Tag / personal developement

by bean2bird

The Waters We Swim In

img_0638Once upon a time, two fish; one older and one younger, passed each other in opposite directions while swimming in a lake. By way of greeting, the older fish nodded and said “How’s the water, today, friend?” The younger fish, looking baffled, whispered under his breath as he passed, “What is water?”

Remember in history class when we learned about the Industrial Revolution and found out that the working conditions back then were utterly horrific? People would lose limbs regularly and children would often become physically deformed because of the laborious tasks they were performing and their lack of exposure to sunlight. Men working in chemical factories would often work under such dangerous conditions that fingers would literally melt off and they would be forced to stop working. But don’t worry, they would instantly be replaced by one of the other thousands of desperate people in need of employment until their fingers would melt off and the grotesque cycle would continue. If you’re having a hard time believing that human beings lived like this, you’re not alone. I was struggling to wrap my mind around the idea when my sister said, very profoundly, “those were the waters they swam in,” aka: that was life; that was all they knew; they didn’t know any other way.

I wake up an average of four times a night. Sometimes more, sometimes less, always for a varied duration of time depending on where we are in the sick/well cycle of winter and the teething/night training cycles of my babies. I’ve been doing this on and off (mostly on) for the last seven years of my life. The water I swim in is sleepy. It’s heavy and tired. It’s foggy and murky and makes me forget really obvious things so that I have to do things like set a reminder on my phone that it’s my son’s birthday on Wednesday lest I forget. But the fuimg_0560nny thing is that because it’s become the water I swim in, I often forget that I’m more tired than I would be under different circumstances. So I’ll say things like, “I don’t know why I’m so out of it today,” forgetting that it’s because I’m not sleeping. This sleepy water has become my normal. I don’t think about it most days (unless the night before saw me rocking a baby for an hour or longer at 3am) and just go about my business on less sleep than any health magazine would ever recommend an adult human should have.

Because it is my normal right now to be constantly a little sleepy, because I don’t know any other way, I sometimes get frustrated with myself because ‘pre-babies’ Alicia would have always, or would have never, or friends of mine always or never, or my mom always or never, and on and on it goes and I see my life as failing through the lens of a comparison that doesn’t account for a) the waters I’m swimming in or b) the waters of the people I’m comparing myself to. Because, frankly, I just can’t see them.

When we compare ourselves to others, we’re telling ourselves lies. Lies we can’t even comprehend because the makeup of each, individual persons’ waters are so infinitely nuanced that we can never truly have the full picture. Let’s face it, we struggle to see the full picture of our own lives, let alone our neighbor’s. We compare ourselves to the friend with the tidy house and don’t consider the fact that her children are older and in school all day long while ours are toddlers who’d just as soon rip a chore chart into tiny shreds and flush them down the toilet as to put stickers on one. We compare ourselves to our healthy, fit, size 2 sister without considering the fact that we’ve had four kids in as many years and can barely feed ourselves their leftovers, let alone get down the solid nutrition we’d need in order to be able to workout 6 times a week. And we can’t take into account how much sleep they are getting, or who they got into a fight with this morning, or how their marriage is doing, or any of the other billions of circumstances that enter into the complex equation of their lives and change the pH balance of the water they swim in.

But here’s the thing! Our water isn’t a) stagnate or b) all bad. The great thing about the Industrial Revolution is that because the working conditions were so egregious, the people gradually became aware of the ‘waters’ they were swimming in and noticed that they needed to be changed in order for the people to live longer, happier, healthier lives. This led to the forming of Labor Unions and Child Labor Laws which drastically improved the living conditions of people and changed the makeup of their waters to become slightly more temperate and comfortable. Those changes have lasted generations until finally in our time, we can’t even comprehend swimming in anything like that.

Discovering the components of what we are currently swimming in might end up being among the most empowering realizations of our lives. It might mean that we need to add some things: get more sleep; exercise regularly; eat more veggies; read more books; get more organized; etc., but it also might mean letting go of some things because our waters are, for the time being, sleepy; or heavy with grief; or overwhelmed with the raising of tiny humans; or dealing with a recurring health concern; or mentoring a wayward child.

