Keeping in Teutsch: Melissa

I usually don’t make them. Or if I do make them, I try not to tell everyone for fear that I won’t keep them and then will be reminded of my failure every single time someone asks “how that New Year’s resolution” going. When I do make them, though, they usually involve losing weight, but this year they don’t. (That doesn’t mean I don’t need to lose weight [because I do], but like I told Matt the other day, if I were going to make a New Year’s Resolution involving weight, it would be to gain 25-30 pounds over the next 9 months and bring approximately 7 pounds of it home in an infant carrier [leaving some of it in the operating room—tmi?—and then losing the rest after that]. However, I have no control in this department. Maybe God added “the expansion of the Teutsch Family” to his plans for this year? We’ll just have to be patient and wait and see. This is NOT a pregnancy announcement. Repeat…this is NOT a pregnancy announcement.)

So, anyway, getting back on track…I had a point…that paragraph was going somewhere before it got hijacked with the baby talk! This year is technically not about losing weight and is about SO much more. I actually thought these through and I don’t really have a timeline on most of these, which is good for me, because although I am organized, I fail horribly on tight schedules. I need flexibility! And, I’ve also realized, that if I make too many changes, too quickly, two weeks down the road, I’ll be back to the same ol’, same ol’ and won’t have accomplished anything. Slow and steady wins the race. (I think I’ve said that before on here—maybe 2 years ago?—but it’s still applicable to how I feel about making self-imposed changes in my life.)

Now that I've said all that, here they are:

* Read the Bible through chronologically. (I downloaded a free guide online.) Sidenote: Juliette came home from church the other day with a guide to read through the New Testament in a year and I just sat it aside because I thought it would be WAY over her head. However, the next day, she came to me and told me that she had read the second day and put a check mark by it. (They had done the first day in class. She just made up what she thought it said for the second day.) I felt pretty convicted then! (See the next bullet.)

* Read the New Testament to Juliette using her guide. (It’s the second week of January. We haven’t started this yet, but we will be. Maybe this is why I’m reluctant to share my resolutions, because you have to admit how not-together you have it sometimes!) L Sidenote: Last night Juliette repeated a Bible verse she learned at church yesterday to us. She said it was from JACK 1:19. We thought at first it was JOHN she was referring to until she said the verse and then we realized it was JAMES! It was funny/cute!

* Also in regards to reading to Juliette, over the holidays we slacked off on reading to/with her and going over sight words every night. We need to start that back up as well. (Maybe this post should be “Melissa’s Shortcomings” instead!) Not really a New Year’s Resolution, though.

* A multi-part one, all pertaining to food: Eat less processed food, eat out less, cook more. This weekend, we did not eat out, and I cooked…A LOT…homemade whole wheat bread (in the bread machine) to use for sandwiches. (Juliette was NOT happy with it when I made her a grilled cheese sandwich with it, but she ate half of it anyway), cheese crackers, whole wheat banana bread (no sugar, only pure honey), walnut maple breakfast cookies (again, no sugar, only unprocessed applesauce and pure maple syrup to sweeten them; they’re pretty good, but not sweet), homemade refried beans and homemade whole wheat tortillas (Juliette didn’t even notice the difference when she ate her taco. I did.). Obviously, it probably won’t be realistic for me to do this every weekend (make our bread and breakfast stuff), but Great Harvest Bread Company here in town has whole wheat honey bread that only has three natural ingredients in it, so I can always buy it there if I don’t have time. (Although, it doesn’t take much time to put the stuff in the bread machine and turn it on.) I’m not striving to be extreme about the processed food, though, because it’s just simply unrealistic for us to cut EVERY processed food out. Just striving to cut back with the main goal being to cook more at home with less packaged food. Treats will be allowed! :) I’m all about moderation...no hardcore "rules" here.

* Make a quilt. I’ve been wanting to make a quilt for years now and just the thought of cutting out those little squares (or whatever pattern I choose) makes my head hurt, but I’m determined that this year will be the year.

