Goal update...

There is a crazy ice storm today.  Isaac had an early dismissal.  I made it home from school and the babysitter without too much trouble.  Ryan's commute ended up being three times as long as usual as he white knuckled his way home from Reading.  

I googled some March blogging prompts and found this list.   The first prompt asks how you are doing on your New Year's Resolutions.  Probably a topic that is not of interest to anyone but me, but I do like to take stock of where I am on my goals on my 101 in 1001 list.  I have made some progress on a few things.

Here are some things I am doing well on so far in 2015

1.  So I have been trying to make more of an effort as far as my appearance.  It's so easy to just throw my hair in a ponytail and mindlessly throw on one of the same boring outfits I have been wearing since I ended maternity leave.  I went shopping over the weekend and finally bought all new bras, underwear and pajamas.  Mine were literally falling apart at the seams, overstretched elastic, the whole nine yards.  I also got a few new outfits and a haircut (can you tell we just got our tax refund?) I've been blow drying and brushing my hair and wearing makeup most days.  It's a process, and sometimes it's easier to just not care, but I think I am doing better.

2.  Preparing things the night before.  I have been really good about signing the homework book, packing the lunches and Hannah's bag the night before.  It's actually one of the first things I do when I get home from work, is pack lunches for the next day. It makes things so much easier in the mornings.  

3. Money stuff.  Ryan is making a lot of more money at his new job, so that certainly helps to have more money to work with.  We have been doing well communicating about bills and expenses and getting on top of things.  Not that we are perfect by any means, but I think we are on a good path.  It's amazing how much stress is out of my life now that things are improving in this area.

4. Staying on top of the everyday stuff.  I am doing better staying on top of the dishes and the laundry (well, the washing and drying part, not so much the folding and putting away part).  

5. Reading.  I have actually finished a few books and have been doing better at keeping a book in the car or my purse for those times when I am waiting on someone and have a little bit of time.  I need to read more at night before bed and not just flip through facebook.

Here are some things I could improve on:

1.  Drinking more water.  I'm horrible about it.  Lunch rolls around and I realize I haven't had anything to drink all morning at work.   It's like, the easiest thing you can do to improve your health and I am so bad about it.

2. Making better use of my morning time.  I pick up Hannah almost as soon as I am allowed to leave work, and she has to tag along for any potential errands to be run after school.  More often or not Isaac has an evening activity.  Ryan usually gets home around bed time.  Our weeknights are full.  There isn't much room for "me time" on weekday evenings.  But Ryan gets the kids up and out the door in the mornings long after I have left for work.  Once in a while I will run an errand or something on my way to work, but that would be the perfect time for me to go to the gym or go for a walk, or get to school early to get stuff organized.  I think one morning a week would be a realistic goal to start.  I will try for March.

3. Getting to the less essential cleaning (bathrooms, floors, dusting).  It's not fun, so it gets put off and put off.

So I want to work on that stuff.  Other goals for March:

1. Date with Ryan-- no kids allowed!

2. Finish Mercy and start another book.

3.  Get my clearances in order for work (they need to be updated to stay at my current job and definitely need to be updated if I am going to get serious about applying elsewhere).

4. Get one more letter of recommendation together.  I have two that I have collected but I need one more.

5. Figure our renewing our family membership at the Y.  

Stream of Consciousness Sunday -- Job Woes

I am trying to blog more.  I really am.  I used to use this blog as a place to just write and write and now I feel like it is only used for weekly monthly posts about what the kids and I have been up to. I came across a link up where you set a timer for five minutes and just write.  No editing.  It's Monday but since I have a delayed opening at work, I decided to give it a shot.

So I have been stuck in an endless thought cycle about what to do about my job.  I am really unhappy there.  I don't feel appreciated or respected.  I am doing a job that was two teachers' job last year.  I don't look forward to going to work anymore.  I have always said if I am going to go to work 40 hours a week it better be doing something that I love and that makes a difference.

There is no doubt that I am burnt out from my current position but then sometimes I just feel so disillusioned with teaching in general.  There is a new law in PA that affects my teacher evaluation.  I work with some low functioning kids and if I can't get them up to a certain preset reading standard by the end of the year, I fail that portion of my evaluation, no matter what.  Add that to the fact that I will probably keep my same caseload next year and things look more and more grim.  I could be labelled a failing teacher.  I hate that I have to spend so much of my time with a timer in my hand: "How fast can you name this series of random letters?"  "How fast can you read these ridiculous made up nonsense words?" Now is the point in the year when we stop teaching science and social studies and start doing non-stop "test practice" for the upcoming standardized state tests.  I hate it and so do the kids.

