It’s Saturday and that means it is time to reflect on the week and celebrate things both big and small. Join our community and celebrate this week by linking up or just stopping by the host Ruth Ayres’ blog to read others’ celebrations.
Family Time
I went to Madison to spend a night with my mother two weeks ago. Every year, we try to go to Maxwell Street Days, a massive sidewalk sale on State Street downtown. I drove to Madison on Thursday afternoon and we went out to dinner and an outdoor concert. The capitol building was so beautiful as we walked back to my mom’s condo!
During that short trip, we shopped, had lunch with my aunt, and went to my great-aunt’s house to pick raspberries before I drove home Friday afternoon (we won’t discuss the ridiculous traffic in Milwaukee and the extra hour sitting at a standstill). I love living close enough to pop over for an overnight!
I also have enjoyed some awesome morning walks with Ramon and the two dogs. Since we are both teachers, we both have the summer off. It is great to be able to spend time together. (We are also learning to give each other space…that is something that we have to relearn each summer for some reason)
Our Rambunctious Duo
Kiko sure loves this beige couch while Carmela seems to enjoy the purple one. A dog’s life certainly is a lot of napping. Maybe we should take a cue from them!
Healthy Choices
We have been eating better during the last week or so. I love summer vegetables and am subscribed to a CSA box this summer. It is so fun to get creative with the abundance of veggies in my box!
A salad with sugar snap peas, cabbage, cucumber, and tuna.A dinner of baked cod, zucchini soup, and roasted beet salad.
I also was more consistent in getting my workouts in this week, and I signed up for a new workout challenge in August!
Fun new grippy socks for my Barre workouts.
What do you have to celebrate this week? I would love to hear from you in the comments!
It’s Saturday and that means it is time to reflect on the week and celebrate things both big and small. Join our community and celebrate this week by linking up or just stopping by the host Ruth Ayres’ blog to read others’ celebrations.
Sunshine Through the Sunroof
We recently traded in a car so that we could bring our monthly payments down and have more money to budget toward paying off debt. Both my husband and I were very happy with this decision. The best part about it is that now we have two cars with sunroofs. Now, don’t get me wrong, we don’t have super fancy cars. We just have cool features in our cars.
Sunroofs make me happy. I love sunshiny days and I love being able to enjoy them in my car. It just makes my day brighter. One of the best memories I have of my father was during the three months before he passed away, when he finally purchased a Mercedes Benz. He had dreamed his entire life about being able to have a Mercedes. He finally got to a place in which he could afford to lease the lowest priced sedan and he went for it. He LOVED that car. And it had a sunroof. Driving down the roads with our windows down and the sunroof open and blasting folk music is one of the best movies that plays in my mind. I was thirteen and I seldom had times when I thought my dad was cool, but these were moments in which I just enjoyed being with him. My sunroof now reminds me of this. Every. Single. Time.
A Rambunctious Duo
We have our hands full with our two dogs. Kiko is the newer addition to our house, and he sure is full of energy! The two dogs play every morning from the very first second that we let Kiko out of his crate. It is so much fun to have such energy in this household. And, they are pretty darn cute!
Summer Speed
I love the slower pace of summertime. I have spent a lot of time making goals and doing some work, but mostly we are just playing it by ear after a two week visit from my brother-in-law. We loved having him here, but it is great to have our house back to normal.
What do you have to celebrate this week? I would love to hear from you in the comments!
Working to create the life you want to live requires bravery. I’m not talking about climbing mountains or facing dragons, I’m just talking about stepping out of your comfort zone. But that is scary.
If I were not careful, I would be in danger of becoming a hermit. I am a homebody. I find my energy in the peace and quiet of being alone (well, maybe not quite alone, I usually have a dog to cuddle). However, the dreams I have and the goals I want to accomplish require human contact. So, I need to get out of my house and see people.
Putting yourself out there is scary. Currently, I am working to build a business. The best way to do this is to become vulnerable and ask people if they are interested. This puts you in a position to receive a lot of no answers. If you aren’t careful, this can take you to a place you don’t want to go. Being brave in this endeavor involves learning to realize that rejection of your offer does not mean rejection of you. Facing this and continuing to go for it, means being brave and being yourself.
Sometimes, when someone really strays from the social norms, it is hard to understand them. However, the mere act of choosing a different path is an act of bravery. I think about my sister when I think about this. She has created a life she loves doing something she never thought she wanted to do, until it slapped her across the face. When she decided to leave her medical residency to be a stay-at-home mom, I’ll admit that I was one of the skeptics. I was there when she came home after trying to go back to work. I was jealous of this opportunity that she saw in her life. I tried to convince her to stick to convention and follow-through with her schooling and her plan. I was not the only one.
She confronted the demons of what other people thought and went with her gut and worked out a plan with her husband and gets to be a mommy every single day. Choosing to not go through with her residency plans had some consequences for her. She now has a medical degree and is a MD but without board certification. She has the ridiculous amount of medical school debt. But her bravery in choosing her life path made her search for a part-time job to help with the debt. She found a job that mixes her passion for writing and her medical expertise and she can work from home with flexible hours. I would say that this job is probably even more of a fit for her than working in a clinic would be. And she gets to be a mommy. Every. Single. Day. (And she is really good at it)
I think there are many examples of people out there who are living their dream every day. But many of them did not get there without a big act of bravery. At some point, you need to choose to leap. And hope you don’t fall.
Now, I also don’t want you to think that I am saying that you need to be unconventional in order to have a good life. I absolutely love my conventional full-time job of being a teacher. I am not sure I would want to give that up (although not having a job that I have to leave home to do would be awesome too). But it takes bravery to stand up and say that you are happy where you are. Have you noticed? People seem to love to work to bring you down a notch. Don’t let them. Be brave and go for what you want in life, whatever it is.
I want to be brave and I want to see you be brave.
Learning to love the person you are and to dismiss the feeling that you are not good enough takes some guts. Do it. Be brave. Live your best life. And maybe act like a weirdo and dance crazy in public. It might do you some good.
I would love to hear your story. Tell me about your best life. What do you have to do to be brave? I would love to hear from you in the comments.
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the idea of time suck and the way the hours can waste away to nothing if you are not careful. I have seen multiple speakers talk about budgeting your time and time blocking. It makes so much sense to me.
You see, as a teacher, every summer becomes a battle between knowing what I want to accomplish in my time off and the ridiculous time wasting that seems to happen. Dave Ramsey says that you need to tell your money where to go or you will wonder where it went later. This same concept applies so well to time. Have you ever gotten to the end of a day off and wondered just exactly where all those hours went? Me too.
This summer, I want to do better.
How do you do better? Well, for starters, you need to decide what is important to you. For me, this summer, I want to focus on writing more, consistent work on my doTERRA business, my marriage, exercise and health, getting ready for the new grade level this fall, and maintaining my household/completing some projects around the house.
It will be important for me then to write out my schedule and create routines that support the work I want to do in each of these areas. I think with a solid time blocking plan I will be able to accomplish my goals while also giving myself permission to take time off and relax. I mean, it is summer after all. We will need to visit the midday happy hour at the beer garden every once in a while.
So this summer I am planning to be intentional with my time. I will focus on the things that I want to accomplish in order to use my time in the best way I can.
Who would like to join me in this plan? What is most important to you? Do you time block your schedule? Any tips or tricks are greatly appreciated!
I went to Madison to spend a night with my mother two weeks ago. Every year, we try to go to Maxwell Street Days, a massive sidewalk sale on State Street downtown. I drove to Madison on Thursday afternoon and we went out to dinner and an outdoor concert. The capitol building was so beautiful as we walked back to my mom’s condo! 