* Declutter the closets. This is more of a to-do item, but it needs to be done and it’s not something I really feel compelled to do on a normal weekend, so I figure if I put it on the list, it might happen! ;)

* Don't drink so much Diet Coke. I was VERY reluctant to put this on the list because I love my Diet Coke, but if I'm going to be more mindful of the foods we are eating, then I need to be more mindful of the amount of aspartame I'm drinking as well. I've yet to cut down on what I've been drinking, but I'm going to start trying to cut one a day at first and replace it with water.

And, because I think it’s kinda neat to chose a word for the year, this year my word is: Patience. (Although Peace was a close second…it was hard to choose.) I’ve found that I’ve shockingly had a great deal of patience already in “round two” of infertility, but I do know from prior experience that it’s easy to be patient at the beginning. It’s when it’s been six months that you need some, which is where we are now. I feel very at peace about it, though, so much so that I cancelled my appointment for this week with the new doctor I chose because I just feel that I need to wait a little longer. (Call me crazy!)

Now, just because I posted these doesn't mean that next time you see me you can ask "how's those New Year's Resolutions going?" :)

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It’s the question everyone is asking today: Where were you? So, I decided to share my story.

Matt and I were living in Englewood, Florida, at the time. He had just quit his job as a youth minister at a church there and we were preparing to move back to Louisiana the next week. I was still attending classes at Florida Gulf Coast University in Ft. Myers (over an hour drive from Englewood), reluctant to resign until we were certain another job wasn’t going to come through for Matt that would allow us to stay until the end of the semester. I was driving to school that morning on I-75, when I heard on the radio station that a plane had flown into the one of the towers of the World Trade Center. The radio DJ didn’t know much, wasn’t sure whether it was an accident or not, and didn’t really have any concrete information. Florida Gulf Coast University was a brand new school and already had smart classrooms back in 2001, so when I walked into my first class that morning the news was turned on and being projected onto the enormous screen at the front of the room. The teacher said she had family in New York, that she didn’t know what the school was doing, but that she was cancelling her classes and she ran out of the room with her phone in her hand. It didn’t take long to figure out from sitting there watching the news what had happened, and knowing that I was more than likely going to be resigning that next week, I went ahead and went home, figuring classes would probably be cancelled. (And they were, like most universities did.) Like everyone else, I spent the rest of that day (and many weeks after it) glued to the TV. It was unbelievable and incredibly sad and a little scary…but being so far removed from the tragedy (in distance and in not knowing anyone involved), it was easy to go about living life. On that day, I never thought my life would intersect with anyone involved in the tragedy.

Ironically, three years later to the day, I was standing in LaGuardia airport in New York City, waiting on my flight out. I had just wrapped up my first media tour with an author that had left me emotionally exhausted more than anything else. (In those three years since 9/11, Matt and I had moved back to Louisiana, I had graduated with my bachelors degree, Matt had just graduated with his masters, and we were living in West Monroe, where I was working as a publicist for Howard Books and Matt was teaching at ULM.) The author was the grieving widow of the co-pilot of the first plane that was flown into the World Trade Center. (He was probably, when you think about it—and I don’t like to—one of the very first victims on 9/11.) While traveling with the author in the week leading up to the third anniversary of 9/11, I found myself having mixed emotions…empathy and sadness for her loss (and the fact that she was still very much in the grieving process); uneasiness over the fact that my job was profiting from her loss (since she wrote a book about it; although, technically, she was profiting to, but you get my point…not trying to make the author sound bad here—the book was part of her grieving process and allowed her to share her story and her strong faith); and frustration over working with someone who wasn’t sure some days if she wanted to talk to the media about her loss. (Which was understandable, but as a book publicist I was very much torn between doing my job and pushing her to finish what she started and as a caring individual protecting her from the media. I didn’t like being in that situation! There were still a lot of raw emotions, and I felt like a degree in psychology would have been helpful to get through that time.)

