Time For A Plan

It's almost back to school time.  One more week for my big kids and 2 weeks for the littlest one & myself.  I love back to school time.  Summer is so loosey goosey with no real schedules.  Which is awesome for a while, but I'm a girl that likes a routine & I'm happy to get back to it.

This year I'm working on a "family plan book".  I have attempted this in the past, but never really got it together.  This year it's a little different.  Last year was the first time I've worked in 15+ years and it kind of sucked as far as the cleaning, laundry & cooking of it all goes.  It was left all up to me, as normal, but with my full time work schedule, 3 kids & a hubby who isn't home much, I couldn't keep it all up.  I got frustrated and angry.  It's not the example I want to set for my kids or the kind of person I want to be.  Hence, The Family Plan Book!!  Thanks to Pinterest, I found a great site with some great printables.  I'm starting small working on menu planning and a cleaning schedule, but eventually I want it to grow to include emergency plans, important phone numbers and a cooking/recipe section too.  I want it to be available so everyone in the family can look at it and know who is doing what and what's going on!

For a long time I wanted to be Wonder Woman and take care of everything myself.  My kids have chores, but it's such a fight to get them done it's almost not worth it.  Easier to do it myself.  Which, I think, has done them a disservice. They need to step up, take responsibility and be proud of the good job they do.  That includes my 4 year old!  Maybe with the third kid I'll get it right!   

Off to plan my menu for the week so I can do my grocery shopping for the week

I'm A Wanderer..Yea A Wanderer

We've been doing a bit of traveling.  Nowhere exotic, just places close to home that we've never been.  This time we went to the Detroit area.  Such fun!! Well, now technically we have been there before, but last time we we stayed in the Dearborn area & went to The Henry Ford.  If you've never been there you need to go!  It was amazing!  I could have spent a lot more time there.  I digress....this time we went to Ann Arbor & Chelsea.

I loved Ann Arbor.  We had perfect weather too.  My smallest one, Jax, had an absolute blast searching for Fairy Doors in downtown Ann Arbor.  What an awesome idea that town has.  I think we went into every store that had a fairy door and bought something in most of them.  Oops!  He is totally enamored and fascinated by fairies now.  I'm think a fairy may visit our house one day soon.  We had such a good time walking around the town.  We finished our day with a meal at The Melting Pot.  So yummy, there is not much better than dipping fruit & cakes in chocolate!!

We also took the time to do some Geocaching.  Have you geocached yet?  It is so much fun.  You use your smartphone (or GPS) to find a hidden cache.  We told Jax it was a treasure hunt.  He was so excited to follow the compass and find the "treasure".  We only had time to find a few, not as many as I would have liked.  The first day we tried we had a tremendous thunderstorm that had us scurrying back to the hotel!!  The second day is when we had lots of success.  We found a medium sized cache & Jax got a little toy from it & we left a geocache toy in it's place.  Another fun one is the teeny tiny one that we took forever to find.  It was right in front of us the whole time, but was so small we looked over it several times!  It's such a great family activity, we all have to work together to find the caches.  Good old bonding time!

The teeny tiny cache

We spent a day in Chelsea MI too.  If you didn't know (and I didn't) it's the home of actor Jeff Daniels!  He has a community theater there called The Purple Rose.  It's a small town with a nice main street.  I love strolling down small town main streets.  It's so different then how I grew up.  There are quite a few cute shops and we had to stop in most of them!  I love to window shop.  I was good & only bought one thing.  The Chelsea Teddy Bear Company is located right at the end of Main Street.  They have tours, but only on Saturdays, and sadly we were there on a Monday.  Jax was so disappointed.  Of course we had to buy some bears or in Jax's case, a shark.  What can I say, he marches to the beat of his own drum!  

giant bear!

Chelsea also has the most amazing play place for kids (and parents) It's called The Chelsea Treehouse.  It doesn't look like much from the outside, it's in a strip mall, but on the inside it's fabulous.  It's not the climbing structure that struck me although I know all 3 of the kids loved it.  What I loved was the multitude of mismatched comfy couches and chairs.  All the tables, adult & kid sized, the glitter in the floor and the whimsical murals on the walls.  I immediately curled up on a couch whipped out my iPad and started to read as my kids ran off to play!  As if that wasn't enough, they had a great assortment of snacks, like cut up strawberries and cantaloupe, string cheese or grapes and great lunches for both adults and kids.  I would be there every day if I lived in Chelsea.  I told my hubby I need to open one here!

reading at The Chelsea Treehouse

We rounded out our weekend with mini golf, playing in the park & watching the Olympics (gymnastics!! swimming!!) and relaxing in the hotel.  It was a great weekend, but I'm happy to be home.  Now it's time to get my kids ready for school.  It starts in 2 weeks!!  Oh no, that means I go back to work in 2 weeks...double OH NO!!

