Since I've been lagging in my blog responsibilities...

I'm overdue for my Thankfulness blog. While it isn't a particularly original topic this time of year, I'm still holding myself to the edict I made here. I am going to change up the format a little. I wasn't able to keep up with my daily items very well this time with all the holiday traveling, so I thought I'd try more of a narrative feel.

My last Thankful post was on November 12th. Therefore, I have 17 days to account for. Technically, then, I would owe you 51 items to be thankful for. (Please, take a moment to be wowed by my mathematical genius... okay, fine... I used a calculator.) However, that sort of obsessive need for details and to follow the rules to their ridiculous end kinda takes the meaning out of it, doesn't it?? And, that same part of my personality is one I believe I could use some work on. I'm just going to ramble away and see where it goes.

Sad but true... I'm ecstatic about the fact that a friend insisted that I buy and read the Twilight book series. They were fantastic and I spent an entire weekend doing nothing but reading all four of them. Seriously. The laundry pile reached mass proportions and threatened to take over the world but I didn't care!!! What is it about vampires (and sometimes pirates, arrogant princes, and other manly men images) that seem to make us all googly-eyed? Heck, I wanted to be a vampire by the time I was done.

On with it.... I'm thankful for an entire 9 days away from work. I didn't even THINK about it for 5 of them! Those blissful days entitled me to some serious family time with not only my kids and Mike but also with both my and his families. We spent a great deal of time in a car, but the kids are seasoned travelers so other than our cramped quarters it was fairly painless. It's shocking the amount of stuff that we cram into the Explorer before we even put us in it.

I'm glad that we got to spend time with Mike's mom. She doesn't get to see the kids very often (once or twice a year) and this time they were all old enough to remember her from the last visit. The last time she came up to our house back in the spring, Abby asked her when Granny Nina was coming to visit (in case you haven't guessed, Granny Nina is Mike's mom...oops). It's unfortunate that she lives so far away, but since neither of us are willing to move it's a situation we make the best of when we can.

I'm thankful for the size of our family. My side of the family is fairly small, but Mike's is HUGE. Divorced parents will do that for you, I guess, but the kids really enjoy the fact that they get multiple iterations of the same holiday with different groups of people. They are loved by a lot of great people and that is something that I will never take for granted.

I am utterly and completely thankful for spending the morning doing completely girly and out-of-character things like dressing my kids up and curling their hair with BOWS even. They love to have their hair curled and I'm not a complete monster - even I can operate a curling iron if necessary.

I'm glad for the wonderful day we spent with my family. I'm still very, very selfish about spending the actual holiday with my family. Mike doesn't mind and I'm VERY thankful for that, because I've never spent a single holiday without them. For those of you that know me, you know that my Mommy and Daddy are quite possibly the greatest people on earth. I don't know of anyone that has been around for longer than a few seconds that hasn't had the privilege of being spoiled by them.

I have some GREAT pictures from that day that I'll post later.

I'm sure I didn't make it anywhere near 51 items. It didn't seem appropriate somehow since the items that did make it are pretty significant. I would be remiss if I didn't say I was glad about beer, though. It doesn't reach the level of Thankful or Ecstatic but it holds its own. :) Hope you all had as great a holiday as I did.

This week's list of things I was thankful for

Thursday, Nov. 6

1. A work meeting on the need and value of training people. I was actually fired up about something work-related for the first time in a loooonnnnggg time. Maybe I've found my calling.
2. Granny & Papa. This falls in the category of really, really, REEAAALLLYY thankful.
3. JEANS DAY!!! Every Thursday you can donate $1 to wear jeans to work. I'd pay $5 but don't tell them that.

Friday, Nov. 7

1. Happy, healthy babies. I take them for granted far too often.
2. Short work days! I left at lunch!
3. Really, really good friends. I don't have a lot of them, but the ones I have are truly great.
4. Super-smart kids. Hannah's parent-teacher conference was tonight.

Saturday, Nov. 8

1. Five wonderful years spent with my Ryley Taylor (okay, so I cheated a few days - she turns 5 on the 10th)
2. A great afternoon with family, which produced this opportunity


3. A well-planned and well-executed day... no rushing around or forgetting things.

Sunday, Nov. 9

1. Watching Hannah at a gym meet and getting little shivers of excitement when I saw how far she's come from last year. I'll post video if I can.
2. A no-laundry weekend. And no, I don't mean that there wasn't any to do....please. that's right, I didn't do ANY.
3. A generally nice day weather-wise and otherwise.

