimes make decisions that make the other one come out and say how we feel, but we are open and loving and communicate wonderfully.
I don't know who I would be or where I would be without my mother. She raised 9 children plus whatever foster kids and friends happened to be visiting. She did it with assigned laundry days and laundry buddies, color codes (including our socks!), massive amounts of bagged cereal and toilet paper, and love. We had family dinners and family night. Family trips and family scripture time. All of this was on her own with a husband who was un-supportive and negative. She is a ROCKSTAR! She always has been, I just had to look with different eyes to see it.
I've often thought of writing down some of my childhood memories for her. I am sure she experienced our childhood much differently than we did. :)
Thanks mom! for everything!
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Sidenote on being out of debt...
I am enjoying my saturday morning and listening to Dave Ramsey's broadcasts from the previous week. Something he said just struck me and I wanted to transcribe it because it's just how I feel!
Dave speaking about his experience being in debt with collectors calling and the repo man taking his car...
"I will NEVER be in that situation again"
"There is nothing that I want bad enough. There is no dream that I want big enough. There is no nightmare that you can introduce to my life that is scary enough. You're not big enough, bad enough, or angry enough to make me afraid enough to borrow money again...I'm DONE! And that's the benefit of having gone through financial hell..."
after getting calls from creditors with threats and bank foreclosure notices:
"...and then I would lay there until 4:00 in the morning wide awake half mad and half scared. I'm never going back there again. You don't have a car that I want that bad... There's not a boat I want that bad. Not a house I want that bad. There's not a business idea I want that bad..there's not anything I want that bad. I want financial peace."
I love how he puts things. :)
Having spent a number of years in my 20's laying awake at 4 in the morning having those same feelings about our money situation and having spent the last 18 months getting out of the $23,000 debt mess we were in, I can honestly say....I WILL NEVER BE THERE AGAIN!!!
Just thought I'd share. :)
Dave speaking about his experience being in debt with collectors calling and the repo man taking his car...
"I will NEVER be in that situation again"
"There is nothing that I want bad enough. There is no dream that I want big enough. There is no nightmare that you can introduce to my life that is scary enough. You're not big enough, bad enough, or angry enough to make me afraid enough to borrow money again...I'm DONE! And that's the benefit of having gone through financial hell..."
after getting calls from creditors with threats and bank foreclosure notices:
"...and then I would lay there until 4:00 in the morning wide awake half mad and half scared. I'm never going back there again. You don't have a car that I want that bad... There's not a boat I want that bad. Not a house I want that bad. There's not a business idea I want that bad..there's not anything I want that bad. I want financial peace."
I love how he puts things. :)
Having spent a number of years in my 20's laying awake at 4 in the morning having those same feelings about our money situation and having spent the last 18 months getting out of the $23,000 debt mess we were in, I can honestly say....I WILL NEVER BE THERE AGAIN!!!
Just thought I'd share. :)
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....
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....
Friday, January 28, 2011
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!) :)
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!) :)
Thursday, January 27, 2011
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.
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.
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