2008 End of Year Meme

This is my fifth year doing an end-of-the-year meme here!

1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before? Decided to start an internet business development business! (coming soon!)

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I kept my business resolutions, and those are the only ones I can remember. I definitely have plans for 2009.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? A friend of mine just had her 8th child the other day! Another friend had her 4th baby earlier this month.

4. Did anyone close to you die? Thankfully, no.

5. What countries did you visit? None.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008? I don't know if I'm feeling lack so much, but things I want to have more of in 2009 include:

-more peace

-less clutter

-more felt success in the areas of hearth and home and home education

-earn more money while spending less time in my work

-more positive breakthroughs in relationships

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? Just before Thanksgiving our family started to experience something that is difficult, and it has been escalating since then. That will be likely to stick in my memory for a long time. Hopefully a positive resolution in the new year will give me something good to remember for 2009.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Choosing to homeschool five of my children, and having over 150% growth in my business ventures.

9. What was your biggest failure? I've had too many blessings to recall any failures.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Not that I remember.

11. What was the best thing you bought? I "bought" myself some mental peace by hiring an accountant for my business finances. In 2009 I'm going to buy myself some more peace in the form of better legal advisement and protection for the business.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? Mine! Saying yes to homeschooling, and being fiercely committed to what I feel is the right thing for my kids, even when difficult, is something I celebrate.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and disgusted? I won't name names here, but I do have two people in mind....

14. Where did most of your money go? A large chunk of money went toward rebuilding two of my web sites when my host pooped out and went AWOL. It all came back to me in short order. :)

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Having five of the greatest kids in the world at home with me every day, and my next great business adventure, which is coming together in exciting ways!

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? overall happier or maybe the same
b) thinner or fatter? probably about the same
c) richer or poorer? richer!

18. What do you wish you'd done more of? gardening maybe. Overall I can't think of any regrets.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of? Again, no regrets I can think of.

20. How will you be spending New Year's Eve? Probably listening to something inspirational.

21. Did you fall in love in 2008?

22. How many one-night stands? What a stupid question.

23. What was your favorite TV program?

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? I don't do hate.

25. What was the best book you read? Change Your Life Without Getting Out of Bed by SARK

26. What was your greatest musical discovery? Just got a CD of The Town Pants for Christmas and it is very fun music.

27. What did you want and get? Windchimes!

28. What did you want and not get? I want to hire a house helper/cook/assistant homeschool tutor. I have been saying this for many, many years, but in 2009 I am going to make it happen. I might not have someone full time by the end of the year, but I am at least going to find the right person to hire for some amount of hours and get started. The time has come. I'm ready.

29. What was your favorite film of this year? Can't even remember a specific movie I've watched this year! I did just discover the Discovery Channel show Deadliest Catch, and that is a pretty cool show! I now have all four seasons on my netflix queue.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I turned 37 this year, and I don't remember what I did.

31.What one thing would have made your year measurably more satisfying? I'm pretty satisfied with the year I've had.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008? Making the most of what I have, unless it's a day when I just done care, in which case I keep it reasonably clean and don't worry about much else.

33. What kept you sane? Keeping in mind the big picture.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? I'm not a fancier, but I was mighty sorry to see Heath Ledger go.

35. What political issue stirred you the most? The FLDS situation. We got an excellent education about the dangerous way that CPS can get away with criminal activities.

36. Who did you miss? Old friends, who are always dear to me though we just don't get to connect much any more.

37. Who was the best new person you met? How about best new being? Our dog Marlee walked into our life in the fall, starving, sick, and suffering. Our decision to care for her, give her a home, and live out our belief that life is valuable has been a very cool journey. She is thriving in many ways and we are learning a lot about sacrificial love. You can read more about that here.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008. Not everything is as it appears to be.

