Today I just wanted to share a bit of our trip to South Texas earlier this month. The main reason for our trip was to photograph Debbie + Oscar’s wedding in Corpus Christi, TX and being that I have some family and friends in the area (about an hr from Corpus) my sister tagged along for a bit of a getaway too and we all got to see some childhood friends and family we hadn’t seen in many years. Jason and I took advantage of the time away without the kiddos and took a little belated wedding anniversary side-trip to San Antonio, TX! A huge thanks to my parents and brother-in-law for watching them 😉
Here’s me & my sister in front of the house where I was born (yup, I was born in there) and grew up in until I was 10 years old. Horses and chickens at my cousin’s house! She loves the country life! Me, not so much….But it was fun visiting 🙂This guy being my “sexy model” while we were scouting for photo spots for the wedding in Corpus Christi!
Sunday Funday! Hanging out with friends and family. It was a mini-reunion 🙂 So much fun!!Getting a little work done on the porch! At the Alamo in San Antonio with my love!
Jason and I crammed a 4.80mile run along the River Walk, couples massages, a little shopping, and some yummy food & drinks in our 2 days in San Antonio. That’s really one of my favorite cities! It was a fun trip, can you tell? What’s one of your favorite cities?
We love to have fun together as a family, but with school starting and getting back to our routine it’d been a little bit since we’d done a family outing. So, about 2 weeks ago we made plans to go to an Italian food festival that was in town and had a bunch of carnival rides for the kids. We took off Saturday afternoon and as we’re driving, we see a very large ominous looking cloud right over the area were we were going. As we got closer, we saw it was right over the festival! We went to Target (woohoo!) instead to see how the weather played out. It began to pour and thunder almost as soon as we walked in the store. Our plans for the day were a bust and the kids were not happy about it. But, we promised to go back the next day and so back we went Sunday afternoon. This time, the weather was sunny and warm and the kids got to get on some rides, play carnival games, and eat some treats! It turned out to be a pretty fun afternoon together as a family and we made some good memories. I think fairs/carnivals are a ton of fun for families. There’s something about all the bright colors, the noise, the crazy characters you see, and the smell of all that food that just makes me feel nostalgic. What kinds of things do you and your family like to do together?
So, a couple years ago I found out about the Day Zero Project. Basically, it’s about making a list of 101 things you want to complete/achieve in 1001 days. Yea, no secret I was all over that one, huh? Me and my list obsession….
Anyhow, the list was a bit too ambitious and I only got about half way through it. But, one of the things on my list was to start a book club and on October 2012 we had our first book club. I started the book club with my sister and a few other girlfriends and next month will be our one year anniversary! You know that is going to be an epic book club meeting!!
Book club is about way more than just reading and reviewing a book. Book club has become a fun monthly ritual where us girls, who may not always get together outside of book club, get to enjoy a few hours of well, girl time! We mingle, catch up on our lives, drink some wine, eat some food, and of course discuss the book we just read. As a mother, it’s great to have some scheduled time to do something just for yourself and focus on you for a few hours.
For our book club meetings, my sister always prints our discussion questions with the cover of the book (it’s really cute!) Depending on the book, we may even make our dinner themed around the book we’re reviewing. For example, when we read “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” we had some yummy Chinese food and since the book “Now You See Her” was mostly based in Key West, you know we had some Jimmy Buffett inspired cuisine. Oh and I should also mention we had a field trip to the movies to see The Great Gatsby and we’ll be doing a fun 5K mud run. You know I am excited about that event!!!
If you’re interested in starting your own book club, here are a few things that I think have helped make our book club successful thus far!
Be consistent – schedule your book club meetings at the same time each month. Ours are usually the last Thurs of the month, but sometimes we change it to Fridays, so being flexible is ok as long as everyone is available.
Take Turns – we all take turns in selecting the books, as well as hosting. This allows us to expand our reading genres and get to know each other better.