Check in with yourself, friend. See what your waters are looking like right now and then change them as they need to be changed. But always allow yourself the grace you deserve when measuring the successes and failures of your life. Always allow for the unseen, environmental circumstances that contribute to what your ‘best’ looks like today. And stop comparing that output with anybody’s else’s. Because who knows? Maybe their water is just a little less sleepy than yours.

by bean2bird

Why ‘Stretch Goals’ Will Revolutionize your Resolutions

img_0533

I love New Year’s. The whole thing; I love resolutions, I love setting goals, I love the promise of new beginnings and a ‘fresh start’, and I love evaluating my dreams and fantasizing about where I hope they’ll take me in a year. Also I love staying up late and eating a lot of fattening but delicious snacks. 2018 was a big year for dream chasing and I can officially and happily report that a lot of my goals for the year came to be. The beginning of 2019 finds me:

-Not Pregnant (!!!)
-At my goal weight (ish. Because. Christmas. I’m working on it.)
-Exploring new hobbies (Yoga! Twitter! Lettering!)
-Re-discovering old hobbies (Writing! Painting! Singing!)
-More present
-Less anxious (thanks to my side piece)
-More organized (thank you, Summer Purge)

Not too bad for a year’s work, I must say. Lots of things I wrote on my resolution list last year came to fruition and I’m pretty happy with my progress. This year; however, I’m going to take things one step further with something called “Stretch Goals” and here’s why you should, too.

I learned about Stretch Goals while reading Charles Duhigg’s “Smarter Faster Better: The Secret of Being Productive in Life and Business” just in time for the setting of New Year’s resolutions. img_0535While considering what I’d like to include in my extensive list of goals for 2019, I’ve read some articles that advocate for the setting of smaller, more achievable goals. I completely understand the mentality behind that idea and have even seen success in goal-meeting while implementing that strategy, but this idea of “Stretch Goals” has added an even deeper level to the smaller, more achievable goal setting I’ve been engaging in up to this point.

Stretch Goals are just what they sound like: goals that stretch you past your perceived limits and put you into uncharted, sometimes nerve-wracking territory. They’re dream-goals. They’re the Porsche of the goal world. They’re the pie-in-the-sky hopes for your future. They’re that thing you’ve maybe wanted for years, but are too afraid/limited/inexperienced/insecure to actually say out loud or write down or commit to. They are what will stretch you in 2019.

Of course, Stretch Goals can’t do it alone. For example, if you’ve always dreamed of running a marathon, but you currently live a somewhat sedentary life and get winded going up and down the stairs (raises hand awkwardly), and you write “Run Marathon” down as your stretch goal, chances are your brain will make a fart noise and you’ll never think about it again. Or maybe you’ll go for a run the next day that makes your lungs burn so badly you immediately drop all pretenses and return to bingeing old episodes of House Hunters. Stretch Goals, on their own, should be so daunting that your brain will try and immediately reject them on principal. So how do we harness the power of our Stretch Goals and make our pie-in-the-sky fantasies a reality?

According to Charles Duhigg, we pair them with SMART goals. I know, I know. But hang in there. Trust me.

Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timebound (see what he did there?) SMART goals take your Stretch Goals and break them down into smaller, more realistic, bite size pieces. What a perfect way to start out 2019! So you sit down and think, “By the end of 2019, I will (fill in the blank with the dreamy goal you’ve been too afraid to commit to up unto this point)” and then you pull out your calendar and divide the year into bite-size goals that will get you to that end result you’ve maybe not-so-secretly always wanted.

