The New Normal

Saturday morning:

Wake up

Play "mini sticks" with my husband and little man

Go out for family breakfast at Cora's (YUM)

Go downtown

Pick up Racekit

Come home and watch Gabe play with his grandparents for a little while

Head out to swimming lessons

...and then it's 10:30 am

Sunday morning:

Wake up

Snuggle on the couch with Gabe and watch cartoons

Eat breakfast and give Gabe some breakfast

Get ready to head out and drive downtown

Watch a friend complete her 7km of a relay we were participating in

Run my own 7km of the relay

Pack up my car to drive back home (to warm up!!)

...and then it's 10:30 am

It amazes me the amount that I accomplish in mornings now that I'm a mom. Gabe wakes me up at the crack of dawn (I won't get into the specifics of those very scary early morning figures!), and by 10:30 everyday I've accomplished more in one morning usually then I had all day pre-baby (especially on weekends).

Would I love to stay snuggled up in bed for a Saturday morning not even getting up until 10:30 am? And then lazily hang out in my PJ's with a steaming cup of tea and nothing to do? Sure.

But I wouldn't trade our "new normal" for a million sleep-in mornings in the world. Because he is the best.

My Un-Craftiness

I am the first to recognize that I am not a crafty person. And I come by it honestly, because my mom isn't either. We both have good intentions and high expectations of ourselves and our craft-like abilities...but our results always seem to fall a little..shall I say, short? More often then not, we will have an elaborate project and really feel like "this time will be different" or "this just looks so easy, surely we can do it!" only to end up in frustration, with a half-finished project ending in epic failure.

But that never stops us. We press forward to our next crafting venture.

So for quite sometime I have been admiring these Christmas ornament wreaths that adorn many homes over the holidays:

This year, I decided that I wanted needed one for our new house. So...me being the crafty person cheapo that I am, once again found myself thinking "how hard can this  really be to make?" So I searched Pinterest (there's half my problem, my Pinterest addiction) and I enlisted the help of my mom. Again.

The evening stared out great. We turned on some Christmas music (which was a mysterious mix of N'Sync and 98 degrees that both of us claimed we knew nothing about) and laid out all of our supplies

We had a coat hanger, dollar store ornaments, a hot glue gun and a very sunny disposition!

All-in-all, it didn't go as bad as we expected...in that, we finished our project. But it didn't come easy. We purchased the wrong sized glue sticks, the balls kept falling off, the hot hanger was hard to manipulate...we were yet reminded again of our un-craftiness.

But here is the result:

We were incredibly skeptical at this point thinking...this looks pathetic. But we kept on going!

Hey...this is starting to come together

TA DAAAAAAAAAAA!!

Needless to say, we were going to make 2...but ended up with 1. Not sure if we will brave a second.
What about you? Do you ever have lofty inspirations for seemingly simple projects (that never are quite what they seem)

a" new year", a new blog

I have a confession to make. I'm a closet blogger. 

Phewh, now it's out in the open.

Since Gabe was born I've enjoyed maintaining a blog, but it's been a private blog accessible only by password. The purpose of it was to keep our family accross the country up-to-date on our lives and, most importantly, our growing baby boy. However, since we've relocated and now are closer to 50% of that family, I've decided that blog wasn't really necessary any longer.

But I've missed blogging. Sharing my thoughts, projects, adventures and funny stories about my boy (more importantly cute pictures). So I've decided to go public and create a new blog.

My little mister man turned 2 not that long ago, so what better time to start a new blog then kicking off with the mark of his birthday!

Happy Birthday (late) Gabe - and join me as I blog about my daily struggle to achieve balance between family, work, fitness (and everything else in between).

the birthday boy taking a drink after playing so very hard at his party!