Beach Trip

Circa: Feb 2010

I am hosting our book club next month so I picked Beach Trip by Cathy Holton as our book. Boy-oh-boy what a pick. What a book! While I am not 20+ years out of college yet, I am almost 20 years out of high school. So this book still rang loudly in my ears...maybe inside the hollows of my brain too! A couple of the main takeaways were "Would we be friends today if we had not know each other so well when we were growing up?" and "How well do we really know people? Even our BEST FRIENDS? What do we keep even from them?"

I remember telling my friend Lysh a few years ago that we were destined to always be friends because we knew too much about one another to be enemies! Keep em close right? One night last year she, my husband and I were at dinner and afterwards, my husband comment he was surprised at how well she really knew me! All that from some off-handed comment about me in high school?? Great. No matter how hard I try to stay hidden and not wear my heart/personality/inner-most-thoughts on my sleeve, I seemed to be failing at that one! (Blogging helps, right?) I am telling you I am a deep dark person that none of you truly knows you just don’t know it!

Back on point, as of today I got to talk via emails with another of my favorite high school friends. Oh man, this girl and I passed more notes in A&P Class than I can count. And YIKES the topics were slightly, in a 17 year old way scandalous! Let me tell you catching up with her has made me absolutely giddy all day today. I have made some amazing adult friends in my life, although nothing can replace those girls that slumber partied with you, TP-ed houses with you(who's mom's drove you to TP houses), who oogled boys with you, fought with you, refuse to speak to you for months, stole clothes from you or vise versa, who threw up in your car before your own kids did, and made you who you are today!

So happy 20th Amy! See you tomorrow night and here's to my 20th next year! I know you all will be there with me. Love ya!

Lesson Learned

A Mom


A Wife

Antiques Dealer

Child Psychologist

Restore an historic home

Make it on "This Old House"

Clothing Designer

Handbag Designer

Interior Designer

An Athlete

Real Estate Developer

Lawyer

Stock Broker

Yoga Instructor

Commercial Real Estate Broker

Author

Artist

Travel the country in an Airstream

Live on a Ranch--even though the country scares me...

The list goes on and on and on.... I always said I would be the kind of person that had many careers--I was NOT going to do just one thing! I can say I have been a raging success at this goal. I love what I do now. But there is always more to check off my bucket list. You see the things I choose to do are things I LOVE--not just jobs. Now I also have said many other crazy things in my life that thank God, I failed miserably. Life is a journey and a constant learning lesson. Some lessons are more painful than others, like...



1) You won’t always be there EVERY time your baby falls--literally or figuratively. You can’t kiss everything and make it all better every single time. There will be times that your kids will get hurt. And it WILL break your heart. Great thing is no one takes away your mommy-card.



2) You teach people how to treat you! I learned this one a long time ago thankfully. You allow or don’t allow for people to walk all over you. It's your choice. You learn to set boundaries and these boundaries are mostly in equal proportion to your own self-respect. Recently I have realized that we teach people how to treat us in EVERY relationship we have from childhood on.... I have been teaching my son this lesson with his little brother. If he wants his brother to respect his toys he has to teach him that. We have had our fair share of pushing and "MINE" goings on but ultimately do unto others as we would have them do unto us in really a GOLDEN RULE!



3) My all time hardest lesson in life is you will walk it till you learn it! Courtesy of an Oprah show in college, I heard a lady talk about women that always seem to gravitate towards the same type of guy. You hear them say "Every guy I date is always the same" when in reality you are the one that is the same. And until you learn the lesson God has for you, YES you will continue to make the same mistake over and over again. So listen up: no matter if it’s the same brand of guy wearing different jeans or the same type boss or same kind of friend, THE SAME SITUATION EVERYTIME rest assured you can kick it! It is not everyone else. It is YOU. So dig deep, figure out what you need to learn here and then you can move on with life and life more abundantly!! Trust me, life is full of lessons. We can learn them now and we get to learn new ones. Personally I would rather get to learn lots of life lessons instead of sticking too long on the same one.



As you can see above, I have lots of other things to accomplish in life too...

 

Give me an "R"

When you start off a new friendship courtesy of a hardcore work out at 5:30 in the morning, three days a week, with no make-up, sweating up a storm, you get real close real quick!  Follow that up with extra time at Starbucks chatting.  Then thanks to a nice little injury all that comes to a sreeching halt after 10 months, and you realize a little too late, you miss your friend!  Thank God for husbands that let us sneak out of the house late at night.  I told Brandon this morning I had forgotten how much fun I had all those mornings for so long. Here's too making room for R time anytime!

Dont let your babies grow up...

July 2009, just look at them!  So cute!  Can't wait to see how big they get next year....

Lying, Babies and Fireworks

Bradford learned about not lying at Vacation Bible School a few weeks ago.  He is pretty much an honest kid so it was something that we had not really focused much on to date.  But now we are going to have to get a little deeper into it.  If you say something like, "I'm going to get you" when you are about to tickle him he asks, "Are you lying?" If you say it's time to take your bath, he answers, "Are you lying?"  And on and on.... I am now working on MANNERS: it is impolite to ask someone if they are lying!

Anyway, Berkeley came running through the house yesterday yelling "Daddy's home" when he really wasn't.  I explained it wasn't Daddy and he answered, "I not lying!"

Oh Geez!

Well we are getting into a quasi-rhythm for the summer.  Then again school will start by the time we have it all down pat.  Berkeley decided he is NOT sleeping in his baby bed any more.  Much to this mommy's dismay.  I was hoping to hold out to Christmas.  For no reason other than I just did not want to admit he is not a baby anymore!  He is very quick to correct me any time I call him my baby, that he is a Big Boy.  But I can call Bradford a baby...according to Berkeley!  After a weekend in Salado with our friends who are expecting, Bradford keeps asking when we are going to get a new baby too.  Oh and a play kitchen?

Oh Geez again!

And yes that was my child you may have seen watching fireworks wearing sound proofing ear thingys.  He isn't a fan of loud noises.  So the BOOM scared him.  He loved the colors, especially from the inside of my car.  While one is scared of the noise, the other can sleep through it!  Brandon had to carry Bradford to the car when it was over because at some point he had fallen asleep on the blanket even with the loud BOOM!  Fun memories!