A Week of Thanks

Thanksgiving is easily one of my most favorite holidays, with the exception of Christmas of course. Thanksgiving to me means spending time with all my family and eating wonderful food. Over the years the true meaning of Thanksgiving has changed for me. Of course, I have always been thankful for everything in my life, but it took me a while to fully understand all the blessings that have been bestowed upon me. I am sure it is like this for most everyone, usually as a teenager and young adult some things just aren't that clear.

I have been looking forward to Thanksgiving since last Thanksgiving for a number of reasons. One being last year at this time I was pregnant, tired, and still really sick. This year Hayden is here and I couldn't be more happy. She has become the biggest blessing in my life and I am so thankful she is here and happy and healthy. Second this is one of only a few times each year when the entire (immediate family) gets together. I truly love spending time with my parents and my sisters and their families, they are so much fun to hang out with. I only hope our relationships strengthen over the years to come and that we don't drift apart or have problems that seem to face so many adult siblings. I think we all (the sisters) speak our minds, sometimes too often, and hopefully we are all used to this and continue to remember how much we love each other and to never let trivial issues get in the way of what God has blessed us with - a great, loving, independent, god-fearing family.

Today, I am thankful for my family, my wonderful husband, our precious little angel Hayden, my job, our loving home, and Maggie (my 3 year old dog). I am also thankful that my holidays are about to begin. After this afternoon I am off until Monday!!

Let the festivities begin - Iron Bowl here we come! This is also a fun little Thanksgiving tradition. It used to be that at Thanksgiving we always talked about what had transpired at the game the previous weekend, but since it now takes place after the holiday we all talk about what might happen. This tradition has taken a little detour since Auburn isn't dominating the bammers anymore, but until Friday no one knows for sure so I can still be hopeful. But I am not holding my breath. It was funny, last night they showed a little promo on the news that said, "What does Alabama have to do Friday to beat Auburn" and Brian quickly, without thinking, said "Show up", hahaha, that about sums it up.

I am going to miss seeing all my aunts and uncles and cousins this year and my Granny, but I hope to see you all soon. I have many wonderful memories growing up and seeing all of you. I miss those that have passed on and I hope you are able to have a window to our lives to see how much has changed since you left this earth. I truly miss each of you.

I hope all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving and take a moment to offer thanks for all the blessings in your life. This should be something we do on a daily basis, not just on Thanksgiving.

Exhaustion

I have been contemplating for a few days now what in the world to write on here and still haven't really come up with much "new" to say. I can tell you this, I am exhausted! I have been trying to figure it out for months now and I think it is a combination of being a new mommy and turning 30. It is not work related, at least not most of it, because I enjoy the craziness of work and actually look forward to Mondays now (is that terrible to say). I used to dread Mondays, now they seem to be one of my most productive days. I think it is because I have been home for a few days and my schedule gets out of whack and I can control what goes on at work and right now I can't at home. I also think my tiredness comes from turning 30 a couple of months ago, my body doesn't seem to recover anymore like it used too, and my knees and back hurt all the time, especially after sitting in the floor for long periods of time. I am sure being "over-weight" doesn't help matters either, but that is an entirely different blog and I am sure one that will be coming very soon! I know all of you in my family are probably laughing at this and thinking if she only knew!

So, the point of this entry is that last week I had a holiday, time off to celebrate Veteran's Day. This came in the middle of the week, on Wednesday. I was so super excited about it and loved the thought of a whole day at home with Hayden during the middle of the week. I came home on Tuesday and Brian and I talked and watched tv and had dinner. I cleaned up a little bit and played with Hayden in the floor and kept telling her how happy I was to be able to spend the next day with her - we would have the whole day together :). Well, that night I put her to sleep at her normal bedtime, around 9:00 and she woke herself up at 10:00. No big deal I thought, I went in picked her up and rocked her for awhile. She was asleep, but I kept holding her and rocking her thinking how much I loved this and how quickly time would pass and she would be a little toddler running all over the place. I was trying to memorize every detail of that exact moment so I could remember it again in the years to come. She was sleeping peacefully in my arms and she had one hand on my hand and the other up near my face. I was loving it! So I put her back down and then she woke up again at 11:00 - same thing all over again. Then again at midnight, then again at 1:00 a.m., then again at 2:30 a.m., at this point I must have been so exhausted that I turned the monitor off in our room and fell back asleep. I am not sure how long she cried, but apparently she cried herself back to sleep because when Brian woke up the next morning, he woke me up and wanted to know why the monitor was off! Are you kidding?!? Did you not hear her crying last night?! Oh well, she slept until 9:15 a.m. and so did I - so much for my fun day off. It ended up being a great day anyway, but I was pretty tired.