Well, that five minutes went fast and my post was kind of a downer. I just scratched the surface of what could probably be a 45 minute brain dump, but at least I wrote about something not entirely superficial.   Happy Monday everyone!

and suddenly it's march

As the kid's at my school would say, "Haircut?  Or nah?"  All of a sudden it's my hair is past my shoulder blades.  After I took that picture I opted for "haircut" and I snuck away for a few hours Saturday morning and got it cut and colored. 

 It's hard to tell from the picture, but it is the lightest brown before the blond section of the little book of hair color samples.  It took about 45 minutes to process which meant 45 minutes of uninterrupted book reading, a luxury these days.  I am reading Mercy by Jodi Piccoult.  

I was happy with how it turned out and have plans next time to go even lighter.  

This little lady is officially 14 months and has been a handful lately--- into everything. She has taken to calling me "mum" but if I am out of sight she will holler "Eeeesa!!!" just like Ryan to find me.

 She continues to be a great eater.  We haven't found very much she will not try.  Recent favorites include sausage, pickles, and ring bologna.  Definitely her daddy's girl with those favorites.

I found these selfies on my phone.  I love my kids so much.

 Isaac is finally done basketball after being threatened with a technical foul in his last game for arguing with the coaches.  He had a great season and his coach recommended that he play on the travel team next year (we'll see).  Saturday he got called in as a sub for the winter soccer league (we opted out but the coach has been calling almost every game to have him as a sub) and another player straight up punched him in the face.



 We finally were able to go out to eat for his birthday dinner.  He chose Buffalo Wild Wings.  Noisy sports bars are not my favorite but it turned out to be a great place to take Hannah, since no one was bothered by her occasional screams and protests.   She has such strong opinions already and was so offended that she was drinking milk and Ryan was drinking lemonade.  

Another happy weekend.  I love when Isaac is home on Ryan's weekend off.  We already have a two hour delay tomorrow so I get to enjoy it a little longer...

A cold day at Chocolate World

It has been record breaking cold here. I know we are not the coldest or worst off in the weather department (like Boston-- eek!), but this has been out of hand.

Saturday Ryan took over with Hannah and I was to spend the morning under the covers with a good book.  I finished this one:

It was a quick easy book about an autistic man with savant abilities that my mom gave me.

Ryan surprised me by arranging for us to leave the kids with my parents Saturday night and go out on a date.  We haven't been out without Hannah in almost a year and it was almost eerie to  be in the car together and not have her with us. We went out to eat and when we came out of Panera it was snowing like crazy.  I was worried and thought we should just forget about the movie but Ryan was pretty determined that we were going to the theater.  When we came out of the movie the snow had stopped but the wind was howling and whipping our minivan all of the place on the back country roads of Leola.

We slept over at my parents house and had planned to go to church with them, but due to the extreme temperatures church was cancelled.  We still felt like getting out of the house, so we took the kids to Chocolate World in Hershey.  We decided to spring for their "design your own chocolate bar" experience.

It involved a LOT of waiting in line and hairnets for all, including Hannah.  But you got to custom make your own bar and follow it through the little minifactory, design the packaging, the whole 9 yards.  

Then we had cake and icecream with my parents to celebrate Isaac's upcoming 10th birthday.  How I am the mom of 10 year old!?

Snowy cold and wintery

Random school story: I used to wear dresses and skirts almost every day in the fall and spring.   This has been an especially cold winter and I have been wearing pants for the past few months.  I was unpacking an overlooked box of winter clothes from my closet and found a long sleeved cotton dress and decided I would wear that to school to show that I can make a little more of an effort in these winter months.  I am thinking I look pretty good and together, when one of my students tells me that it "looks like I am wearing my nightgown" to school.  Awesome.

We are trying to figure out the new normal around here with Ryan's new job.  He finally recovered from a week of pneumonia and has worked a few shifts.  His new hours are 1-8 which puts him home with Hannah half of the day which I love.  He is already making so much more money than his own job with the potential for his earnings to continue to increase.  It has been nice to have some breathing room in the budget to take the pressure off.  We are catching up on things and finally getting to things that had been put on the back burner forever.  Ryan was so proud to finally buy me a new fridge filter-- the "time to change" alert light has been as long as we have been together.   He even surprised me with a new laptop to help with my insane increased work load at school.   I was so surprised and grateful. 