So let’s take a look at our couch potato marathon runner scenario. Couch Potato says “I want to run a marathon by the end of this year” Couch Potato’s brain says “Fllllrtttpp” (which is how you spell a fart noise) Couch Potato says “No, really I want to” and pulls a calendar over. Month 1: will walk 5 miles every week. Month 2: will jog half of my miles. Month 3: will jog 5 miles a week. And so on. (Disclaimer: Clearly I have never run a marathon and have less than negative eleventy percent idea how to actually train for one. So. Don’t do what I just outlined if your goal is to actually run a marathon by the end of the year)

But you guys! Think of the possibilities! I mean, they’re literally endless. Dream vacation to Disneyworld? Bam! Stretch that goal, girl! Lose 100 pounds? STRETCH it, mama! Learn Spanish? Streeeetch, friend. Read 50 books? Stetch, Queen! You name it, you do it. Write it down. TONIGHT, friends. Tonight, sit down with the fabulous New Years Resolution lists you’ve already created (I see you, Insta friends!) and add one stretch goal and then break it down into the achievable steps it’ll take to get you there.

img_9741The hubby and I have a Stretch Goal we’re working on currently and it. scares. the pants off me. I’m not even lying. When I think about it, I get scared, flippy butterfly tummy which is equal parts terror and excitement, but HOT DANG are we gonna stretch it. We have a date on Thursday night to sit down and carve out all the SMART goals that are going to get us there and get there we will. I can’t wait to share more about it with you all! Stay tuned. 2019 is going to be our year, people!

Happy New Year and happy stretching.

 

by bean2bird

Mary’s Longest, Shortest Time

It’s likely obvious to you by now, dear reader, how entirely I love my role as a mother. I’m kind of obsessed with raising these people. I love them as babies, I love them as toddlers, I love them as preschoolers, I love them as elementary kids. I. Love. Them.

I also sometimes feel like bedtime might never come and wonder vaguely in between wrestling matches and blown up ovens how much they’d go for on eBay. But despite the riches undoubtedly potentially waiting for us, on we press with all four of them in tow and we love (almost) every minute of it.

And that contradictory place parents exist in all the time is what some of us lovingly refer to as “the longest shortest time”. I’m in the thick of these days that last forever and the years that fly while I blink. I know before I know it my years will have passed and these tiny men will suddenly be full-sized and will go out into the world and offer it (hopefully) more love, more kindness, more generosity, and more service while I sit back in my E-Z chair and look on, satisfied with the results of the days that felt like years and the years that felt like minutes.

These years; the longest shortest ones, I’d imagine they’re pretty universally experienced by most parents. Especially during the Christmas season, I like to think that they were also lived in by Jesus’ mother, Mary as she watched her helpless, snuggly newborn grow into a stumbling, tumbling toddler and continued on through His childhood until He became the man and Savior He was destined to be.

I love picturing Mary gracefully and lovingly guiding her precious Christ child through stages like teething and weening and napping and trying solid foods and learning to read and write. I love the idea that she comforted the Savior who would grow to comfort us all. That when He was a new and clumsy walker and would fall, she would patiently pick Him up and help him begin again. And that He would soon become the one who would pick us all up as we clumsily stumble through life. I like to imagine that while He inherited His Godhood from His Father, He inherited some of His patience, love, and gentleness from His mother, too.

I’ve always thought it a beautiful miracle that Christ the Lord and Savior of us all was sent to us as a helpless baby who would need to learn and grow so much before He could begin His earthly ministry. And that one of His most influential teachers was Mary; a mother.

And I sometimes wonder if Mary had days she thought would never end. I wonder if she collapsed in her bed at the end of a long day with a teething baby and let out a sigh of relief that she’d made it through one more day without considering that she was one day closer to losing that child to His divine manhood. And on other days, maybe the picture of the cross loomed large in her mind and each minute that He grew a little closer to that destiny, she was filled with the desire to slow time down, never let the sun set and keep Him hers forever.

Maybe she felt that longest shortest time more profoundly than I can imagine. But I think she felt it.

