Kayla

Little Ms. Kayla has just been making me laugh a lot lately, she is developing this funny little personality that just cracks me up! I love this picture because it sums up who Kayla is right at this moment in time! Today she was playing in Jenna's room with her new jewelry box she got for Christmas from Jenna. She also took Jenna's jewelry box out and has evenly divided Jenna's jewelry up between the boxes. I ask her what she is doing and she tells me "I took Jenna's jewelry because mine only had one, then she pauses and with a matter of fact tone declares....I think Jenna is going to be mad at me!" She says this in her sweet little Kayla voice that makes everyone around her just say "oh how cute!" Well my cute little sweet voiced child has a hidden dark side that is learning to manipulate her cuteness into getting what she wants or using it to negotiate her way out of trouble! She really didn't care if Jenna was going to get mad, and I think she may have been enjoying the idea of making her sister a little mad! But the little charmer worked her magic because I left the room not doing a thing about it, but just smiling because it really was cute....even though I'm sure when Jenna realizes what her little sister has done I won't be smiling anymore!

New Years!!!!!

Well happy New Years!! So apart of me really loves New Years as a time of renewal and starting over....but that last about 3 days then I'm back to my usual bad habits, I then get in a funk of a mood because I have totally failed at the 10 or 15 things I set out to change about myself and end up eating the rest of the Christmas candy and feeling really crappy for the rest of the month!

Historically January has always been the most depressing month for me so I think I have always been doomed to failure from the start! I always have felt this huge let down after Christmas, it always makes me really sad to pack up the Christmas decor, then when we lived in Utah January weather always made me feel all gloomy and doomy, at least now I have sunny weather to help me stay out of my January funk!

But some things just dont ever really go away, and every year comes January 13. That is day I lost our first baby at 13 weeks, yes it happened the first year we were married (13 years ago) but the pain is still there and it still really hurts. I rarely think about it until this time of year, but I loved that baby and I think trying for 7 years to have another made the pain that much worse. After having my girls I think a year or two actually went by when I didn't think about it till that day, but now that my girls are older and knowing my body can't have more babies I find I'm thinking about that loss baby again and the longing for another is emerging, and once again I find myself getting really sad that I can't get pregnant again, but for now I will save the baby talk for another post:)

So for those main reasons and a few more little ones I dislike January!

That is why I have decided to start this January with a totally different out look than in years past! While I have resolutions I want to make I'm not going to. Instead I have chosen two things to focus on, I feel that by changing these two things they will have a snow ball effect on the rest of my life!

The first is getting back to dinner. I was great at that up until a year ago and I don't know what happened but I have become so disorganized in this area that we end up eating out, eating really late or resorting to our staple of PB&J! To fix this bad habit I have created a menu that we will rotate through every month. I'm hoping that it wont get boring or repetitive! I did make room for a new recipe to made every month, but I figure having 21 dinners to rotate through wont end up getting old (I don't cook Tuesday or Saturday nights). This way my grocery list is always planned, I don't have to sit down every Sunday night and plan a weekly menu (I think this has been my downfall) and I hope that by planning more budget friendly dinners I can stick with my budget of 125 dollars a week on groceries! I also planned really well balanced healthy meals that are easy to make so hopefully that trickle down theory will come into play with maybe a little weight loss;)

My second goal is just to keep on top of my 5 daily choirs, a rule I had after Jenna was born to help make me keep to a schedule every day as a new stay at home mom.

The rules are as follows:

1. Make beds every day....a bed made for whatever reason keeps the bedrooms clean

2. Do a load of laundry...my all day laundry marathon once a week if even that is getting old!

3. Organize the mail...I happily can say I have always stayed on top of this one:)

4. spend 10 minutes every night just picking up clutter

5. sweep the kitchen floor after dinner

This is not to say I don't do these things all together they just have not always been getting done every day, and I find that when they don't get done life becomes a disorganized mess! I'm hoping that just by getting back to simple basics and forgetting the rest I can once again lead a more focused and organized life and that by small steps everything else will just fall into place!

I will end with wishing everyone a happy new year and happy wishes that we can all stick to new goals, that this year will be better than the last and that when the end does come we are better people than we are now!!!!