Have Rules – ok, we don’t have a lot of rules to our book club, just two 1. Choose a book you’ve never read before 2. No trilogies or series books. This way we aren’t obligated to only read those for the next few months or so.
Send an evite – a few days after the last meeting, I’ll send an evite to everyone with a simple recap of our meeting, thank the hostess, and provide all the info for our next month’s book and meeting spot.
Discussion Questions – these can be found easily online. I usually find them on http://www.litlovers.com/ or http://www.goodreads.com/ Having a set amount of predetermined questions helps move things along!
Have Fun!
I’d love to hear if any of you are part of a book club and what you love about it? xo
Is this even possible? I ask, because we all seem to struggle with it. I don’t think I’ve ever met a single person that has said they live a perfectly balanced life. We are always striving for a perfect balance between our work, family, hobbies, responsibilities, etc. What does having a balanced life really mean, anyhow?
I’ve struggled for a long time with this. Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate the freedoms and perks that come with being a mom who works mostly from home. But, it’s very hard to work from home and have “working hours”. When I’m doing laundry, I feel I should be working. When I’m at the gym, I feel I should be working. When I’m playing with my children, I feel I should be working. But then, when I’m working on my computer, I feel guilty that the dishes aren’t done or that my daughter is playing alone in her room. Or better yet, watching way too much Disney Jr. Also, with social media being such a big part of our lives and in my case, a big part of my work, I feel like I’m always “on”.
There are days, when things feel completely chaotic and out of control mostly because I’m trying to juggle too much at the same time. On those days, I feel unaccomplished and stressed out. I find that when I get to this point, I need to step back and prioritize. I need to figure out what’s most important, what’s truly urgent and tackle those things first. This means some things just don’t get done or don’t get done right away and I have to be ok with this.
Maybe having a balanced life does not necessarily mean a stress-free life. Maybe a balanced life isn’t so balanced after all. There are things that will take priority over others, like our family. Or things that will take more of your time. There are things we just prefer doing over others. Instead of looking for a perfect balance in our lives, maybe we should just look for some balance. Maybe balance is more about being flexible and able to change directions. Balance may not always be about giving everything or everyone equal priorities. Maybe balance is about letting go of the things that hold us back and weigh us down and keeping what makes us happy and fulfilled.
What does having a balanced life mean to you?
I was really struggling to keep my balance during Tough Mudder!
17 years ago today I married the best guy ever. We were married young, so it was a bit of a rough start, but I don’t regret one minute of our life together. We grew up together and rather than grow apart, we’ve grown closer with every year.
There are so many things that I love about the hubs, but I won’t bore you with all the mushy details, but I will say that he is perfect for me. I cannot imagine my life without him. I love the life we have together, even if it is a little crazy sometimes. It’s the most amazing thing to know you can count on someone no matter what and believe me I’ve pushed my limits (yikes!)
Here’s just a glimpse in photos from the past few years together! ps. It was hard finding photos of just the two of us without the kids, so note to self: more photos together as a couple (even if it’s the kids taking them)!
And….summer is officially over. I must say we had a great summer this year and we got to mark almost everything off our Summer Bucket List. I told the kids we could still mark a few more things off since the weather is still so warm here in Vegas.
Yesterday was the first day of school for our little man. I can’t believe he is in 3rd grade already. Time sure does fly. Elysse won’t turn 5 until the end of October, so she still has one more year with me at home. Well, she’ll be starting preschool twice a week soon! She is thrilled and I’m excited for her because I just know she is so ready!
This year, due to overcrowding on our side of town, Diego’s elementary school is one of 3 that will be going year round here in Vegas. Diego is excited to be off for random months throughout the year, I’m still not so sure how I feel about it. I’ll have an update mid-year. For now, I do like that I’ll be back to my regular work/stay-at-home mom routine with Elysse and not have to be playing referee most of my day. Although, I will miss the carefree summer mornings with no rushing or packing lunches.
How are some of you other mom’s feeling about kids going back to school? Love it? Hate it? Let me know in the comments 😉
I love how their personalities just shine through in this photo!