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

FYI: You Won't Want To Miss This

Hey peeps,

I just wanted to give you guys a heads up. On January 1st I'm going to have a BIG giveaway for my newsletter subscribers. If you like freebies, goodies, and truly valuable stuff, you should get hooked up with at least one of my newsletters:

The Baby Boutique

Supermom's Health and Wellness

Supermom's HomeSchool

Feel free to let other people know. I think that most people are going to be very excited about the freebie they'll receive to start out 2009. :)

Christmas: We're already done

My husband has to work on Christmas day, so we decided to celebrate early. Our original thought was to simply have the kids wake up to Christmas on the 24th. And then as I started thinking about how hard it is to get them to go to sleep on Christmas Eve, how tiring it is to try to outlast them that night, and the early morning we'd be in for, surprising them with Christmas in the middle of the afternoon started looking better and better.

They were busy in another part of the house, watching a movie, and my husband and I got everything set up. Once we were ready we invited them up, and they were so excited! :) They enjoyed opening their gifts, and had the rest of the evening to put together new Lego sets, play new games, and put stuff away. Several of the kids said this was the Best Christmas Ever! Pretty nice to hear that. :)

Once our plans were already underway to pull off the afternoon Christmas surprise, we found out that the Creation Museum is offering free admission tomorrow. We've been wanting to go, and it's only about 2 hours from us. So, now tomorrow is all clear, so as long as the roads are good and the weather decent, that's what we'll be doing for Christmas Eve Day. Even our 16 year old is looking forward to it. (and if you've ever known or had a 16 year old, you know how GOLDEN it is if the kid actually wants to do a family activity. I DON'T want to miss this chance!)

So, enjoy all of your last minute preparations and your family time. I'll be enjoying being all done. :)

My Husband Outed My Blog!

In a moment of Facebook euphoria/insanity, my dear husband decided to tell all of our friends and relatives and everybody else about my personal, super-secret, I-do-not-tell-real-life-people-about-it blog. (he's so used to knowing about it that he forgot it was on the down-low) It was all resolved within 3 hours of his posting it, since I called him at work and had him take it right down. Alas, now I can't help but wonder if I've gained any new readers.

So, um...if you are one of those people.....WELCOME! Welcome to my blog that I never told you about. :) Let me know if you're here, ok?

I hate to shop!

I hate to shop! I hate it the most in person, but also hate it online. Would much rather never need anything for any reason whatsoever.

Today my husband took the kids to their homeschool activities and left me home for a day off. I had so much work to do that I have been going non stop all day and now they will be home in a half hour. Honestly, I'm glad that I had a chance to work on some of the things that have been piling up. Though I was invited to go get a massage or something, things are so crazy here, I don't think it would have been relaxing for me to spend all day elsewhere instead of beating back the tide....

Biggest accomplishments for the day include wrapping most of the already-purchased gifts, and doing almost all of the rest of the shopping. I would love to be ALL DONE with the whole thing today. Don't know if I can pull it off though. My brain has turned to mush and now I am going to go soak in a hot bath. Goodbye!

Take 5 minutes to watch this

Have you seen this clever video to help guys stay out of the doghouse this holiday season? Go! Laugh! Share.

I've GOT GOT GOT GOT no time!

Today is one of those days that makes me think that there is no possible way for me to ever get on top of everything. Not exactly newsworthy in my life, but this is a fresh flare up, so amuse me or click away, ok?

We had the holiday last Thursday, travel last Friday, being out of the house most of the day Sat., a small amount of stuff getting done Sunday, schooling to do Monday and then surprise preparation for a large remodeling project that day, and then today that project was going on while I spent the day homeschooling, cooking, cleaning, and then being a hostess for several hours.

Having several days in a row like this throw off my plate-spinning equilibrium mighty fast. Next thing you know there is laundry all over the family room, construction project stuff and dust everywhere, a torn apart laundry room, and me with about 5 or 6 large plates crashing to the ground and no time to pick 'em up yet.

Tomorrow I have to be out of the house for probably at least 4-5 hours. It's for a fun event, but that just means that even more stuff will be piling up while I'm away.

Ironically (or not) I decided to join a class called How Do I Do It All? And of course, now that I've downloaded all of the classes, I have absolutely NO IDEA when I am going to have time to listen to any of it.

