Dear thirty three

This is 33

In a few short weeks I will be 34....

phew thirty three is busy.

thirty three is nothing like I thought it would be...

I think I qualify as a grown up now. I have two kids, rent, a big girl job, and a somewhat better understanding of my finances (hey I'm getting there)...so those certainly seem like grown up things

and being a grown up? It's way harder than I thought it would be!

thirty three involves a lot of mom-ing.

a lot of diapers and folding socks

a lot of grocery lists

endless little people who want to eat...can you believe they actually want to eat?

It's a lot of running around cursing and breaking up more fights than there should be.

It's a bit of wondering where I went in the midst of the backpacks and bills

But I'm learning that the best thing for my boys is to be ME for them, and I suspect that involves more than dishes and work.

I am Happy!!

Although I don't really have a good handle on what thirty four looks like...

I think it will involve more patience than the previous years and a lot of pondering questions.

Dear thirty three,

it's been real...

xoxo
Alana

365 cups of coffee

All great blog posts begin with...I am sitting on my couch in my pajamas drinking coffee...but not this one....here goes nothing!

I am currently belting out "I will always love you" by the great Whitney...and enjoying being behind the computer screen. It's something about the clicking of the keys that just makes me so giddy inside and almost powerful in a sense.

Ok judge away I have not been on in quite sometime but, you know, there is this thing called life...yea you know whats coming next... it happens!!

 This blog post is going nowhere fast...so I'll get to the good stuff

Last year I blogged THREE TIMES...y'all seriously though wtf.... was I thinking...I love to blog, but like with many things it got put on the back burner...kids, homework, dishes, laundry and work came first but, I need to allow time for my personal interests/passions!!

So with that said I will now bore you with my resolutions/plans from last year that I wanted to complete and then tell you what really happened.

2016 GOALS WERE BROKEN DOWN AS THE FOLLOWING:

Big goal

Finish something

Medium goal

Looking after myself physically and emotionally

Small goal

Improve my blogging

Well this is embarrassing....

Finish something...the only thing I finished was approximately 365 cups of coffee. Ok I'm only kidding. I did finish a couple great books (I just barely made the cut off for that) oh and I was in a small craft fair...So I finished those crafts!

Looking after myself physically and emotionally...Does drinking coffee and jamming out to music count? Oh and, countless nights of 5 hours of sleep... that definitely has to be great for me! I did start running...I ran just yesterday...for like .5 seconds! Emotionally...yea I blocked out a lot of shit this year!

Improve my blog...well we can see where that one went...enough said

With all these things that did not get done the way I had imagined...I will follow up with great things that did happen

1. I went camping

2. I went to the beach twice

3. I went hiking

4. I went to three concerts

5. I got my own apartment

6. I took a new position at work

7. I made more than 10 new recipes

8. I visited at least 5 or more new places

9. I painted a lot

10. I did hard things

SO WHAT ABOUT THIS YEAR?

Big goal

Write my own memoir and get it published by the end of the year

Medium goal

Do all things with love

Small goal

Volunteer

I hope that you all surround yourselves with the dreamers and the doers, the believers and thinkers, but most of all surround yourself with those who see greatness within you, even when you don't see it yourself.

xoxo

Alana

You deserve to be happy!

 

Here's your first dose of Motivational Monday for the year!

You have to roll with life. Crap happens, a lot. It’s life.

But good things happen too, a lot. Because it is life, and we actually are here to be happy.

There are a lot of other people who deal with really, really, really extreme and hard situations. We take these burdens for granted. Instead of anticipating when things will be getting bad again, life is best lived when living happily in the moment, taking things as they come, and knowing that no matter what, someone is on your side.

The reason I share this with you today is because I know that somewhere out there, several of you are currently experiencing these types of feelings too. And I wanted to let you know that you’re not crazy

But mostly, I wanted to let you know that you deserve to be happy.

And no guilt should ever come from being happy.

xoxo

Alana

So Tomorrow is Monday...

As my long dreamy break comes to end some things I'll miss, but look forward too...

I'm not going to lie being a stay at home mom is not for me...Lets face it..I need my adult interaction!! 

I will miss waking up to Brayden's sweet smiling face...although a schedule is very good for his well being. He honestly did really well for not being in school for 16 days! I will miss the hours from 1-3 when all is quiet in my house...where we all get snuggled under a blanket and take a nap! {If you know me you know I live for a nap.} I will miss the $460.00 that I saved from not having to take the kids to afterschool!

