must I have so many hobbies?

Last Thursday, my friend, Judy and I spent a fabulous day at a photo seminar. The morning was spent learning how to take better pictures and how to use all those 'other' buttons on my camera. The afternoon was spent inside the Photoshop program. There were only 5 people in the class so we were able to get a lot of hands on training. Can you say FUN?? When the day was over, my brain was complete mush and I only had the capacity to sit on the sofa in a catatonic state. Here is just one of the easier techniques I learned....(look for more to come)...

I think she might be sent here to teach me something...

Why is it that we will pay top dollar to have someone else distress our wood and then get all 'distressed' when we do it ourselves? A few weeks ago, we held Baylee's Suzuki Violin Book 1 Recital. Shay, Tanner and I tried to push the piano from the music room into the family room (do you see where this is going? yeah....) I now have two rather large 'distresses' in my front entry wood floor. At first, I was a little 'distressed' at myself for not waiting till I had more manpower and even more 'distressed' that I had done such a stupid thing. I have now decided to look at this another way...every time I see those grooves I can remember that BAYLEE IS DONE WITH BOOK ONE. Hallelujah!! Oh the struggles, the tears that have been shed, and the lessons we have both learned from one dear Dr. Suzuki!! It was a much needed milestone.
Last night, Baylee had a complete meltdown, her book report was due (today) and she still had 55 pages to read. mmmmm....????? "I hate book reports!!!" "I don't want to do it!!!" in which I replied, "Ok, you know you don't HAVE to do it." More tears...."but then I'll get a bad grade!!" mmmm....??? Then, (and this is one of those full disclosure mom moments where you question my abilities, but just keep in mind that I am not perfect and at that time was completely overwhelmed) I said "just do the book report and finish reading the book on Friday" mmmm....???? thats when we needed buckets for all the tears...."But mom, that would be cheating!!" mmmmm....??? As my dear friend Suzzie would say....."For the LOVE!!!"

My love/hate relationship with running

5:40 am, alarm goes off......do I really want to run this morning?
5:50 am, dressed, walking out the door....do I really want to run this morning?
6:00 am, arrive @ friends house (get the ipod, gloves & hat out)....do I really want to run this morning?
Mile one.......do I really want to be running this morning?
Mile two....do I really like running?
Mile three.....when do I get to stop running this morning?
7:06 am, getting the morning call from Tanner (Mom, are you coming home?).....ahh, I'm so glad I went running this morning!!!

i blog...therefore i AM??

I recently heard someone say that the common denominator of all human beings is to know that our lives matter. I resisted this 'blogging' thing at first. People my age, at least the ones I know, do not blog-we are barely learning how to put the punctuation marks in our text messages. We all seem to be running around like chickens with our heads cut off.
Maybe it is the start of a mid-life crisis or the desire in me to find 'myself' amidst all the mayhem, but somehow sending my journal into cyberspace makes me feel like my life exists.