The picture of Mary, cuddling her infant son in a stable is so beautiful to me. I love that we’ve frozen that moment in time for her. That sacred night and the sacred fleeting years ahead of her were gone so quickly. He was hers for just a moment. And mine will be too. Eventually I will offer them to the world in my own small way, to do what good they can and leave the world a little better than they found it. And although their end won’t be so profoundly important or so devastating either, I feel solidarity with Mary in the idea that they are not mine to keep, but mine to give.

I’m grateful to be in the middle of this. And even on my longest days, the ones filled with chaos and destruction and fighting and noise, I hope I’ll remember that they are only mine for this moment. For this longest shortest time.

Merry Christmas, all! May these moments with loved ones feel slow and long in all the best ways.

by bean2bird

World’s Okayest Mom

image 3

Guys, I hate to brag, but I have to tell you something. I am the world’s okayest mom. Like. I’m right there in the middle. I am so okay, that I’m not the best OR the worst…in equal measure. I’m not even exaggerating. My imperfection and simultaneous perfection cannot be overstated. I am super, totally and in all other ways: okay.

I fail and win with almost total equality every, single week. Sometimes every single hour of every single day. I have moments of Instagram worthy successes and moments of blog-worthy fails, sometimes on the daily. Kind of like these:

Success Number 1: Train Your Brain
We put a big emphasis on the power of your mind in our house. We talk about the parts of our brains that are responsible for different functions and how we can control and strengthen those parts in ways that will serve us the best. We talk about methods to use to bring different parts of our brains (like the emotional right cortex and the logical left) together to work in tandem to achieve our goals. Yesterday, the big boys (7 and 5) were fighting as per their daily norm. It had escalated considerably and eventually requireimg_9966d adult intervention to put an end to the violent madness. Once I’d saved them both from committing murder (all in a day’s work), they were told to hold hands until they had calm bodies and calm voices. Then, we talked about the importance of taking a deep breath and counting to four in order to allow the slower, more methodical, left thinking brain to catch up to the hot and bothered emotional right. They rolled their eyes a lot. But they didn’t fight anymore that day and I didn’t lose my patience once. Win.

Fail Number 1: The Lost Onesimg_8179
Peter (2.5) gets lost a lot because we sometimes forget about him because we have a lot of kids. Also, he’s super independent and has no sense of self-preservation when we’re in public. So. That’s embarrassing. Also, Thomas (10 months) was being really quiet for a long time yesterday before it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen or heard from him in a while. Went to go find him aaaaand he’d fallen asleep in his high chair. Where I’d put him. Twenty minutes earlier. So. Fail.

Success Number 2: Laundry Goddess
I don’t know what magic spell I cast, but it must have been a strong one because I’m going on week 3 of only having to do one load of laundry a day, getting it all folded and put away in one go and not having stacks of clean clothes balancing on the back of my couch for days at a time before finally breaking down and putting it all away to make room for the next three loads in the queue. I’ve become a laundry expert. I don’t know, guys.

Fail Number 2: The Half-Listen
img_7971Samuel (5) talks a lot. And I love that! I also tune it out a lot. He’s also really creative and has all kinds of great ideas. Several times a week, I get myself into trouble by only half listening to his barrage of conversation and mumbling ‘uh huh’ as he asks me questions, only to learn later that I’d just agreed to allow him to do an ‘experiment’ in the kitchen. Usually these activities involve the freezer and several different liquids or yogurts or crackers or deli meat or ice he found outside. I usually find the results of his experimentation later, scold him for it and then feel super guilty when he informs me that he’d gotten permission to do it. From me.

Success Number 3: Cleanliness
My house is clean sometimes!

Fail Number 3: Cleanliness Part 2
My house is a disaster sometimes.

Success Number 4: The Family That Reads Together
I’ve always had a desire to read to my kids a lot and I’m happy to report that I’ve been fairly successful in this area of our family life. We’re currently reading James and the Giant Peach and I couldn’t be more thrilled to introduce these boys to some pieces of my childhood. Good ole Rhold Dahl. I’ll never stop loving you.