So, we are getting to the end of summer and that means the end of our Summer Bucket List. Every summer since Diego started kindergarten we’ve taken a 3-4 day trip to Southern California around the end of August. It’s become a tradition, so of course going to Calif was on our list. As I’m planning the trip, I thought we could also mark off a few more items from the list. We planned to make a few stops on the drive down and look for Geocaches. We also planned to go to a children’s museum and see the sunset on the beach. But, sometimes things don’t go as planned…
We planned to get an early start Friday morning, but that didn’t happen. We left way later and decided to do the geocaching either Saturday or Sunday on the drive back down because we wanted to make it to the museum. We did make it to the Kidspace Children’s Museum in Pasedena, CA. The kids really had a great time playing with all the hands-on exhibits, getting wet in their creek, and climbing the indoor towers.
That night, Elysse’s asthma flared up and she began coughing & wheezing a lot. We managed to get it under control by mid-morning with her inhaler and other medication I took. But she was definitely not back to normal. The kids really wanted to go to the beach, especially since we were meeting some friends out there, so by early Saturday afternoon we did make it to Newport Beach. Unfortunately, Elysse was not feeling 100% and she didn’t really enjoy herself too much. Diego tried out his new boogie board but the water was cold, so he hardly played. Needless to say, we did not make it to watch the sunset on the beach. As a matter of fact, Elysse’s asthma got worse, so we decided to pack it up and head back home that night so she could get on her nebulizer treatments asap. We’ll never be leaving home without that machine again!!
What is normally a 4 hr drive turned into 6 hours due to major traffic from an earlier road closure. It was pretty nightmarish. We made it home around 3am and put her on her nebulizer. She’s much better now after her treatments, which is what matters most. I am a little sad we didn’t get to have the fun trip we planned for, but I guess this means we’ll just have to be going back sooner than later 😉
We got 2 more things off our summer bucket list this weekend! First up, was the kid’s bike wash! We’d seen this idea on Pinterest last year and Jason thought it would be a ton of fun for the kids, so we put it on our list this summer! It really was a family project, as the kids went with Jason to the hardware store to buy the supplies and Diego even helped with putting it together. The kids had a fun time riding their bikes through it and keeping cool 🙂
We also had Star Gazing at Red Rock Canyon on our list. The Las Vegas Astronomical Society hosts Astronomy in the Park at Red Rock Canyon once a month. It’s a free event where members of the club invite us non-astronomers to peek into the night sky through their telescopes. This is something we’ve been wanting to do since last year, but it just never worked out. So, when we finally were able to go this Saturday we were all really excited. We were able to see Saturn, Venus, few constellations, a nebula, a far off galaxy, and we were even shown how to find satellites flying across the sky. Saturday was also the start of a meteor shower, so we saw some really awesome shooting stars! It really was a fun night to remember!
So, we’ve got 17 days until the first day of school (but who’s counting!) and then another week until Labor Day which is the official end of our Summer Bucket List Challenge. This summer has flown by! I’m so glad we have this bucket list to keep us from wasting the whole summer away and getting us to have a fun time together as a family. It’s so easy to get carried away in our everyday chores, errands, and chaos that we forget to make the time have fun. Because, that’s what it’s about it’s about making the time to be together and being intentional about it.
So, we had backyard camping on our list but we had to tweak it a bit and bring the camping indoors. The Vegas heat has been intense this summer and none of us really wanted to sleep outside in the heat. Kids still had a great time helping their dad put up the tent! I’m calling this one a “WIN”.
We also had “Mystery Activity” on our list. Jason and I thought it would be fun to keep the kids guessing, plus it gave us some wiggle room as to what kind of activity it could be. We ended up taking the kids to the drive-in last week. We only told them we were going to do our mystery activity so having them try to guess what it could be was half the fun! They were thrilled they were going to see the movie Turbo! It was a fun night and they really enjoyed the movie.
It's a Messy Life 