Pieces Of My Heart

listen to: Keep Holding On

Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~Elizabeth Stone

Despite the fact that I haven't finished my college degree, or have anything that the business sector would call a career, I have a good sense of who I am, and feel I am always growing, learning, working together with my loved ones to have a happy life, to make this time here on Earth worth it. Someone said that to have a child is to have your heart go walking around outside your body; running, more like it. So, as I raise these 4 little lumps of my heart, and they grow, discover, break down, learn to live, I am doing it right along with them. Their beats are my own, 4 times over. It is a tremendous opportunity for personal growth if taken advantage of. Honestly I don't feel like taking advantage of it every day, or at 3 a.m., or when the eye rolls come my way, or when I am skipping around a quiet house on that joyous first day back at school. But, I am immeasurably grateful to be a Mom. I will always be one. I will always be loved in that capacity. How often do we have an opportunity to put so much of ourselves into such a worthy project? I am a better human being because of it.

New Year, New Look

A couple of my favorite bloggers updated their look, so I started browsing around and found this quilt. I love it. Thanks for the motivation, Shelli and Erica!

Cody Country

listen to: Shine, Peace

This slide show is made up of my favorite pictures we have taken of NW Wyoming. It will have a permanent place at the bottom of my blog page. Listen to some music while you watch by clicking on a song from my playlist. Enjoy!

New Years Resolutions

Well, I was thinking, as I too often do, about what my New Year's Resolutions are. In my day-to-day busy work, a few things have come to the forefront of my mind, and my husband has assigned me one. My in-laws gave us "The Money Makeover" to read and learn from, and for a few days, as Brandon read it first, every time I walked by he would say out of the side of his mouth, "You need to read this book." He isn't doing that anymore. But I am going to read it and I look forward to what I can learn from it. So, here is a list of my Resolutions, in no particular order, because maybe if I write them here, I will do some of them.

1- Stay within my budget so we can go to Disneyland next year, and so Brandon won't stress out over money.
2- Sort through our "storage" and prepare for a yard sale in the spring. Be ruthless.
3- Finish my cookbook.
4- Be slower to yell, and maybe not yell.
5- Start running again.
6- Work on shyness towards people I don't know well. Start with smiling more readily.
7- Build up food storage.
8- It wouldn't be a New Year without trying to be better at remembering birthdays...although my Mom-in-law's was yesterday and we forgot. Great start, eh?

There you go. Not too bad. I am sure I can tackle these.