Fail Number 4: Homework Is For Nerds
I’m not going to lie to you people, I am horrible at managing my kids’ homework. I hate homework. I especially hate homework in first grade. I basically (sometimes) make sure he’s done the bare minimum reading and then sign it, but (often) completely forget and don’t sign it at all and his take-home library book sits in his backpack for weeks until his teacher finally sends a reminder note home to me and my sense of respect for authority kicks in and we finally sign it immediately.

And now for the pièce de résistance:

Success Number 5: My Love For You Glows Brighter Than A Thousand Suns
I love my kids more than I can describe. I want to raise them to be highly functional, independent, strong, capable, kind, good, and happy. I want them to know how important they are to me and how powerfully they can affect the world around them. I want them to feel capable of making this world a better, safer, happier place to live. I want to parent for the long term. I want to use moments in my every day as a stepping stone to get to the final destination and remember that short term parenting is for short term results and long term parenting is harder because it’s worth more. I want to be the best mom that I can be.

There is no Fail Number 5. I mean, there are…trust me, I’ve barely grazed the surface of my short-comings, but the reality is that I’m trying to find peace with being the world’s okayest mom. I’m trying to remind myself that it’s okay not to be perfect and that average is the new exceptional. I’m remembering that when my goal is the long-term success of my children, that one or two failures here or there isn’t going to make or break my kids. And guess what? It won’t make or break you, either.

Mistakes are important! Mistakes are essential to our growth and learning. We make them all the time, in every single role we fill and we always will, because that is how we improve. No, being the world’s okayest mom, lawyer, author, burger-flipper, father, etc., doesn’t mean you’ve got a built-in excuse to play small, but it means you have all the tries in the world to get okay-er! You get to try again tomorrow and the next day and the next day and hopefully watch yourself improve and grow until suddenly, you’re more than okay, you are great!

Being at peace with being the okayest in your field is just another way of giving yourself permission to be imperfect; to mess up; to fall short, and then pick yourself right back up and go at it again the next day with your very best, most okay effort.

So go forth and be okay!

by bean2bird

A Journey Of A Thousand Miles

img_9938This singular image alone is insufficient to illustrate completely the disaster that was my house today. But let it serve as a suggestion to your imagination as to what the rest of the picture looked like: apple slices littering the kitchen floor; dripped water color trails leading from the table to the sink; various pieces of cutlery strewn about willy-nilly as the ten-month-old unloaded the dishwasher (a favorite of his hobbies along with sorting through our trash can and emptying every package of wipes he can get his hands on). Not to mention the dried Ramen noodle on the carpet (pretty sure that’s still there) and the almost completely emptied Christmas boxes in our two-thirds decorated living room.

But more than wishing I had pictures of all of these messes so that you could more fully understand what I mean when I say ‘disaster’, what I really wish is that I had documentation of what this house looked like last week. Because let me just tell you: last week I was a house-keeping goddess. I’m talking every single room of my house, spotless, at least twice a day (morning and night…ahh the moments when the short people sleep) all at the same. time. This is not a drill.

I’m talking no laundry in the laundry baskets, I’m talking floors vacuumed and mopped, I’m talking rooms having been deep cleaned and de-cluttered. It was a dream come true. And I reveled in it. Cleaning, last week, was top priority. I was determined never to see a mess again without immediately swooping in on the threat and neutralizing it. It’d been a project eight months in the works, this nearly perfectly clean house. It started with a massive overhaul and de-junking in the summer and had culminated the week prior in the vacuumed edges of this paradise I was now at “leisure” to enjoy. I say “leisure” because it was anything but leisurely to jump on messes in real time. Do you know what real time looks like with four, tiny human beings who’s entire life mission is to destroy my creations?

But I loved it! I loved walking in the door and seeing a spotless living room, I loved waking up and wandering the neat and vacuumed hallways, I loved being able to find every single thing I needed instantly because it had been put back where it belonged, I loved doing only one load of laundry a day, putting it all away as soon as it came out of the dryer and not having to do anymore laundry because there literally wasn’t any.