Monday, Nov. 10

1. Nobody said "It sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays" to me. Wait. Yes they did, but they were totally kidding. (If you haven't seen Office Space that comment will make no sense to you.)
2. A warm, toasty house. I went all crazy and turned the thermostat up to....72!!!
3. Giggling in bed with Mike. (Okay, mostly I giggled. Boys don't really giggle, do they?)

Tuesday, Nov. 11

1. Sick days home from work. Not so much thankful for the sick part as for the sleeping all day part and watching stupid movies part.
2. Dayquil. Wonderful stuff. Nyquil. Even better.
3. Not having to cook dinner (Thanks Papa!)

Wednesday, Nov. 12th

1. A truly productive day at work. Stop laughing. It really happened!!!
2. My boss returning to work soon. Seriously.
3. A luxury lunch at Copeland's with Mike. Yummy. Extra bonus when we saw that they deep-fry turkeys for Thanksgiving, which in turn became my culinary contribution to Thanksgiving Dinner (you can laugh at that one. I can totally cook but SO choose not to.)

All in all, a nice, quiet, slow week.

Report on extra-credit work from last week (Three things I said I'd work on):
Patience, patience, patience... It's in short supply and as a result I'm losing my cool far more often than I should. If I did better at all, it was a small improvement. Abby continues to wet her pants after going 3 months without doing so and I'm LOSING MY MIND!!!
Creating more opportunities for events to be thankful for - stop using "I'm too tired" as an excuse. I did better here. I let my kids play with makeup and tonight we're getting the fish tank ready for Hannah's new goldfish.
Calmly and rationally telling my husband why I'm irritated instead of letting it fester until I blow up. I think I only blew up once, and it was a small blow-up. A "poof" really. Not the "KA-BOOM" kind. Maybe you should ask him how I'm doing. (Then you will immediately tell me everything he said!!) Oh dear, I really haven't made it far at all. Better luck next week :)

Did I give my "everything" today?

I've just finished reading the latest post on one of the blogs I follow - Bring the Rain (link on the right of my blog). The song that plays when you first open is called "All that I can say" and one of the lines in the song is "This is all that I can give, that's my everything". I was looking for a topic for today's blog, and that's a good one.

Did I give my "everything" today?

Did I whole-heartedly go after this day?

The answer is NO.

I'm usually a go-getter kind of person. At least until lately. Actually, that's probably not true. There's been an ever-increasing level of apathy in my attitude for some time now. I can't place my finger on when it started, but I guess that really isn't the important part anyway.

There was a time when I didn't need a lot of external motivation or urging to give my best. I liked the way that doing something well made me feel, and I also liked the challenge of working on something until I got better at it. This drive and some healthy competition was all I really needed. Oh, and the fear of getting in trouble for doing something wrong. Nothing motivates me more than the possibility of getting in trouble :)

My love of sports stemmed, at least in part, from this part of my personality. Sports are always a challenge, and you can always improve... plus, there's the added bonus of competition. My competitive nature isn't the kind that always needs to defeat the other team, and it isn't particularly driven by aggression. I just felt that if I was going to do something, I shouldn't waste my time doing it at anything less than my full efforts.

Not so these days. I float through my days on a "make it through" philosophy. I'm in a hurry to just get things done so I can move on to the next thing, or worse, I simply put the things off in the hopes that I won't ultimately need to do them.

Today at work, I knew going into the day that it would be a short work day and that I would be going home after lunch. I also knew there was only one item that I had to complete in that time, and that item would take less than an hour. However, instead of completing that item and moving on to other items with later due dates, I goofed off. I found many distractions to rationalize it.

I know in my head that completing those other items (or at least starting them) would 1) make for a much easier time later on, 2) result in a better work product, and 3) drastically reduce my stress levels because I won't have to worry about them anymore. What happened to the internal drive to do things well? Has it been replaced by a lesser drive to just get things done when I HAVE to, or worse, no drive at all? I wish I could say the behavior has been perpetuated by an environment where the workload in unreasonable and therefore it is impossible to get everything done to the level of my satisfaction. If that were true, how did I manage to do exactly that for the first three years I worked there?