Oh Yea...I Dit It!

Yup, I kicked ass today!  Got both my hour of cardio in AND a leg workout!  It wasn't the best leg workout I've ever done...my knees don't like me much, but I feel it and I love that!  I think I would've pushed myself more if I was working with a trainer or a buddy, but I did my best.  I'm looking forward to my workout tomorrow.  Bring on the back & Bi's!!!

Working On It

A big aspect of my life is fitness and nutrition.  Well, it was a lot bigger at one time.  Indulge me in a flashback...way back in 2006 I was living the good life.  I was a stay at home & my 2 kids were in school all day.  I really didn't have much to do so I started working out.  I set a weight goal and, to my surprise, achieved it. (remember me?  under achiever??)  Looking for another goal a friend suggested that I train for a figure competition.  She hooked me up with a trainer & I got started.  Again, to my surprise, I did awesome.  My body really responded to this diet & workout regime.  To my amazement I got down to a weight/size that I never thought my body could get to.  Not to be conceited but I looked damn good!  Maybe too good since I ended up getting pregnant!!

Fast forward to present day & I am 20lbs over where I want to be.  Am I fat?  No, I'm not, but I'm not comfortable in my body or the way I look in some of my clothes.  Since having Jax I haven't been able to commit to a fitness routine, forget about consistently eating clean!  I've since parted ways with the trainer who got me started (very bad situation there) and have attempted to work with a couple of others, but nothing has clicked for me.  I find myself, once again starting again.  I don't know that this time will be any different than any other time I've tried, but I really want to get back to that place where being healthy & fit is a priority in my life.  

When I was all into working out & eating well I was helping friends with their workouts and keeping them accountable with their food choices and I loved it.  Even through my pregnancy, although I wasn't working out (it was a high risk pregnancy & to be honest I was depressed, not wanting to be preggers & having marital issues at the time) I was helping other people achieve their goals.  I've been toying with the idea of going to school to become a registered dietician or nutritionist.  The idea of helping people learn to have a good relationship with food and eat healthy really speaks to me.  I think that will be my goal today to look up info on how to become one of those & which would work better for me.

Back to my own fitness goals...I started my week off right.  Did my cardio and lifted chest & tri's yesterday.  I've done my cardio for the day & will hit the gym for a leg workout a little later.  It's funny I always seem to forget how much I LOVE lifting.  I don't know why I forget, but I do.  When I'm lifting it feels right & I feel strong.  It's my time all to myself.  I put my headphones on & get in my zone, it's awesome!!  I'm gonna write it on a post it so I don't forget

Seeking Who Now?

I don't have a dream.  Sad isn't it?  I hear about people who "followed their dream" or "realized their dream" or even "working hard to fulfill their dream"and I think what the heck is wrong with me?  I don't have a dream....can't even think of one.  At almost 42 I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. 

Growing up I recall I wanted to be a teacher or a mom.  I think I set the bar too low, your typical under achiever.  Not that there is anything wrong with either of those things....as it turns out, I'm kind of both of them.  I am a mom to 3 kids who I love dearly (most of the time) and I work in preschool where I kind of teach.  I don't have any kind of teaching degree so I'm technically not a real teacher, but I do teach little kids.  I do like doing it, but it's not what I really want to be doing with my time.  Therein lies the problem, I don't know what that is.

Lets go back to that under achiever comment above.  I was looking over my report cards and on almost every one of them it says "Salena is very smart she needs to work harder" or even better "Salena is not using her full potential".  I guess I'm still not.  Looking back when I was growing up my parents (isn't always the parents fault?  I often wonder what horrible damage I am doing to my own kids!!) pushed me, but then I think they kind of gave up.  Coincidentally this happened right around the time when my sister was born.  Odd how that happens, right?  There was no talk of what college I was going to, no college tours for me just a "you need to pay rent now that you're out of high school" talk.  Bitter much?  Yea, a bit.  I need to get over it. 

So, I need to find my dream, follow my bliss, find my destiny figure out what makes my heart sore.  Find out who Salena is and what makes her happy.  I'm seeking me.