Expectations

It’s official, I am a nerd. I was sitting there watching tonight’s episode of The Walking Dead and I kept thinking about the darn Mac and how I need to run some updates and install the latest operating system. I totally love this show even though I never watched it until 2 weeks ago when the first episode of Season 3 aired and I had spent a day and a half watching the marathon of Seasons 1 & 2 while pretending to also be a good mom. (Think lots of frozen pizza and running up and down the stairs with loads of laundry.) I was hooked and the show is awesome, but I guess I am more of a computer nerd than I am a zombie addict.

So yeah, this is basically going to be some more ramblings while I am updating some more stuff.

The older I get the more I find myself trying to figure out what it is that makes me happy. I mean, I am happy most days, but I always need for there to be more going on in my life than just being a wife and a mom. There are always a dozen or more hobbies or projects floating around in my mind and most of those don’t even get implemented. But it’s like I have to have these things that I think I am going to do, create, perfect…or I just don’t feel like a complete person. I was thinking of how long my current list of TO DO things is and as I was chuckling to myself, I figured I may as well let you chuckle along with me.

In no particular order:

Cookie Maker/Designer
I used my birthday money from my parents and in-laws and bought a ton of baking supplies so I could make the perfect sugar cookie and design them using methods like outlining, flooding, sanding and more. One website I found to be extremely helpful and also contains the sugar cookie recipe I plan on using is Bake at 350. I have all the stuff I need to make some cool Halloween decorated cookies, but I have yet to make them. Looks like I am making some cookies tomorrow night with Karli since Halloween is almost here.

Paint the kids bathroom
I bought paint for this project back when I painted Karli’s bedroom back in June. Ken doesn’t like the color and apparently I am not in love with it either since I have yet to paint with it. It’s like a dark purple-ish color and I have 3 boys and 1 girl. I know, that wasn’t a smart choice. I’m thinking a medium gray with red accents would be sweet instead.

Get back into running
For me stress and running don’t mix. I take that back, pretty much running and anything don’t mix. If I have any single thing that I have going on for the day even if it is something quick and easy it messes up my entire day and I somehow can’t find the time to run. Same with stress, if I am stressed about something I turn off everything else in my head and exercise just isn’t happening. I keep seeing all these motivation books that I want to read about running and I’m thinking that somehow magically I am going to become addicted to running someday, but I just turned 40 folks, isn’t it kinda late to start now? Okay, that was silly question, I know it’s never too late to start…which is also why I haven’t started yet. Because I have plenty of time. Ha!

Go to college, I mean help my son get into college
You would almost think that I was the one going off to college in less than two years with the amount of time and effort I put into Andrew’s college plans. I have a list of the schools in Michigan that offer the Masters programs that he is interested in which is either Physical Therapy or Physician Assistant. Only one of the universities offers both programs – Central Michigan – so in his mind this school is his first choice. He can go to pretty much any university and apply for the Physical Therapy program in his 4th year and then transfer. He would also like to consider a Sports Medicine physician as a career but the thought of all that college (13 years) doesn’t have him convinced it’s the right choice. All this crap is stressful to me for some reason. I think it’s difficult because you feel a certain amount of pressure to help push them in the right direction. {sigh…}

Blog, vlog, tweet, pin, instagram and more
I still love the world of blogging and all that comes with social networking however to be super successful at this you need to have full commitment and sort of make it your life’s goal to get “IN” with all the people that are also successful as well. So for me it continues to just be a hobby that I tend to do in spurts. I especially love YouTube and really really wish it was something that I could do consistently. The videos I was making for my “Can Fat People Do the Insanity Workout?” series are still getting excellent views, but I got so bored of the whole thing. I tried 3 times to restart the second month of Insanity and was just too bored with the program. This is still always in the back of my mind, that I want to be better at all that is involved with my blog and YouTube channel because I do thoroughly enjoy it.

Reading
I have a list of a couple dozen books that I really want to read sometime soon. I made the list at the beginning of summer and I haven’t read a single book. I’ve started a couple, but haven’t finished one since the Fifty Shades series. I’m planning on picking up a couple of paperbacks to read while on vacation next month since I don’t want to take my iPad- any suggestions for some good beach reading?

Cooking
I am always trying to find new recipes and plan weekly menus to have a variety of foods to offer my family. I wish I was more creative in this way so it required less planning and just more cooking.

Memory Books/Scrap Books
I can’t even tell you how far behind I am on my kids school and sports scrapbooks. All of the supplies sit in two bins up in my bedroom and they taunt me every day. I figure that I better have Andrew’s done by the time he graduates from high school so we can share it at his graduation party, so I better get a move on. I have piles upon piles of photos that need put into the books as well as prints that need ordered from the past two years. It’s one of those things where I am so far behind I dread even working on it.

Now that I wrote all of this down and scroll up and see all that I feel like I want to do…it doesn’t seem so bad. It doesn’t look like I have too many things to balance. I can work with all of this. It’s just going to take some planning, prioritizing and commitment on my part. Here lately I have been spending so much time with my kids with homework, reading, and studying that by the time the day is over I am too exhausted to do anything productive. The days just fly by too quickly. Boy do I miss the days when I was a stay at home mom with only 1 child in school and the other 3 at home and all I had to do all day was play and take care of the kids.

On a lighter note…both of my boys football teams made it to the Championship game for football. They both won their division and their playoff games today! One final game next week to win it all. I know they can do it!