The same applies to how I deal with my kids in certain situations. I'll put off putting them in the bathtub or I'll decide it's "time" for them to learn to bathe themselves (they can, but are easily distracted and "forget" to wash) until it's way past bedtime, and then I rush them around getting them dry and in jammies. In the rush, of course, there's no time for bedtime stories or talking. I'm ashamed to say that more often than not I make Hannah read to them anyway. I rationalize THAT by telling myself it's good for her... which it is, but not in the way it should be. If I were giving my "everything," I'd lay down with all of them while she was reading to them, and then we'd all talk about the book together. Instead, I substitute Hannah for me because it gets the job done. In no deep corner or far reaches of my imagination do I believe this is parenting done well. I feel guilty, and I should.

The greater question is, WHAT AM I GOING TO DO ABOUT IT? It's the easiest question in the world to ask... and the hardest one to answer. How do I make myself take the time to do the job well in a day that is a total whirlwind from the second the alarm goes off until I pass out in bed with the kids? I can't answer that yet. I need to work on making sure I realize all the times I don't give everything I have, because I fear it's more often than I think. And maybe I should hire someone scary to supervise so there's the threat of being in trouble. Apply in your comment and be sure to use your best authoritative tone :)

I'd love to hear if any of you have had similar issues, and whether or not you've found something that works to get you back on track. I'm at a loss on this one.

Daily Account of Thankfulness

As a result of my realization that I am just going through the motions, I've decided to post a daily account of 3 things I'm thankful/appreciative of. In the interest of time, I'll post weekly with the items by day for that week.

I set ground rules: I cannot use an item more than once a week... so I can't cheat by using my husband and kids every post. The items do not have to be monumental or life-changing necessarily - there is joy to be found in small stuff too.
Hopefully this exercise will provoke me to stop and smell the proverbial roses...

I'll start easy... I'll start my account from last Friday (mostly because I cannot honestly remember what happened before then - thus the need for the exercise). By the way, these are in no particular order of importance...

Friday, October 31
I was thankful for...

1. The nice weather for Halloween. The last few Halloweens have had cold, rainy, windy weather.
2. The kind interaction of complete strangers in my office with my children.
3. A stress-free (and coincidentally work-free) day at the office.

Saturday, November 1

1. Sleeping in to the late hour of.... 8:00 a.m. Seriously, it was wonderful.
2. My dad keeping the kids for me so I could go run tryouts for our local junior volleyball club
3. A quiet, uneventful day that ended with a calm dinner with just the girls and I (Mike went to the Razorback game)

Sunday, November 2

1. Spending time with my girls decorating sweatshirts. It was horribly messy and they absolutely loved it.
2. Lounging in the bed with Mike for almost a full hour after we woke up. Normally he wakes up before me and doesn't like to stay in bed, so it was a nice treat.
3. Daylight savings time. An extra hour of sleep that magically appears... wonderful.

Monday, November 3

1. The sun being up on my drive to work.
2. Mike and I having lunch together.
3. The giant hugs and the awesome sound of "Mommy!" being yelled when I picked the little girls up from daycare.

Tuesday, November 4

1. A full, productive day at work with minimal interruptions. They're very rare these days.
2. The tree tunnel. It's the leg of my drive to work where the road is not only lined with trees but the branches stretch over the road, giving the illusion of being in a tunnel. It's absolutely stunning in the fall.
3. An extremely tiring but enjoyable evening of semi-competitive volleyball with good friends...

Wednesday, November 5

1. Wednesdays being my short work days and the day that Hannah and I get some alone time.
2. The Question game that we play at dinnertime. It started with the normal "How was your day" stuff and evolved into a way to entertain everyone at the table, including me. (I suggest the KidChat books... lots of fun questions for kids like "If you could make something else besides snow or rain fall out of the sky, what would it be?" Hannah wanted kittens, Ryley opted for mice, and Abigail wanted hot dogs. It's a fun game, even for the smaller girls.)
3. The freckles on Ryley's nose. She only has four or five, they're in a semi-straight line, and they're so cute.

Extra credit.... Three things to work on for next week:

1. Patience, patience, patience... It's in short supply and as a result I'm losing my cool far more often than I should.
2. Creating more opportunities for events to be thankful for - stop using "I'm too tired" as an excuse.
3. Calmly and rationally telling my husband why I'm irritated instead of letting it fester until I blow up.