Food of Champions.

My daughter and I have set a goal this year.  We want to walk a couple of 5K walks and maybe, possibly do a half marathon.  I know she could do it.  She walked about 8 miles today, but me, that's a different matter.  I did work hard to get my Presidential Active Lifestyle Award last summer and then this fall I did barely enough walking to get a reward from my insurance company,  about 20 minutes a day.  Today I wanted to buy Cheetos (my addiction) and my daughter said "You can't eat Cheetos, you're in training"  Then my youngest son said "Mom needs some Wheaties.  Or maybe Wheat-Free Wheaties."  Hmmm.  I kind of doubt they make those.  :-)

Kind of a pet peeve.

I have kind of a thing about TVs at parties.  I have been at parties where the TV is the loudest thing in the room and I can't hear the person next to me because of the TV.  I've been to Christmas dinners where the TV is left on with something inappropriate and/or scary and I've had to take my kids out of the room (when they were little).  One of the parties this Christmas season, I was at a party where the Disney channel was on with about 10 kids watching.  They are cousins and haven't seen each other in a year, probably have a lot of other things in common besides liking the Disney channel, but will they ever know?  Not if they just stare at the screen and don't talk to each other.  :-(

Merry Christmas?

We are going to another Christmas party today.  My youngest son wanted to keep our tree up until now, but I just couldn't stand having the living room crowded up any longer, so we took it down last week.  It feels weird, going to a Christmas party today, but I don't mind eating and socializing, so that's okay.  It's a really pretty day.  The kids might even get to venture outside during the party.  We're taking the game we got for Christmas, Curses, so that should be fun.  I tried very hard to think of something I could cook that would fit the criteria that my husband said we'd bring, sandwiches and a salad or a dessert, that my son could eat, being gluten free and dairy free.  I decided to make peanut butter fudge for the dessert and take a ham I bought at the grocery the other day, a loaf of regular bread and have my son bring his own gluten free bread.  I'm also gluten free, but I don't each much bread, so I don't need to bring bread for me.  It's too expensive.   I'll just roll my ham up in a lettuce leaf.

I'm better now.

I've got today behind me and I feel better.  I just really got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.  Certain kids around this house are still doing school work tonight.  They had this idea to change from a printed chart to a white board and they'd keep up with their work on it.  They asked if they could do all their chores in one day, all their writing in one day, etc. and I was fine with most of it.  So this week. they've been doing it and there has been some procrastinating going on and now it's Friday night and my daughter has had to do 3 writing lessons today, 2 French lessons, practice guitar, math, notebooking and I don't know what all.   She's been busy all day and it's 8:10 p.m. and she's still working.  The youngest son has a similarly long list.

Stressed.

There's just no other way to say it.  I'm stressed.  Working more hours, schooling, raising teenagers dealing with my mom's needs, dealing with my own health problems, trying to keep this house from being condemned ... it all there.  I was just read an article that said that this generation of women are stressing themselves out to the point that we will be the first generation of Americans not to outlive our parents.  I've got to figure out how to somehow get taking care of myself into the equation.  :-(

I knew going into this week with several doctor's appointments, my job with no paid time off, the post Christmas winter blahs and starting back to school (even though the kids are pretty independent with school) was going to hit me kind of hard.   :-P

The not so good and the good.

1. I had a doctor's appointment that I kind of thought was tomorrow, but then I called and it was today, so I had to hurry up and go today without any preparation (my own fault, but still), like getting up earlier to get a good start on work before I went.  Consequently, I'm still working at 6:30 p.m.
2.  The appointment took a lot longer than I expected because apparently I have some stuff going on and needed some tests.  Very, very, very unpleasant tests. 
3.  I'm still working at 6:30 p.m. and no where near finished.

Some good things:
1.  I got to ride on a glass elevator.  I enjoy them.
2.  The kids did their school work while I was gone.  My daughter "almost got 100%" on her algebra test.
3.  I hit a really good after Christmas sale at Kroger on the way home and got some neat little things for 70% off.  I'll use some of them as 5 dollar gifts next Christmas.
4.  The stuff I ordered from Barnes and Noble came today so it feels like Christmas is still happening.

I really feel list-y this week apparently.

5 Good Things.

5 things that were good about today.
1.  I woke up in a better mood today.  No blahs.  This is critical to how the day turns out.  Sometimes I just have a funk wash over me and I can't seem to do much about it.  Thankfully, not today.
2.  I made vegetable soup.  It's good.  I used up a can of peas that didn't have a label on it.  I had been wondering what was in there and in the hopes that it was a vegetable, I opened it today.   That worked out.  Pineapple would have been weird in the soup. :-)
3.  The kids did their schoolwork with minimal nagging from me.  There was some nagging but not too awful much.
4.  We have finished the read aloud of the 39 Clues book that is a book that I have to read and have gotten to the next one which we have on audiobook and I can listen (and possibly fall asleep).  
5.  The mail came today and I got 2 of the books I ordered myself for Christmas.  One is a gluten free recipe book and the other is a Katie Fforde book that I haven't read yet.  I enjoy her books, which are romantic comedy. 

January 2012.

Wow.  It's already the second.  My amazement at how quickly time passes, never goes away.  We are back to school today, much to the dismay of certain kids in the house. I've been looking at Amanda Bennett's site because she's having a sale.    I'd kind of like to kick off the year with a unit study or something fun, but we'll probably just do the usual because it's easier.  We stayed up until midnight and celebrated the New Year with crazy revelry, playing board games.  Then yesterday,  we had a family Christmas party.  It was nice, really low key although I must admit, some of my relatives kind of drive me crazy.  They were on their best behavior for Christmas though.

My New Year's resolution to start walking has not started all that well.  The kids walked yesterday, but I did not.  I felt tired all day from going to bed late and getting up early, burning the candle at both ends and I didn't want to walk.  Today is another day and I'm going to do it today, along with all the in-town errands I planned to do yesterday afternoon and didn't.  :-P