The Happiness Project- August

August's "project" was to be more aware of my surrounding and to treasure the little moments.  I had intended to do this with Amirah, but each time I asked her what made her happy that day she said things like, "I painted" or "I drew a picture."  Sounds good, right?  The thing is she was just making things up.  I think she might be a little young to get the point, but the girl knows what she likes and she loves arts and crafts.

One of the biggest blessings for us was finding an awesome babysitter who also loves arts and crafts. Amirah has made some really neat paper crafts and she is always talking about "Miss Melissa".  Once again God literally just dropped someone in our lap to take care of our children.  He is so faithful.

Each night I wrote down a few words of what I was grateful for that day or what made me happy.  Here's what I wrote.

1- Bunco!
2- an evening outside with my family
3- time with April and Erin at Starbucks
4- a chance to relax tonight
5- A.C!
6-
7- an evening chat on the back porch with Alli
8- seeing Amirah's cousins together
9- apples from Josh and Sherah's tree
10-
11- monarch caterpillars and a visit from Crissy K.
12- hamburgers on the grill
13- new neighbors
14- a partner in parenting
15- mulch I didn't pay for or spread
16- babysitter who loves my children
17- a goodnight kiss and a compliment
18- an evening with my sister
19- tea party with friends
20- successful day at school
21- playdate at the park
22- free lunch
23- lunch with Nikki
24- fun day with the kids
25- couples massage!
26- Brielle's birthday party
27- a great group of kids
28- the transformation of a butterfuly
29-
30-
31- foot massage

When I look over the things that made me happy I realized that more than half of them were the relationships in my life.  I am so grateful for the friends and family God has given me.  I am truly blessed.

I want to keep this attitude of gratefulness as I begin a new school year.  I am also looking forward to September's goal-- trying new things.  My goal is to try five new things in the month of September.  Here are some ideas I had, but I would love to hear from you.

- cooking with bok choy
- karaoke
- going to Wal-Mart in my p.j.s (I want to see what all the fuss is about...)
- learning to embroider
- lay in the yard and watch the stars with Ysmaille

Summer List Wrap-up

School starts next week for me.  I am really starting to get excited.  I've had such a great summer.  Xander has added a joy to our family, Amirah is learning what it means to be a big sister, and Ysmaille and I are along for the ride!  Here's what we accomplished:

• visit Lake Tobias
• have a picnic and swimming at Fuller Lake
• make bubble art
• make frozen bananas
• paint my nails sea foam green
• paint with ice cubes
• go to Britton Park
• feed the ducks and fish at City Park
• watch fireworks

Here's what I still have to do...

• spend an evening at the Municipal Pool
• finish shutters (for some reason I am not motivated to finish this project.  Maybe if I knew what I was going to do with the shutters...)
• make a water pinata
• make homemade ice cream
• get a couples massage at Warm Springs (Ysmaille and I are doing this next weekend.  So excited!)
• go to the pet store
• catch lightning bugs
• make donuts around the campfire
• take Amirah to Voila
• sleep all night long (Oh, God, please let this happen soon!)

Below are some pictures of our visit to Fuller Lake and making our bubble art for the bathroom.

 Xander just couldn't take the fun we were having at Fuller Lake. 

 Fuller Lake is our best find of the summer.  Amirah just loves playing in the sand!  Isn't her suit just adorable?

 I had to take a family picture after I realized we were all wearing some shade of torquoise. 

 This is Amirah making bubble art.

The finished product.  Now these light blue walls are a wild shade of orange.  The jury is still out on how we feel about that...



Afternoon Tea

Ysmaille's working overtime this afternoon, which means I have an extra hour on my hands.  I needed an activity to keep the kiddos busy, so I thought why not have a tea party?  

 The guests arrived all decked out with hats and necklaces.  It was a beautiful sight to behold.  (If you look closely at the picture on the right you can see a milk mustache.)  The guest dressed in green was quite a diva and requested MILK of all things at a tea party.  Being the polite hostess that I am I didn't deny her.

This particular guest was a dud.  I hated to be rude, but he just fussed and complained the whole time, until I finally told him to take a nap.  Don't tell his pediatrician, but I put him on his belly because he sleeps better that way.

 We even had a special seat for the little "dud", but I guess you just can't please everyone.

Did I mention we had pancakes instead of crumpets?  Like I said my guests were very particular. 

The Summer List Saunters On

I'm not 100% confident that our Summer List will be completed.  At this point I'm not even 50% confident it will be completed.  But the thing is, we are having fun.  We've done some fun projects that weren't even on our list and compared to how I felt at the beginning of the summer (sad, tired, frazzled, etc.) I am so happy!  Don't get me wrong, somedays are crazier than others, but overall we are having such a fun time.  This is such a conflicted time of year for me.  I totally love being at home with my kids, and yet I start to look forward to going back to work.  Dropping Xander off at the babysitter is going to rip a hole in my heart, but then I think of all the mothers who trust their "babies" into my care and I know that my job is such a vital and important one.  I digress... Back to our summer list...

