A Fresh Start...

First of all, I have left my camera at my mom's and have no pictures to post. I know, boring!

This past few weeks have been hard for me. I have decided that I detest the month of January. It doesn't help that several of our friends from our neighborhood are currently on a cruise and this week it is bitter cold! Tomorrow the low is zero degrees!! I have just been in a funk of all sorts. I was sick with a cold for the last 2 weeks and haven't been consistently exercising so I am sure that has added to it. It is SO hard to get up at 5:45 am and run in the cold. Oh, I can hardly wait for spring and then my favorite..SUMMER!!

But back to January..

It seems my whole household is in a funk. Kids are fighting more than normal. The house seems to be a mess. Mom is grumpy. Dad is grumpy. Mom feels sad she is not on vacation right now. Dad is frustrated with mom for being sad. You get the picture, right? We had a "Family Meeting" last night. The kids love those! (not!) I even had a written out agenda. It looked something like this:
1. Housework- Assign areas to keep clean
2. Fighting- Cell phones/XBOX
3. Weekly Schedule- Dad leaving town
4. Plan Family Vacation

I admit, when I start getting overwhelmed and grumpy with the house, I still resort to immature tactics. They usually involve a little bit of cupboard door slamming, tossing things into people's rooms with a little more effort than usual and a few mumblings under my breath. Something was reaffirmed to me last night. My family responds much better when I just talk to them about the problem. Our family meeting was a success. Each of the kids agreed to be responsible for a certain area of the house on a daily basis. It seems there are 4 areas of my house that are constantly attracting clutter. They each willingly agreed to take a weekly turn on their area. We came up with serious consequences for the fighting that goes on between the two oldest boys. Cell phone taken away for Zach. XBOX taken away for Noah. (Get them where it hurts the most) and we ended on a positive note by discussing ideas for a family vacation.

Here were our ideas:

1. California for a week w/Disneyland included
2. Missouri for a week staying w/relatives and going to Nauvoo (this was actually Alan's idea)
3. Florida for a week going to Disney World/Beach
4. Jackson Hole Weekend and short Disney Land weekend (2 separate vacations)

We agreed that Missouri would be the cheapest and still a lot of fun but would allow us to maybe do another short vacation to Jackson Hole or somewhere within driving range. So far, that's in the forefront.

My purpose of this post is to remind myself that I sometimes need to treat my family like a small company and I am the President. (Don't tell Alan this!) It's so helpful to just sit down and talk through issues and get everyone back on the same page again. However, I have learned if I do this too often it's not as effective.

We all needed something to look forward to. I woke up today much more ready to brave the cold weather and am even okay with the fact that Alan is going on a "guy trip" this weekend. I guess if we didn't have "January's" in our lives we wouldn't appreciate the "July's" as much.

P.S. Sorry to any of you out there who have a January Birthday!
P.S.S. I also just realized it's Feb 1st today!!!

Obsessed with Pink....

For the past several months, Abby has been insisting she wear pink to school. I have made it a rule that I get to choose her clothes for school and she can choose the other days of the week (other than Sunday, of course!) I am a bit of a control freak when it comes to dressing and doing her hair. She is my only girl you know!

For the past several months, she has also had quite an obsession with "The Chippettes". She wants to be Brittney~the lead singer, in every way. She wants her hair in a bun so she looks like Brittney. She wants to wear short skirts with tights every day so she can look like Brittney. She even wanted to be Brittney for Halloween, assuring me we could glue brown cottonballs all over her body. I haven't minded the obsession because along with it came a lot of singing and dancing around the house, which I love! She even came up with a club at school where they played "The Chippettes". I just thought it was cute.

I have played right into it, allowing her to wear pink as much as possible. There were days she literally looked like a bottle of Pepto Bismo~dressed from head to toe in pink. From bows, to furry vest to pink tights. Again, I just thought it was cute.

Well, today she again informed me as I was getting her dressed that she needed to wear pink. I had already picked out a purple outfit and wasn't going to budge. She finally confessed, "If I don't wear pink~then I DON"T GET TO BE BRITTNEY!!!" I was confused and asked her what she was talking about. She continued to tell me that whoever was wearing the MOST pink to school got to be Brittney when they played the Chippettes at recess. I about died as I realized that for months I have been feeding right into this by dressing her in pink~ to be cute, thinking how girly she was, etc. I can pretty much guarantee that MY DAUGHTER has been able to be Brittney on most school days. I quickly thought to myself "Oh those other girls are going to secretly hate her!" This ended up being a great little "life lesson" for her. The first of MANY to come I am sure. We talked in great lengths about being a good friend and giving everyone a chance to be Brittney. I told her nobody will want to be her friend if she always has to have things her way, etc. She seemed like she was getting it until at the end of our conversation she said "That's okay...I don't want to play "The Chippettes" today anyway...I want to play "Bolt" (from the movie)" I said, "Well, who gets to be Bolt?" She said, "Oh, I always get to be Bolt!!"

Oh man! Am I in trouble or what?