I was glad to have the experience behind me when it was over (and it helped me immensely in dealing with future authors who wrote books about their losses). As uncomfortable as I was with the situation, though, working with that author put a face on 9/11. I needed that! Although I was saddened by the situation and would cry sometimes when watching some of the heartbreaking stories on TV, it was still easy to push those temporary emotions aside because I didn’t know the people affected. My day-to-day life didn’t change, and aside from stricter airport security, it still hasn’t, but having a face on 9/11 helps give me a little more sympathy and compassion, helps me to not so quickly “forget” when national tragedies happen.

Every 9/11, I think about that author, and I probably always will. That book promotion was the toughest one I’ve ever done, but I need to remember the emotions, the author and her courage to tell her story…I need to remember that there are nearly 3,000 other families just like hers. I need to remember 9/11.

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Still playing catch-up from the holidays! On December 21st, I celebrated (reluctantly and without much fuss) my 30th birthday. And now, I officially feel old.

In (late) celebration of that momentous occasion (there seems to be a theme here), I decided to do a list of random tidbits about myself. Originally, I was going to do 30 of them, but I ran out of stuff to put on there, so I stopped at 20. (Twenty is the new 30 anyway! At least I'm going to tell myself that!)

So, without further ado, here are 20 random things about me:

1. I almost always wear my hair in a ponytail on weekends…except to go to church. Mostly. And, about every other day during the week. Fine…I'll admit it. I'm addicted to wearing my hair in a ponytail. I consider myself successful at fighting this bad habit when I wear it down at least three days in a work week. (It doesn't take much to make me feel successful!

2. I will forever be 15 minutes late to work. It's been this way since the dawn of my professional employment days in an office and until I work for a boss that cares, I imagine it will stay that way. (Ironically, I give myself a figurative pat on the back if I get to work less than 15 minutes late. I don’t know what I do when I get to work on time, as that has never happened before.)

3. I don't take lunch breaks and just eat lunch from home at my desk. It's not that I'm so busy…it's just that I'm lazy and I don’t want to walk home for lunch. Plus, because of my lack of timeliness, I have to make sure I get in my 40 hours. I'm the moral police when it comes to the time clock. I kid not!

4. I mostly eat yogurt and a granola bar (sometimes with a piece of fruit) for lunch. Riveting information about me, huh? My favorite flavors: Banana Cream Pie, Strawberry Shortcake and Red Velvet (all Yoplait Lights).

5. Since Fiber One came out with poptarts, I've been eating a Strawberry poptart for breakfast every morning. Seriously. Every. Single. Morning.

6. Speaking of food (and then I promise, I'll move on because I sure hope there is more to me than just food!), I could eat Mexican pretty much every day.

7. When I was unemployed back in 2009, I interviewed for a job as a law partner's personal assistant in a big firm here in town. Some of the job duties were to wind his clock every morning in his office and to change out the batteries in his beeper every day. I'm pretty sure I didn't get the job because I questioned what kind of batteries he was using that wouldn't last more than a day! True story!

8. I also interviewed for a research job at the university, assisting the person who tracks down alumni and asks for donations or asks for them to write the university into their wills. The woman who interviewed me gave some scenarios and asked how I would go about finding people. I'm pretty sure I didn't get that job because my answer was "Google" for all of them and I had a look of "are you kidding me?" on my face when she asked me, for instance, how I would find the owner of a Chinese restaurant chain. My thought process was, "Is this a trick question? Because Google is still my answer." Maybe I'm just really good at using Google and have thought all this time that everyone else knew how to use it to find people. Am I the only one that cyber stalks people? (Don't answer that!)

9. I have a major problem with "pulling the trigger" and booking hotel rooms. I know…that is such a random thing, but when I was planning our little trip late last summer to Houston, I spent WAY too much time obsessing over how many stars and good reviews a hotel got that I started stressing myself out about where we were going to stay. Thankfully, I didn't land us in roach motel crawling with bed bugs in a bad part of town, which is totally my fear!

10. I have the inability to go on a vacation with my husband without all hell breaking loose about directions—and subsequently, getting lost. Thankfully, I like to think that this is only partially my fault and now that my husband has a smart phone with GPS, we can look forward to our 4 year old NOT refereeing from the backseat on the next trip! (Yes, we sometimes fight or yell at each other in front of her…I'm just keeping it real, people. Let's not pretend we're perfect!)

11. I'm super indecisive. I will probably never, ever build a home, because of the magnitude of decisions that will have to be made. Don't ask me to choose the restaurant either!

12. I dislike trying a new restaurant unless I'm with someone who has been there before or unless I have read all the reviews about it. I know, I'm weird. (Maybe I should have titled this "Quirky things about Melissa.")

13. I'm currently doing Weight Watchers (in my 6^th week!). I've never kept something up for this long nor has the question "Do you want to go out to eat?" ever made me sprint to the computer to look up points for restaurants and then semi-hyperventilate when I can't find them!

14. I dislike playing pretend with Juliette. (Let's not act like we all like to play pretend with our kids!) I still play it with her if she asks, although I do try to persuade her to choose something else to play. I find, though, that I'm seriously lacking in the pretend-play area of my brain. Am I the only one that finds it difficult to create dialogue for a bunch of Barbies?

15. I'm not romantic AT ALL. In fact, I think most romantic gestures are cheesy and have hidden agendas. Matt knows that more often than not if he does something romantic or says something romantic, I'm going to ask, "What do you want?" Now, I should probably save my husband from a hanging about now and say that he doesn't usually have hidden agendas…it's just where my mind goes. My love language is service! Show me you love me by washing the dishes and doing the laundry. And, if you clean the bathroom, I will be on cloud nine and won't care if you have a hidden agenda and want something in return!!

16. Along the same lines as above, I also dislike receiving flowers from Matt. My main reason? They die…and they can be costly. Since the money comes from our checkbook, I prefer it not be spent on something that is going to die within the week. I will make exceptions for tulips, though, since they are my favorite and you can't find them all the time.

17. I prefer to make lists about what needs to be done, then to actually do what needs to be done. Nevermind the fact that in the time it took for me to make the list (and color code it with markers!), I could have already done a few things on it!

18. I rarely go to the grocery store without my dinner menu planned for the next week and a list of what I need. And, like clockwork, I go grocery shopping every Friday afternoon (unless we are going out of town for the weekend and then I go when we get back on Sunday).

19. I started out majoring in pre-pharmacy and Chemistry 101 kicked by butt (I barely got out of there with a C), so I hightailed it to the liberal arts before that first semester in college was even over. The truth is, I never really wanted to be a pharmacist, I just initially chose that field because of the fact that I would be a doctor (PharmD) when I graduated and would be making awesome money. I clearly was not thinking about my strengths and weaknesses (science being my weakness).

20. My dream job is to be a stay-at-home mom! I don't know if that will ever happen, but I pray about it often.

And now feel free to psychoanalysis me in the comments! :)

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Kelly's Korner has a blog carnival every Friday and this Friday the topic is "A Day in the Life." I rarely participate, but I thought I would today, just to give you a little glimpse into my typical work day.

I usually wake up around 6:20 and am out the door around 7:20 with a Diet Coke and Fiber One Strawberry Pop-tart in hand. I have to be at work at 7:30 am and our house is only two miles from campus. Some mornings, though, Juliette wakes up at the crack of dawn and joins me in the tub and then wants to watch Curious George and eat Cheerios, while wrapped in a blanket (she's very specific!), so on those mornings I usually don't leave the house until almost 7:30.

On Mondays and Wednesdays, I try to not take a lunch break and just eat at my desk--either a frozen Lean Cuisine or Chick-fil-A from on campus. Since we are only allowed 45 minutes for lunch breaks, I do this so that I can take one hour lunch breaks on Tuesdays and Thursdays (since I pick up Juliette from preschool on those days) and so that I can leave around 4:50 on Mondays and Tuesdays (since Matt has a 5:30 class on those days).

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I leave work at 11:20 to pick up Juliette across campus (well, not really "across") from preschool and take her home where I fix her lunch and scarf down some lunch for myself before the babysitter arrives at 12.

Once I get home from work, I change clothes, look through the mail and start on dinner. We usually eat around 6 or 6:30, depending on how long it takes to cook. After dinner, I clean up the kitchen and then play with Juliette and spend a few minutes checking Facebook and email and reading some blogs (or blogging myself). I try to have Juliette in the tub around 8 or 8:30 and while she is in there, I usually straighten up the house. Juliette goes to bed around 9 and then Matt and I catch up on our DVRed shows. I usually am in bed around 10:30 every night, although if I'm really tired I'll go to bed when Juliette does.

So, nothing too exciting here during the week...just your typical, normal routine!

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IF YOU HAD A DAY, FREE WITH NO RESTRICTIONS, WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

So, I'm going to assume this means I would have a day where I woke up to a clean house and clean laundry that has been put up! My ideal free day is sleeping in a little late (but not too late--don't wanna sleep my free day away), going out with Matt and Juliette for lunch and just goofing around (go to the mall or Target or something). Since this is my ideal day, Juliette would take a nap and Matt and I would watch a movie or get caught up on our DVRed shows. We would all cook dinner together while listening to music and then I would get to take a hot, hot bath and read a good book in the tub!

Truth be told, though, my free days in reality aren't that much different than this one above. Today I'm off work for Mardi Gras, so I got to sleep in a little. Juliette woke me up at 9 a.m., which is a good time. (Yesterday, she woke me up at 8, ugh!) We're about to get baths and get dressed for the day. I need to go to the fabric store and then this afternoon we are going to take Juliette to the Mardi Gras Carnival and a parade. I've going to go by the library and get what I hope are some good books that I put on reserve yesterday and we will probably all cook dinner together tonight. I plan to get Juliette in bed before 9, so that I can have time to read in the bathtub. Aside from the fact that I do need to clean the bathrooms and put away the laundry, there isn't really anything else I'd rather be doing, which says a lot about my personality!

IF YOU COULD NOMINATE ONE PERSON FOR SAINTHOOD, WHO WOULD IT BE?

I'm not sure about this question. Dictionary.com tells me that a saint is a person of great holiness, virtue and benevolence. Of course, sainthood is usually a term used in Catholic churches and some others, so this question to me is along the same lines of "if there is one person you could have dinner with who would it be." Great holiness, virtue and benevolence is quite a big list for such imperfect humans, so I can't say that anyone on Earth is deserving of such a title. However, I will say that my mom is someone I really look up to that exhibits lots of good Christian qualities.

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If you are wondering where I went, I'm still here! I've just been busy plotting my Rage Against the Fleas. Oh, yeah, you read that right! FLEAS! And yes, yes, I am actually going to admit to them...those pesky little things that only unsanitary people have in their homes...or so we like to think!

Let me preface my flea story with a few facts: 1) Zoe is an inside dog. She goes outside to use the bathroom and on the way back in likes to take the time to bark at the neighbors and the parade of pets that roam our neighborhood, but that's about it. She doesn't spend a lot of time outside. 2) We've had Zoe since she was a puppy and she will celebrate her 6th birthday at the end of the month. In those 6 years, I've never had a flea infestation in my home and Zoe has never really scratched much...meaning she's never had a flea problem. 3) We've always just given Zoe her flea medication during the hot months only, since fleas aren't supposed to be able to live in low temperatures and since the best flea medication out there--Frontline--is so stinkin' expensive.

Last week, during what has been THE coldest week so far this winter (and not to be confused with this week, which has been the hottest week of winter so far), Zoe started scratching up a storm...like ALL THE TIME. The dog couldn't go even 5 minutes without scratching. I held her down a few times and didn't see any fleas. I doubted she had fleas since I didn't see any on her and hadn't seen any anywhere else. Plus, I was thinking the whole "fleas don't come around during the winter" thing. She kept scratching and Matt and I started wondering what the heck was wrong with her. Last weekend we went up to North LA and on the way bought some flea medication and put it on Zoe when we got to my parents. Zoe didn't scratch the whole weekend away. We thought she was all better! Yeah, that would have been way too easy!

So, we get home on Sunday and IMMEDIATELY the dog starts scratching again and I begin thinking that she is allergic to something in our home and tell Matt that he'll probably need to take her to the vet to get her checked out. Monday night, I'm sitting on the couch in our sunroom (which is where Zoe spends most of her waking time) and a flea appears on my arm and right then, I start planning my search-and-destroy mission. It was on!

The thing about me, though, is that I have to research everything. That's just how I'm wired. So, in the process, I learned WAY too much about fleas...enough to set my imagination into overdrive and to make me think that my house is crawling with invisible-to-the-eye flea eggs. I planned my attack for Tuesday night after work. It included washing every bed linen, jacket, blanket, and rug that could fit in my washer. Then it involved a thorough--and I mean, thorough--vacuuming of the house and the mattresses and the couches and chairs and rugs and anything I couldn't fit in the washer. The kind of vacuuming you would do if you were moving out of a rental house and wanted your deposit back...and where you have to throw away the bag from the vacuum cleaner afterwards in the OUTSIDE trash so those little buggers don't hatch and get out! Then, I sprayed--well, more like doused--the furniture and mattresses and rugs (you get the picture...any fabric in sight) with flea spray for the home. And then I drowned my sorrows in a M&M Sonic Blast and called it a night, but not after applying another dose of "monthly" flea medication to Zoe. I was hopeful that I was triumphant and I was itching, well, like a dog with fleas, because I felt like they were crawling all over me too! (Are you itching yet?)

We resprayed the house on Wednesday. On Thursday, I was worn out and just started praying that God would take them away. Probably the craziest prayer request I've ever had, but hey, He cares about everything, right? Then, tonight, that dog is still scratching some (and this is after Matt took her to get a flea bath too), so Matt applied a THIRD monthly dose and she seems to have calmed down some. Hopefully, we haven't poisoned her in the process, considering we applied 3 months of flea medication to her in one week! She seems to still be kickin' though. Tomorrow...oh, dreaded tomorrow...I'm going to revacuum like my life (or really in this case, my sanity) depended on it and respray everything AGAIN. And if they are still here, than kudos to them for sticking it out, but I'm just going to dump the couch on the road and let the sucker who picks it up worry about them! (It was a hand-me-down anyway, and we plan to give it away when we move to the apartment this summer.)

So, now that I've taken 6 paragraphs to just simply say, "we have fleas," let me share a few other things with you...like the 52 Questions, Week 3. I'm not loving this question AT ALL. It's kinda boring to me, but I guess it's an important thing to have people who hold me accountable, so if you comment or email me often, please feel free to ask me how the whole "self-discipline" thing is going. I know it will help me stay focused!

We've had a dilemma the last few weeks in trying to find a babysitter for Juliette a few hours a week. Matt had worked out his schedule so that he could be with Juliette except for 6 1/2 hours a week. Since it was so few hours, we didn't want to pay $105 a week to put her in daycare. (You have to pay the full-time rate, whether they go full-time or not.) We asked the preschool director to help us and she sent an email to the students in her classes (early childhood education/family life studies), but no one was interested. We originally needed someone for Tuesdays and Thursdays from Noon until 2 pm and on Fridays from 8:30 am until 11 am. We figured the Friday time slot was what was hurting our chances of finding someone, so after talking to my boss, we decided that Juliette could hang out in my office on Friday mornings. Ms. Boudreaux, the Graduate Assistant and one of the three main teachers at Juliette's preschool, agreed to watch Juliette for us on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and we are SO happy to have her. Juliette loves her and was thrilled to have her come and play with her this week. And, being the good little photographer that Juliette is--maybe she'll be a future scrapbooker!--she thought a picture was in order too. This was on the camera when I got home:

This is Ms. Boudreaux!

While I was working on this blog post, I watched some of the Haiti telethon. Haiti has been heavy on my heart and it's sad to say, I usually distance myself from non-U.S. tragedies, but I haven't on this one. I'm not really sure why I do that...maybe it's just a coping mechanism or a way for me to not have to live up to the reality of third world countries and how horrible their living conditions are. I haven't watched ANY news coverage of Haiti, but what I've found and what I've been reading is better than the news coverage could do any day. I read blogs and one of the blogs that I read is a girl in California. On one of her blogs last week, she linked to someone she knows, Kristen Howerton, who is an American, and was in Haiti--in Port Au Prince--when the earthquake happened. She was there with her infant daughter visiting a little boy that they have been trying to adopt for 2 years now. She had to leave him behind and was evacuated (like almost all the Americans were) by the military. Since last week, she has been trying to get humanitarian parole for her son, so that he can come live with them in the U.S. and finish the adoption process from here. Tonight, on her blog, she posted that he is on a military plane headed to Orlando and that her husband is there waiting for him to arrive. You can read their blog here: www.thehowertons.blogspot.com.

The Howertons son was among 80 orphans at Maranatha Orphanage in Haiti, which is part of Heartline Ministries. All but 7 of those orphans are on that plane to Orlando tonight and will be handed over to their adoptive parents. One of those 7 orphans, though, belongs to the Wyatts of West Monroe. I don't know them, but I happened to see a link on the Howertons page, followed it and realized they are from there. Surprisingly, though, the Wyatts will be receiving a baby girl from Haiti also (this was a last minute thing), who is on that plane. So, although, they aren't getting the little girl they've been trying to adopt for two years, they are getting another one and their other one will be joining them very soon. (There was some paperwork issues.) You can visit their blog here: www.four2six.wordpress.com.

And, I have one more blog that I really think you should get an eye on. The Livesays are missionaries to Haiti who work for Heartline Ministries (who has the Maranatha Orphanage). Troy and Tara Livesay have been blogging daily about the earthquake and what they've been doing. Their blog is more "real" than the news can give you, so if you are interested, you should check it out: www.livesayhaiti.blogspot.com.

OK...so I know that was a lot, so just hang in there with me for one more picture of Miss Juliette, sporting her new boots. I could just eat her up!

Hope everyone has a great weekend! (Please pray I get rid of these fleas...I'm serious!!)

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Wow! I really had to stop and think a bit on this question and I'm still not sure if I'm completely ready to answer it, but here it goes:

When I first read the question for this week, "What's my vision of whatever-your-word-for-the-year-is," my mind immediately leaped to the unattainable and lofty expectations of perfectionism. And I had to stop myself right there and figure out if I had subconsciously chosen the word self-discipline because I related it to perfectionism. Do I want to perfect? Doesn't everyone? Is perfectionism attainable? Not here on earth! But, the big question is, is that what I want this year? To try to be perfect? To strive to be something I never can be? And, so, after a little head scratching, I came to the conclusion, that no, I wasn't seeking perfection, but I am seeking improvement! So, my real vision of self-discipline for this year is to:

1) Think and pray longer about decisions--practicing self-restraint/self-discipline in the decision-making process
2) Plan ahead in the everyday things in life--not just the big things for the year--in order to bring more order into my and my family's life...that includes anything from meal plans to setting apart time for prayer and Bible study.
3) Go slow and steady, striving to instill new habits and remembering that "slow and steady wins the race."
4) Keep everything in moderation--from my food intake (yes, I am trying to lose weight, but I'm trying to approach it from an emotional standpoint, instead of just merely a physical one) to my time spent focused on other things that take away from God and family.
5) Start saying "no!" To me, a person with good self-discipline knows when to say NO and it makes them a better person for it...whether it be because they said "No!" to eating too many unhealthy foods in one week or "No!" to an activity they really couldn't fit in their schedule and would have caused unnecessary stress to their life.

I think that about rounds out my vision for the year. I tend to be an all-or-nothing kind of gal, so for me, I'm really having to dig deep right now and remember the slow-and-steady thing, as I usually approach changes that I want to make to my life with so much gusto that within 2 weeks I've given up because I couldn't do it and be it all. I feel very calm and relaxed, though, about the slow-and-steady thing and trying to make self-discipline be a new, lifelong habit in every aspect of my daily life.

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