Hannah continues to be, as her babysitter describes her, "appropriately destructive". She unloads drawers, she empties Ryan's wallet, dumps water glasses. She is always on the go.  The above shot was the best one I could get of her.  Most pictures I take turn out like the ones below:

She seems to be following in her brother's footsteps with hitting physical milestones ridiculously early.  Not only does she run now, she also jumps from both feet which is so cute it's ridiculous.   She has her own personality and opinions and is able to express them very well since she still only says "No!".  Like when we were eating nachos the other day and she had a fit because Ryan was handing her chips and she wanted to select her own chips.  She prefers her morning milk in a bottle, never a sippy cup.   She knows what she likes and she can let you know surprisingly well for someone who is still nonverbal.  (Yes, I have tried to teach her baby signs.  I know she understands them but she really can't be bothered to use them.  Sigh)

Isaac continues to be just an all round great kid.  He turns ten next week which blows my mind.  We are thinking about doing the Sixers for his birthday.  We continue to shuffle through after school activities for him which is a double edged sword.  He needs to get out the house.  He is a kid who actually cannot be cooped up within four walls for long periods of time.  The nights we end up without an activity he is bouncing off the walls.  But loading up Hannah and entertaining her while Isaac is at basketball/soccer/swimming/whatever can be torturesome.

That's about it for us.  Hang on, Friday's coming....

6 More Weeks of Winter

* January was a long month for us.  Ryan was traveling for 3 weeks.  I did better than I thought getting by without him, but it does make me more grateful for all of the work he does around the house and helping with the kids, especially Hannah. Sadly, he came home Friday and then woke up Saturday feeling horrible.  It seems that he has the flu (again) or some sort of icky virus-- high fever, lots of chest congestion.  Monday was supposed to be his first "official" non-training day of his new job and he is still as sick as a dog.  I tried to get him to take a sick day but he won't take a sick day on a normal day, let alone his first day.  Of course they sent him home though, to his great disappointment.  Tuesday he got into the doctor and ended up getting sent to the hospital for a chest X-ray.  It looks like his "bad cold" may be pnuemonia!

* Sunday night we did watch the Super Bowl.  Ryan typically likes to make a big to-do out of it, but since he was stuck under a blanket on the couch drinking gatorade and sucking on cough drops, it was pretty low-key this year.  Hannah got really into the half time show though.  Her dancing was intense and adorable.  Neither one of us made it to the end though.  We both fell asleep on the coach together sometime during the 3rd quarter.  I should start watching football the nights I suffer from insomnia.  It puts me to sleep every time.

* I finally finished I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb, the 800+ page book I have been lugging around since summer.  It was well written and I am glad I eventually powered through it, but I am looking forward to reading something a little lighter next.  It put me a bit behind on my reading goals, if I am going to hit 50 books by October.  We'll see.

* I would like to get a few fun things on the calendar for the kids.  I would love to take Isaac and Ryan's kids snow tubing.  I would love for us to spend a Saturday at a museum.  I would love for Ryan and I to go for a real date sans Hannah (something we haven't done since last February!).   The winter seems so long and dreary.  We need some fun things on the calendar to look forward to.

cold and wintery

This week Ryan was traveling again.  The weather has been cold, snowy and icky and the thought of spending Martin Luther King Day trapped within the four walls of our townhome was more than anyone could stomach.  Isaac asked if he could go to Arnold's, a local arcade with laser tag, go karts, etc.  I agreed.  It was actually a surpisingly good place to take the Hannah/Isaac combo.  Isaac did all the fun stuff and Hannah had fun running around the arcade, looking at the lights and dancing.  Isaac was even sweet enough to let Hannah "try" some of the games with him.  All in all, the trip lasted about 30 minutes longer than I would have liked, but it was a success.

The only other thing worth noting is I am on a couponing frenzy.  I post some of my finds on instagram if you want to follow along. In what some may describe as a sickness a passion.   Ryan knows that Saturdays will be spent driving from CVS to CVS or Giant to Giant in search of whatever the best deals of the week are that I haven't been able to stock up on.  Poor Hannah tags along too and even passed out in exhaustion on a pile of toilet paper.

This week was my best trip ever.  Not only did I pay nothing out of pocket (see that 100% savings on the reciept) but CVS paid me six bucks. 

 I got paid for buying 2 Vaseline Spray Lotions, Xtra laundry detergent, Garnier Fructis shampoo and conditioner and a thing of Palmolive Dishsoap.  In seperate trips this week, I have also scored 9 free full sized men's deodorants, Progresso soups for 38 cents a can and Oral B toothbrushes for 35 cents.  My basement stockpile is growing so large Ryan is looking into buying more storage shelves.