I will love getting back to a schedule! I will love all my adult interaction! I will love picking up the kids and hearing about their days...Hopefully we have a good drop of this morning with the bus and normal routine with Brayden ;) 

I'm going to remember that everything we love about breaks, holidays and special occasions is available to us every single day.

If you had a break I hope you loved it just as much as we did ours!

xoxo

Alana

cheers to 2016

What did you do last night to bring in the New Year...

I laid in bed and watched HGTV "Caribbean Life" and wished I had anywhere from 300k-500k to drop on a beautiful house and not work! Although I know that I couldn't actually uproot from my hometown and leave all my friends and family, But a girl can dream can't she?

I was fairly hesitate to write a "Resolutions" post as they tend to bore me. Who cares if you plan on eating more kale and less processed food? You probably won't anyway

But on a personal level I thought I'd take a look back at what I stated as my intentions for the past 365 days. These included:

Traveling more

Go to a concert

....and something about not being a social media whore

I definitely didn't travel anywhere...unless you consider VA beach or watching destination TV traveling, but I did learn that you need money to go places so that has led me to a new goal for this year, but we will go into that later.

Nope...no concerts for me! I didn't really try either though so I don't feel as that should be held against me, but who needs a concert when you have a working s-t-e-r-e-o in your car.

It actually makes me cringe that I wrote "social media" as a resolution. Sure, have that as a resolution, but that should definitely have been filed under the "things to keep in my head" But No. Resolution wasn't achieved, how else do you think I amused myself over this past week. That resolution is going to the bin.

SO WHAT ABOUT THIS YEAR?

I am going to break down my resolutions for 2016 into the following categories:

Big goal

Finish something...anything maybe one of the many craft ideas that I have inside my head I'm pretty sure that I have gold spray paint and some coffee mugs somewhere around here...lol

Medium goal

Look after myself better physically and emotionally. Over this past week I realized that I do not eat well at all, WHEN I'm off my schedule eeekk...oh who am I kidding all the time...emotionally I need to remember that blocking out things isn't always the answer. Sometimes you need to confront things head on and handle them instead of acting as if it never happened.

Small goal

I want to improve my blogging. Blogging is yet another one of my creative outlets (hobbies that help me keep my shit together) I consider blogging to be a form of journalism and being able to translate my thoughts and emotions into an image for my readers to enjoy. I've always been a big fan of Instagram and lately have used Instagram as a form of blogging, but I can't write everything that I want under one picture. 

I hope that you all surround yourselves with the dreamers and the doers, the believers and thinkers, but most of all surround yourself with those who see greatness within you, even when you don't see it yourself.

cheers!!

xoxo

Alana 

What is a speech therapist?

When you have a child, you may dream of this magazine/perfect life for them. You may even map out their whole life before they are even born...down to their very first girlfriend/boyfriend 

(when they are in their 20's of course, 

because... you know what you were doing when you were a tween)

Then they come along and you know in your hearts of all hearts that something isn't right... 

Your dream comes crashing down...

BUT...

even though you think to yourself "how in the hell are we going to deal with this?" 

you start building a new dream.

The same dream you had all along...to give your baby the life they deserve.

Your dream will come crashing down several times more, once you get your first diagnoses you will want to give up, but you know you can't.

Insurance, therapist, medicaid, bills, on top of house and car payments, childcare. (you get what I'm trying to say)

and you go back to that thought of "how the hell are we going to do this"...

and along comes some help...

Back to my orginial question what is a speech therapist...

According to google...

1. A speech therapist is a specialist with training in the diagnosis and treatment of a variety of speech, voice, and language disorders who works with people, unable to make speech sounds or cannot make them clearly.

To our family she is a saint, a miracle, someone we can't see our lives without. 

She is a teacher not only to our child, but to us we are constantly learning something new, 

She is a cheerleader.

She is a giver, and strives to help us give our son the life we have always dreamed of for him!!

She is a believer, not only in our son, but in us as well.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that she is more than just my son's therapist 

_________________________________________________

She is a friend...I can call or text her at any given time and she is there answering any questions we have or giving any support that she can!!

Thank you Suzanne for everything that you do!! 

We Cherish you.

xoxo

Alana 

10 steps to restoring your self-esteem.

10 steps to restoring your self-esteem

1. know yourself.

2. understand what makes you feel great.

3. recognize things that get you down.

4. set goals to achieve what you want.

5. develop trusting friendships that make you feel good.

6. don't be afraid to ask for help.

7. stand up for your beliefs and values.

8. help someone else.

9. take responsibility for your own actions.

10.take good care of yourself.

xoxo

Alana