"Steady Days"

We moved again and are in Logan, Utah now. Logan is an amazing city. Before we moved we heard comments like, "Logan? I used to live there, you will love it!" No one explained why we would love it, just we would. After a month we do love it, and I can't seem to explain why either. It is a lot of little things. Everything is so close. We can walk to the store, the library, the church, the transit center where we can hop on and ride somewhere further for free. Running errands takes 15 minutes total instead of 15 minutes just in travel time. I am sure there are other reasons I love Logan, but this cozy feeling is one attribute I just can't get over!

Cam's started school (the actual Computer Science coursework, yahoo!) and we are settling in at home. We started going to the library since the cold and wet weather of January made going out to play difficult most weeks. By chance I looked up some parenting books and stumbled on "Steady Days" by Jamie C. Martin. It is a small, thin book so I figured I had a fighting chance of actually finishing and applying the book.

The subtitle is "A Journey Towards Intentional, Professional Motherhood." Intentional and professional mothering is something I have struggled with since having Dallas.

Up until Dallas was born I was constantly in school or working, usually a combination of the two. I had something other than myself telling me where I needed to be, what I needed to do and my sense of hard work and responsibility (I felt guilty if I didn't do assignments to the best of my ability, I couldn't even fathom intentionally skipping class or sloughing off assignments) took care of the rest. After he was born I was suddenly at home ALL THE TIME and no one telling my what to do. I had no idea what to do with myself. I had intentions of setting specific days to clean, of always having dinner of the table when Cam got home and other "homemaker" duties. Unfortunately, I didn't. There were times it got very bad (we won't go into details, but I never left the house so I wouldn't shower until Cam told me I smelled... yeah I guess that was too much detail, huh?). However my work ethic was still there making me feel incredibly guilty, but I didn't know what exactly what I was feeling guilty for.

I only felt accomplished when I was working outside the home so I found a job and kept working. I felt I needed that something telling me what to do! After working part-time in the tutoring, para-educating, and substitute teaching realm; I finally landed a full-time teaching job! If that wasn't going to make me feel accomplished I didn't know what would! However, even while teaching full-time and being told how much I was benefiting the 150 students in my classes; I felt guilt for what my children (and, to a lesser degree, the house) weren't getting.

So what gives? I realized "doing" work didn't fulfill that guilt for sloughing off my responsibility to my children. I was a good professional educator, why couldn't I figure out how to be a good professional mother? That is why this book really caught my eye: "Intentional, Professional Motherhood."

The book has been an eye-opener. It isn't full of ground-breaking thoughts or techniques, but has given me clear ideas and methods to make being at home with my children productive and meaningful. Along with creating a "Steady Routine" the book suggests finding one thing to improve upon at a time. It is so easy to tackle things one at a time.

If I sound like you, or you sound like me, I would recommend giving this book a gander. You'll take some, you'll leave some, but I believe it will be a good experience :)

Hot Zone

It is one of my favorite books. For those of you that don't know much about it here is the jist. It talks about the Ebola virus, a disease related loosely to HIV that attacks blood cells and turns your insides to mush through massive hemorrhaging. The "Hot Zone" refers to the area in Africa it is thought to originate (I think).

Well our house is a pretty bad Hot Zone right now. We had my mom, dad, little brother, little sister, and one of my older sisters at our house for Thanksgiving (we more than doubled our "family" size that week, it was so fun!). Sunday after Thanksgiving (right before everyone was going home) my little sister woke up feeling very weak and sick. Monday morning Dallas woke up at 5am throwing up. Monday afternoon Cam came home from work early with a sore throat.

I was thinking Chelane and I were going to skip out on the sickness altogether until Thursday afternoon when I started on a sore throat. Friday I woke up with a fever, body aches, absolutely zero energy, a HUGE headache, and the inability to keep myself warm. When Cam got home I went to bed for a little bit and apparently broke my fever. When I woke up I felt like I had much more energy, but still a massive headache. My body was also quite weak from not feeding myself that day. I took some ibprophen that night (without consulting a physician, bad me) to try to stem the headache and lower backache I had so that I could sleep easier (and sit or lay down without my back protesting). I am happy to say that today I am feeling much better (although the sore throat is still around, but I can deal with that).

Cam has pretty much had an off-and-on mild sore throat all week. Dallas didn't throw up after Monday morning (he really only threw up once) but started on a runny nose Tuesday and now that that has eased up he has a pretty nasty cough. Chlane has still stayed all but immune. She sounds like she has a little of it (her nose is a little cloggy and she coughs once and a while) but, other than those mild symptoms, she seems great. I would happily take another day of the fever from h-e-double-hockey-sticks if it meant Chelane didn't get sick.

I started a few packing projects on Friday and Thursday that I obviously didn't finish on Friday so the house is also a complete mess. So maybe "Hot Zone" isn't the correct term to use... maybe something more like "War zone where biological weapons were used"...

Another Short One

Portland is a no-go. Cam got the news this morning, so he is applying for the Seattle position. If that doesn't go well either we are still planning on moving up for him to go to school, probably after Christmas sometime.

Also I finished the "Twilight" series last night, I stayed up a little late to do it... I didn't get to bed until almost 1am, but luckily Chelane is deciding to do her long stretches today. She didn't get me up the first time until about 5am and hasn't gotten up again yet (it is almost 11am - I am going to wake her soon if she doesn't rouse). I liked the books, the last one made me cry (all the parts where she is preparing to send off Renesmee and thinking they will all die, it tugs at a mother's heart strings).

Well I should get back to my amazingly perfect children, Dallas is eating Honey Bunches of Oats in milk downstairs with a spoon (still, hopefully) and I need to see how much damage has been done to the kitchen :/

It Snowed

Yes, here we are in October, poor fall has only been happening for about 3 weeks, and we get snow... I guess in snow's defense it is melted already...


I have always associated snow with winter and Christmas, and while the snow makes me a little happy because of that connection, it is also making me sad when I realize how far away Christmas still is.

I think I am going through some past-baby emotions. Sometimes I am feeling just super and then little things either set me off (temper-wise) or start me crying for no real reason. Having only one car makes it a little worse since I can't go out and about during the day (although I don't know how much of that I will want to do, at least not for a few months, trying to handle two kids by myself doesn't sound terribly fun); and while sitting at home, being able to relax and read (I am on book 3 of the "Twilight" saga, Mom bought them for me when she came down to help with Dallas) while taking care of the munchkins is very nice I know I am going to get a little stir crazy without adult interactions... So keep posting and commenting so I feel like there is at least SOME connections with the outside world!

I really love this picture of her... Sorry you are going to be getting random baby pictures posted up here for a while I think.

The Book List

Yeehaw I have 12... most of the italicized ones I have never started just wanted to read (except the Bible, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes... I have read all the Bible but a few chapters from books in the Old Testament and, I have only read a few plays and sonnets from Shakespeare, and I have read 2-3 of the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes... Oh and I have gotten most of the way through The Count of Monte Cristo and Brave New World was one I sorta started reading for a class but decided I didn't care for it)

I really feel they should have a separate text for those you intend to read and those you have started, there is a big difference to me.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR USING THIS LIST:

* Look at the list and bold those you have read.

* Italicize those you intend to read, and/or books you've started but haven't finished

* Reprint this list in your blog so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma- Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility- Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (en francais)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (en francais)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo