Becoming a morning person is hard work!

I don't know about you, but I'm not a fan of the morning time.  I would much rather snuggle with my blankets and lay in my warm bed until 9am every day if I could.  Unfortunately, I have 3 different alarm clocks that prevent me from doing so: my phone, my son, and my husband snoring!  Then there's that regular thing called work that really forces me to get out of bed 5 days a week.  Ugh, I hate when that happens :-/.  Lucky for me I'm able to function on very little sleep...well, as long as there's an IV set up to pump me full of coffee for the rest of the day lol! 

Now more than ever I'm going to have to rely on my favorite caffeine friend.  I've recently decided that I'm going to try and become a morning person ::gasp::.  Even though my mornings are already filled with craziness as of 6:30am, I love the feeling of having something accomplished before my "regular" day begins.  This year I've made a huge commitment to myself that I'm going to keep up a regular work out routine through out the entire year.  With the way my schedule sits as is it's almost impossible to find the time or energy to squeeze it in any time after I get home from work.  My only other option is to do it in the morning ::gulp::.  Well, I guess here goes nothing.

This week I've put in some serious effort to try and make it work.  Tuesday I woke up 20 minutes before my first alarm typically goes off and did a quick 15 minute video work out.  I felt so exhausted for the remainder of the day that I could have sworn someone had sewn bricks onto my eyelids!  Wednesday and Thursday I did some stretching and rested since I felt as though I'd pulled something.  This morning I planned to do a little more of an actual work out.  Thankfully I made myself go to bed around 8:30-9pm the night before so I'd get plenty of rest.   I set my first alarm to go off at 5:10am to encourage me to get my butt out of bed.  The next one went off at 5:20 to start my work out, then one at 5:50, one at 6:10, another at 6:35, a sixth alarm at 7, then finally the last one at 7:20.  They might not have all been necessary, but they definitely kept me on schedule to be out the door on time (I was even a little bit early)!  

Today is a fairly slow day at work so it hasn't been too rough on me, but we'll see how I'm feeling at 8 tonight after little man goes to bed.  I'm hoping with lots of practice and repetition that my internal clock will adjust, and it will come naturally for me to wake up early so that I can get my work out in.  For everyone who already is a morning person, kudos to you!  For those that aren't, that's ok too.  We can't all be chipper at the butt crack of dawn. ;)  Remember you can do anything you put your mind, motivation, and energy towards. 

Here are some of my favorite motivational photos/quotes that get me going (or just laughing).

I'm me again!

If you have had the pleasure of talking to me (on the phone or in person) these past two weeks you would have thought I was turning into a man!  What I thought was just a bad cold turned out to be one crazy long case of the flue.  Luckily I was able to pass on all of the icky puky stuff, but my throat took one heck of a beating.  It's now the 16th, two weeks after it first struck, and I'm finally sounding like me again!  I never thought I'd actually miss the sound of my voice.  That sounds a little vain, but I don't really care at this point. 

I don't know about you, but this new year has already started out a little on the crazy side.  Work has been a little stressful with my Regionals and VP's knocking on our door every week.  They get so demanding some times.  Luckily they like me, so I'm usually in the clear.  Life at home has been so back and forth with Bryan's job being so unreliable.  The landscaping industry is very temperamental when it comes to weather, and it's becoming a huge pain in our butts.  Thankfully, the little man has been doing really well.  Scary to believe but he is actually on the verge of starting to walk!  He is able to let go of the furniture and balance himself for long periods of time.  He's even tried to take a step, but he usually falls right after it.  Looks like I'm going to have to find myself one of those baby gates like they had on The Rugrats to keep track of him!

I mentioned in my last post that I was working on putting together my new years resolutions for this year.  I'm sure most of you could probably care less what my plans are, but for those of you who are interested, here they are:

• Make time every week to talk/catch up with a friend
• Learn a new phrase every week in a different language (currently working on Spanish)
• Take photos of Logan every week of this year
• Start a work out program and keep up with it for at least 1 full month or longer
• Go on a vacation using the money I saved from coupons, shopping sales, donating clothes, etc.
• Do something different every week on my days off
• Organize my closets and cupboards
• Start a once a month cooking club
• Become better at saying "no"

Most of these don't sound like anything too spectacular, but I believe they will help make my life a little less stressful.  I know that I can do anything that I put my mind to.  Well, here goes nothing! :) 

I hope everyone is having a great week.  Take care of yourself and each other.

New Year, New Me

I told you it would be awhile until my next post didn't I?  I'm actually surprised that I'm getting through all of my catching up and it's still the first week of January!  It was a very busy holiday season to say the least.  We were in Kansas for 4 days over Christmas, then came home so that I could work my one day on Thursday, then I flew out to spend the New Years in MN and do a late Christmas with my family.  It's hard to believe that I actually fit 3 states into less than 2 weeks.  Go me! :)

My number one priority was making sure that I got so see lots of family while I was home for the holidays.  I haven't seen my in-laws in almost a year and I missed them so much.  They absolutely loved getting to spend so much time with Logan.  They almost didn't let us take him home with us!  Then again I could say the same for my family.  Both of my parents got to spend lots of quality time with the little man and they couldn't believe how much he'd grown in just 4 months.  More than anything, I'm so happy that he got to squeeze in some much needed play time with his favorite cousin Ava!  They seriously are each other's favorite toy when they get together.  I know Logan misses her already, and Auntie says that Ava keeps looking for him around the house.  I'm sure we'll be getting them back together soon enough, though.

My second priority was to see friends!  While in Kansas I finaly got to see one of my best friends, Alison, who I haven't seen in over 2 years!  We used to work together at VS in St.Cloud and have seemed to live very similar lives thus far.  She is actually in labor as I'm typing this and I can't wait to finaly see pictures of little Mason! Side note:: just realized that all of my pictures of Alison and I were lost when my old computer died :(.

When I was in MN I met up with another long lost friend of mine from my Ridgewater days, Aleesha!  We also haven't seen eachother for about 2 1/2 years (the last time I seen her was actually her wedding, which just happened to be 4 days after my secret wedding hehe)!  We met up for coffee and 30 minutes turned into almost 4 hours before we knew it!  We could have sat there all day catching up, but it was still so good to see her.  I also got to quickly see one of my favorite girlfriends, Nicole, while I was home.  Unfortunately we didn't get to see eachother for very long since she was on her way to run errands with her other half, and I was about to leave for my dads.  Either way, it felt so good to be able to give her a hug and see her face to face. 

(Me, Charlie, and Aleesha a long time ago in Cloudy town)

 

(Nicole and I in 2009)

It's no secret that great friends are hard to come by.  I've learned this the hard way more than once.  This year I've decided to make one of my New Year's resolutions(more on those later) to make sure I keep in touch with all of my friends no matter how busy we are.  This means all of them.  I've had some friendships in the past few years that have fallen off the cliff because neither of us felt we had enough time in our crazy lives to keep it going.  I want to make sure that my friends know that I appreciate them and that I haven't forgotten about them.  I hope that they'll all be as happy and willing to try and make things work again as I am. 

Well, after all of that traveling I've gotten kicked in the butt with one angry cold so I think I'm going to grab my box of Kleenex and bag of Halls cough drops and call it a night.  Take care and I hope everyone is having a Happy New Year!!!