Cheers!

Music To My Ears

Either because of or in spite of the fact that I spent my teenage years dating and being boy crazy, I have always discouraged my kids from this. I'm not interested in jumping on the courtship-betrothal bandwagon with all it's various weirdness, nor am I going to pretend that I can control whether or not my children have extra special warm-and-fuzzy feelings for other people. My approach has been simply to explain my position again and again, let them make their own decisions, and let life teach them whether what I say has merit or not.

My oldest is 16 and he's had a few girlfriends so far. Several months ago there was a big break up with his longtime girlfriend, and it was a split that was many months in the making. The situation was especially tough on the girl and it has been a source of concern for our family to know that she is hurting so badly. Since the breakup I've had several little conversations with my son, reiterating that it seems a terrible waste of a good friendship to sacrifice it for a "girlfriend." In the end these kids just get hurt feelings, broken hearts, and a relationship that's usually too strained or broken down to be able to continue.

In a world where good friends are hard to find, it makes no sense to me to toss out good, healthy relationships for these ridiculous, contrived boyfriend-girlfriend situations.

My second child is 12 and at her age the thing we have run into is that the boys and girls that are friends don't feel like it is ok to talk on the phone if they aren't "going out." So, she's had a couple "boyfriends" who were nothing more than friends she could talk to on the phone. Since she doesn't go to school with these kids any more, phone calling is the only social link she's got. So, a pretty important thing in her life.

The recent boyfriend has proven to not be a real positive thing for her. My daughter had come to me several times to talk about it and ask my opinion. My honest advice was to break it off, just be friends, and stop with all of this boyfriend nonsense. (I say it a whole lot more diplomatically to her)

In the car the other day she and I were talking about this again and my 16 year old piped in to tell her, "Honestly, I've been following Mom's advice for quite awhile now, and it's really a good thing."

High praise!! What a thrill!! Definitely blog-worthy!

That night about an hour after tucking my daughter into bed she came out to give me another hug and tell me she loves me. This is not a common event for her. I wondered if she had appreciated what I had told her. (This is a child who will typically fight me on issues that she doesn't want to deal with or hear about, but later on is able to tell me that she is glad I stuck to my guns and kept doing what I felt needed to be done. A wonderful thing for me to know, since I regularly hear her complaints about oh-so-many of the things I am doing "for her own good.")

The next day she broke up with the boyfriend in the kind way I recommended, and so far things seem to be going well.

Tonite she and I were folding laundry together and talking and she shared some of the breakup details with me. Then she said that once she had a chance to let my words sink into her head, she realized that it made perfect sense.

!! Gotta love moments like that!

I don't have any delusions that my two oldest kids are going to forego boyfriends/girlfriends until they are ready to look for a spouse (though I would recommend that!) but it was good to know that they are hearing me, that what I'm saying is helping them and making sense to them on some level, at this time.

Another Rock Star Momma moment for me. I'll take 'em wherever I can get 'em.

Addicted

Last night my sister turned me on to Mexican Train Dominoes. As Pioneer Woman would say, "Lawsie, mercy!" I'm a goner now. How I will ever get a shred of normal stuff done, I do not know. Any member of my family of origin can tell you that I have a mighty strong tendency to get hooked onto games that require ordering and arranging cards, tiles, numbers, and so forth. From approximately 1983-1987 I spent all summer breaks, school breaks, weekends, and spare time holed up in my bedroom playing solitaire (with real cards, people!) over and over again. And I loved it.

Today, I have solitaire and backgammon on my pocket pc, and I usually play one or both of them every single night once I get into bed. (I often play them again first thing in the morning as well) I love games like that, and find it relaxing, I guess.

Mexican Train Dominoes is one more game in this genre that I love. Plus it's speedy (which is an additional thrill for me). What am I gonna do?!?!

Countdown to Christmas Day 1

We just did day 1 of Countdown to Christmas. The story was wonderful (almost made me cry!) and the games were SO fun! Check it out!!