I loved it.

Then, it all came crashing down on me in one fail swoop: the flu. It hit me like a ton of bricks…one moment I thought I was feeling queasy because I’d skipped breakfast in preparation for afternoon Thanksgiving feasting; the next minute I was so nauseated, I couldn’t move and spent the entire night awake and puking. (I kid you not, I was awake until 5:30 in the morning, puking every ten minutes. It was The Worst)

Shem got sick, too, and pulled his ankle the same weekend during a turkey bowl because the universe likes to watch us squirm. So you can guess what the first thing to go was. No, not our children. They’re still here but it was a close call*. No, the first thing to go was my beautiful, immaculate, I-will-never-let-you-get-dirty-again house.

And honestly, it hasn’t been the same ever since. Oh sure, we’ve cleaned up at night and de-cluttered and it hasn’t been a holy wreck the entire time, but the spotless utopia we’d been living in up until that point hasn’t been near the same caliber ever since the flu. I know we’re only three days past being knocked flat on our butts by the thing, but here’s the truth: I’m actively not choosing that blissful order this week. Because I’m actively pursuing other things and there simply isn’t space for Everything.

On Sunday I had a private devotional while my kids napped and in the process I mapped out some goals for the coming week; what I wanted more of, what I wanted less of, what my goals were, etc. and I wrote a list that looked something like this:

-Less social media; More creativity
-Less television; More reading
-Less cleaning; More intentional time with my babies

I know we’re only a day in, but that top picture should give you an idea as to where my priorities were today. And they just weren’t as devoted to my house. They couldn’t be because instead, we were busy painting and making homemade play dough and then using our Christmas cookie cutters to make some pretty stunning Christmas scenes and we were reading stories and telling stories and listening to Samuel’s fabulous ideas for the 25 Days of Kindness advent we’re going to put together this year and rocking the baby and teaching him “Itsy, Bitsy Spider” and getting into tickle fights with…pretty much everyone, and singing Christmas carols and watching Christmas movies and teaching our brains how to like fish and brussel sprouts. And there just isn’t time for Everything.

With a few notable exceptions, you can have anything you want in this world; a spotless house, a million dollars, a thousand friends on facebook, a thriving career, a huge family, a healthy diet, a bangin’ bod, good relationships with your kids, a second language, a third language, all the languages, …you get my point. You get to pick what you want out of life and whether or not you’re doing it intentionally, you are picking everyday. Maybe you’re unintentionally choosing to set the world record for fastest binge session of every season of Doctor Who (guuuuilty) or to eat chocolate everyday (that’s more of an intentional choice for me, tbh) or to become the foremost expert on That One Family from My 600 Pound Life, but whether intentional or not, you’re making decisions with your time that are leading you somewhere.

Intention is just steering.

Now, I enjoy living in a clean house (a cruel irony that I also really enjoy having and raising baby children because the two are almost entirely mutually exclusive) and so some of my time will almost always be dedicated to that end. And I’m at peace with that. I’m at peace in the knowledge that the time I choose to devote to keeping my house at an acceptable-to-me level of cleanliness will necessarily take time from something else and the amount of time I choose to dedicate might even change on a week to week basis, depending on the needs of my children and myself. I’m at peace with the fact that some weeks might necessitate deep breathing as I survey the state of disaster surrounding us and am working on listing the less visible accomplishments I’ve achieved in the course of the day (like listening with all my heart to a detailed blow-by-blow of what The Oldest created in Minecraft).

I’m also learning to make peace with the fact that in this season of my life, the intentions with which I steer my life are somewhat per-determined based on choices I’ve already made (like. procreating). And so in order to steer my life and the lives of these cute boys towards a destination I’ve always envisioned for us, I have to use my time for certain, non-negotiable things. I’m trying to make peace with the fact that things like cleaning are negotiable while things like… teaching my children to negotiate with kindness, for example, are not. Sometimes the thing I think I really want (like a spotless house) might not always be the thing I actually want (like respectful sons who know how to negotiate peacefully as men).

