My mom's birthday

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!

This is the day that my mother was born. (Obviously if she were not to have been born, nor would have I.) That she is MY mother is a thing that I have enjoyed and then again, not so much. She is now a grandmother to nine (three that are mine), though she sees most of them rarely. This is a sore spot to me, being that she chose to move away from my family several years ago under circumstances that were not our fault. Not that she had to stay within 50 miles or anything, just not so far that we see her at best once a year and hear from her occasionally. The big reason that this bugs me, is that it has not always been like this. We used to talk almost daily and see each other several times a week to do various things together. It left a big gap.

While there are choices that make us all who we are; there are also choices that shape who we will become. It seems that when one makes choices based on emotion or while being emotional, they are rarely the right ones. Knowing that we all make mistakes, prone to drive the ones we love off, and purposely (or not) hurt those who care the most about us - it is easy to see why at this time in my life I feel more distant from my mother than at others.

Enough of the talk of how we are today....let me think back to the yesterdays. My first memory of my mother is at my 3rd birthday. She made me homemade strawberry ice cream and cupcakes. There were many things she made for me and my siblings. Creativeness has ALWAYS been a thing she is good at. Today it is more of art than craft or homemaking. This is one of the things that I have always enjoyed about her, her ability to create. Thankfully it is also musical. That is another of my earliest memories, listening to her play the piano. These things are a vital part of who I am today. Thank you MOM for all that you did for me. Now I am trying to give my children some of the same appreciation of art, music, and crafts.

Getting healthier

It has been close to three weeks now that I committed to getting into better health. There are many reasons to do this, but what got me to agree and be motivated to really change is Tim's willingness to help motivate, work-out with, and just be supportive to me. I need to loose close to 100lbs. to be where we think is a healthy weight. That is a BIG number to just look at and think of doing, but I am going take it each day and see what comes with out the scale telling me how I am doing. So far I take walks with Malia riding in a backpack, work-out to videos/DVDs, and eventually ride my bike. All the exercise is supposed to last a least an hour, and hopefully more than twice a day five to six days a week. At this time, I have been under that amount of time during those days, but have come close several of them. It is my hope that as I get used to this kind of routine, it will be easier and easier to make the time. Of course there is the eating better thing too. With SO many vices in that category, it will be a challenge to keep doing what I should. But, we are eating more fresh vegetables and fruit now and cutting back on the sweets (most of the time). Dairy and sweets are the hardest for me to not have too much of. Eating out is also an area that I like to do too much of, but that is mainly because I do not get dinner done when I should. So all in all, it is about choices and making the time to do what really need to be done.

for starters

Here goes...let me know what you think.