My Beautiful Day

"Come on, SHIMMY!" "Keep those arms up - I don't want to see you put them down!" "I want to see pretty hands." "This part is called seduction, I want to see seduction on your face, not exhaustion ... but not too much seduction either!" These are some of the many quotes I have heard over the past month on Monday evenings and Saturday afternoons.  You see, this is the time that I turn our household over to Monte, load up my gym bag and hit the road to go to the gym and take in a belly dancing class. Belly dancing?  Are you serious?!  Yes.  Completely, totally serious.  I was definitely skeptical of it initially, as my sweet friend, Trish , had invited me to join her in the classes.  I had mentioned to her how I am starting to spend more time working out in effort to rid myself of some of this extra baby weight, and she told me that these classes were an excellent workout.  So I decided to give it a try. The first class was a little bit ha...

Pretty much forever ago (and by forever, I mean about two or three months ago) I was browsing the aisles at Costco (which is a very dangerous thing to do without a specific list!) when I came across the most perfect bulletin board.  Why on earth would I get excited about a bulletin board?  I'm glad you asked!  You see, I have a rather narrow wall in my office that I've wanted to have a bulletin board on for awhile so I can use it to hang family pictures and different things of that nature.  So, when I came across this bulletin board and saw that it was very reasonably priced, I became extremely excited!  I bought said object and brought it home, showed it to my wonderful husband and asked for his help in hanging it.  I put it away in the corner of the office to keep it out of our way.  That was a very bad idea.  A month or more passed before I realized it was still not on my wall, so I politely asked my husband to hang it.  Unfortunately, he ...

As my husband and I sit here chatting, I'm realizing that it is now 10:05pm and this is truly the first time today that I have had down time to do as I please.  I just finished ordering our groceries (yes, with a 10-week-old baby and a five-year-old son who must come with me, I choose to grocery shop online!) after figuring our our extensive meal plan for the week.  I must admit that I wish I could contain all of my grocery shopping to online only, but alas with a family of seven people, we go through food much too quickly for me to make a once-a-week online order.  It's not uncommon for me to also stop by the grocery store several times a week amidst picking up my daughter from her after-school activity. Maybe I should rewind a little bit and let you know what a typical day in our house now looks like.  I wake up anywhere between 4:00am and 4:30am when Ethan first wakes for his bottle.  I feed him and do my best to stay awake myself during this time, as he us...