We’re playing the long game here, people.

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step; so watch your step.”
-Jeffry R. Holland

Steer intentionally. You’re on the journey anyway, might as well enjoy the destination!

*just kidding

by bean2bird

Allow Me to Introduce…

image 615 Fun Facts about Me:

1. My name is Alicia, but my friends from high school all call me Bean and/or Beanie. There is an entire group of human beings on this planet who would sound really strange if they called me by my first given name. Which is weird now that the number of people who use my first name have far outgrown the number of people who don’t. But I love it because it means I get to keep a piece of my maiden name which I loved and now miss.

2. I didn’t used to love children, even though I’ve always been really good with children. They kind of overwhelmed me and made me nervous, but I can now genuinely say in a surprising turn of events that I love interacting with kids. LOVE. It’s becoming one of my passions in life, actually and I anticipate that when my own children all start going to school full time, I will begin a career which involves children in some capacity.

3. I’m super into football, guys. Like, I get really, really into it. I love the intricacies of the rules, I love the strategy, I love watching a talented quarterback make breath-taking passes in less time than it takes me to figure out where the football is during the play. It’s one of my favorite things about fall, actually.

4. Reading is my number one hobby. I love reading about the same as I love chocolate which should give you some idea if you have functioning taste buds. I’ve read more books than I could ever remember to count. And several of those more than once.

5. Harry Potter is my jam. I’ve read the entire series once a year since I was 11. I’m 29 now. So. You do that math.

6. I hate math.

7. I love music! I’m looking forward to a time when I can devote some of my time to re-learning music theory and practicing the piano on the regular. Right now, I practice a few times a month if I’m lucky because I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to play the piano in the presence of a 7, 5, 2 and 9-month-old, but I can make you a couple of promises: A) they will all sit next to you on the teeny, tiny bench, B) they will play the piano and C) you will not.

8) I’m a singer. I was studying music in college, but was derailed by a little thing called: babies (a sacrifice I am very happy to have made because I heart my life and my kids and wouldn’t trade them for all of the college degrees in the world). I was planning on going back to school to study music, but have changed my plans for a future career and will focus on music on my own time when time and money permit.

9) I love to write. I’ve been writing short stories and books and poetry since I was really, really young and have never fully stopped. Writing is a really great way for me to work out my thoughts and feelings. I’ve kept a journal since I was in second grade and as a result, I have about 20-25 full journals. Including one I typed from 8th-10th grade. It’s about the length of War and Peace and literally no one will ever read it because I’d be mortified if they did (turns out 13 year olds are tres embarrassing), but hot dang if it doesn’t exist.

10) I love food, but don’t love to cook. I’m a fan of shortcuts in the kitchen and typically see meal prep as a necessary evil in the ‘keeping my children alive’ category.

11) I’m a boy mom and love it! I’ve experienced some gender disappointment in the past, but now I just experience all kinds of joy at being a mom to all boys. I feel like I won the lottery and genuinely enjoy my role as mother to all these tiny men.

12) I hope to sing in the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square someday.

13) I’m a brand-spanking new yogi! I’m really terrible at yoga because I am zero percent flexible, but I absolutely love it because it does wonders for my back which is a miracle because I have the back of an 80-year-old. I’ve been doing it for several months now and am just getting to the point where I can do a proper downward-facing dog. Which. Is an embarrassingly easy yoga pose.

14) I love nature. Camping, hiking, the beach, forests, walks in the park and by rivers, etc. It all brings me joy. I don’t even super mind the bugs out there because that’s where they belong. If they happen to wander into my house, though, our truce has officially been breached and I will slaughter them with no remorse.

15) Diet Dr. Pepper is my D.O.C. I could drink that stuff all day, err day. I try really hard to drink responsibly and not get to the point where I’m having it every single day, but it’s a struggle. That stuff is like crack to me. Mmm. Dr. Pepper.