 Feeding the ducks and fish at City Park (in Hagerstown) is something I've wanted to do with Amirah for awhile, and two weeks ago we got the chance to do it.  Please disregard her "just woke up from a nap" hair.

 Daddy and Amirah on a little adventure.  I just love the relationship these two have.  It makes my heart happy.

Amirah and I made frozen bananas (with chocolate and peanut butter) last week.  Oh man.  They were delicious.  As you can tell by Amirah's face she was pretty excited, too.

 Painting with ice cubes was really fun.  I just froze water with food coloring and then let Amirah move them around on a canvas.  As they melted they left water marks. 

Here's how it ended up. 

July's Happiness Project

I spent July focusing on eating healthy in an attempt to shed those last few pounds of baby weight.  I started out with good intentions, but we all know where the road to good intentions leads us...  I'm sure I've had one too many hotdogs and ice cream cones, but can I be honest?  I really don't care.  July has allowed me to be more conscious of what I am putting in my mouth and how I am treating my body, so although I still have a few more pounds to go I think it's a success!

I am super excited for August's goal: being intentional about noticing my blessings.  In January I started a "blessing jar" where I write down how God has been provided for us financially.  I want to take time in August to notice blessings outside of the financial realm.  I'm including Amirah in the challenge.  Each night I am going to ask her what made her happy that day and write it down so we have a record of our blessings.  It's really important to me to teach my daughter that God loves to delight us and even during those days where things don't go as planned He is always showing us his love.

Summer List 2012

There are so many things to do on my summer list.  We have only checked off four items so far, which means there is a lot more fun to be had.  If you live in my area and have small kids I'm sure you've visited Britton Park.  If not, you definitely should.  They have a tiny pool with lots of sprinklers to play in.  

 Amirah splashing in the sprinklers.  I thought she would like it a lot more, but all she wanted to do was...

 eat lunch.  Apparantly I make the most amazing pb and js on the planet!

 I wasn't sure how Amirah would react to fireworks.  She doesn't like loud sounds.  I prepped her the week before by explaining that they would make a sound like thunder.  I even showed her some videos on youtube so she would be prepared.  She absolutely loved it!  Her mouth stayed open the entire time and she was literally speechless.  She sat on her Uncle Han's lap and refused to budge.

 Another thing on my list was to paint my toes sea foam green.  What do you think?  I definitely prefer my usual coral color, but this is a nice change.

 Lake Tobias is an awesome place, but I do not reccomend it for two month olds.  This picture was taken on our safari just after Xander send projectile spit-up all over my shorts and just before he had one of those up-the-back blowouts in his diaper.  I ended up having to take off all his clothes and he spent the rest of the afternoon in his diaper.

Amirah and Natalie really enjoyed feeding the animals.  It's pretty amazing to see all kinds of deer, bison, buffalo and birds in the same field.  It was a really neat experience. 

This was not on our summer list, but I thought I'd add it anyway.  Last school year a friend gave me a bunch of hats that belonged to her grandmother.  Amirah and I had fun trying them all on yesterday.  We had so much fun we didn't even realize that Daddy had come home.  (Usually we are counting down the minutes and looking at the window) :)

Spark People

July's goal for the happiness project was to lose those last five lbs. of lingering baby weight.  For those of you who have ever tried to do this know that the last five lbs. are ridiculously hard to get rid of.  Enter http://www.sparkpeople.com/.  I truly love this website.  Five years ago I weighed 154 lbs.  On a 5' 2" frame that's a good bit of extra weight to lug around.  A friend told me about Spark People and I decided to check it out. I ended up losing 20 lbs. in about six months or so and have kept it off. 

Basically it's a social network of people trying to lose weight.  I don't care about that aspect of it so much.  I really just like the nutrition tracker.  You can type what you weigh now, what you want to weigh and in how much time you want to lose that weight.  It gives you a calorie range that you should stay in to do that successfully.  It also gives a range for how much fat, protein, and carbs you should consume.  You then type in everything you've eaten that day and it records it for you.  There is something about having to write down what you've eaten that makes you think twice about the cookie calling your name.  Last night I really wanted a snack (not so much because I was hungry, but moreso because I wanted something to do).  Typically I would have had a bowl of ice cream, but last night I went to bed without a snack.  Simply because I didn't want to have to go the computer and write it down. 

Three days in I've already lost a pound.  I refuse to diet.  This keeps me aware of my choices, but still allows room for ice cream if I want it.  So for those of you needing a little extra "spark" you should check out this website.