Next time I don't think I will tell Hayden I have a day off and maybe she won't know to wake me up all night. I can picture the little wheels in her head spinning right before she drifts off to sleep, "don't forget Mommy has the day off tomorrow, be sure to wake up really, really early so we can spend the whole day together, don't forget, don't forget..."

Busy Season

My busy season for work has officially set in. No more late starts, long lunch/shopping breaks, and no more calling it a day around 3:00 or so. November through March is the time here at work when I can hardly catch my breath, let alone enjoy the holiday season. For the past couple of years I have almost dreaded the holidays because I know that I have no "down" time, so to speak. I will still take a couple days off during Thanksgiving and Christmas, but that will just mean double time to make up for it. Here is a sampling of what I have to get done and accomplished during the next few weeks and months.

Starting today - I have membership renewals to get processed and mailed out to each individual member of the association (that's a total of almost 700), let's just hope that number stays the same this year or increases. I have a magazine deadline on Monday, which means I have to get all the articles written, photos formatted and organize my district events in calendar order. This magazine covers January-April, so that's a lot of writing that needs to be accomplished and a lot of events that need to be planned. My Leadership and Enhancement and Development Program is in December, so shirts need to be ordered, meeting space finalized and meals set up for three days. During that time I also have my last Board of Directors' meeting of the year. This meeting isn't usually that time consuming, but this year there is a lot of business to be discussed. I have 4 agenda items that I need to put together for a vote, so I am not anticipating this meeting to be a short one - and one of the items that will be voted on is the budget for 2010 and I still haven't got that balanced, not sure that I will either. And my most major, time consuming event is in January each year, this is my annual conference. Right now I am working on all my speaker requests, unfortunately I am going to have to decline most of their financial requests, whatever happened to doing something out of the goodness of your heart? I have 40 speakers and over half of them want to be compensated for speaking to our group for one hour. Most want logding, mileage, and meals taken care of - this equals out to almost $700 per speaker! My tradeshow is coming together, but that is usually the easy part, the hard part is getting my attendees to show up so my exhibitors aren't unhappy about all the money they spent. Events that need to be planned for conference are, a golf tournament, a draw-down (sell 400 tickets for this), 2 other social events, an awards banquet, business meeting, opening general session, and I need to secure lots of sponsors for this event. Getting sponsors is definately my weark spot. I hate calling people and asking them for money, and believe me they hate hearing from me as well! All these things are just a dip in the barrell of what I am dealing with on a day to day basis. I personally think this is too much stress for one girl to handle, but I am very thankful for the job I have.

Speaking of stress, just yesterday I had to go to the Doctor, again, for an earache. He told me that the earache is caused from my jaw - I grind my teeth - and this is the result of too much stress. I asked what on earth I could do about this and he smiled and said stop stressing out :) - thanks Doc!

The year will be ending soon and I know another Spring is on the horizon and for the most part Spring and Summer are nice here at the office. So I can look forward to that. After my March trip to DC, it should be smooth sailing, at least for a couple of months.

When Brian and I first started dating, I would have nights when I would work until 7:00 or 8:00 and never take a lunch break, those days are over too, since I have other obligations at home, this sometimes adds to the stress, but I wouldn't change that for a moment. I will do whatever it takes to be out of here by 5:00 every day. I look forward to my time at home now, spending time with Brian, Hayden and Maggie means more to me than anything else. I always have to tell myself that my job is what I do, not who I am! My family defines me, not my job!

Happy Halloween

This photo is one from Sunday, right after church. Gram and Pap watched Hayden for us while we went to the contemporary service. We would have put Hayden in nursery, but the last time we did that, we were "paged" out of the service to come and get our screaming child, after they were unable to calm her down after 40 minutes. Bless her heart, as soon as she saw me coming and I picked her up, she stopped crying and just held on to me so tightly, as if to say, please don't ever leave me again. I know this isn't a good thing, but sure does make a momma feel good.

Pap holding Hayden at our house on Halloween! We dressed her in her little dress again, I couldn't resist putting her in it one more time.

Lesley and I and our sweet little goblins!

A couple of the pictures of the beautiful candles for outside before it got dark.

This past weekend was Hayden's first Halloween. I have captured a few photos from the weekend - it went by in a blur. My sister and her girls and my parents stopped by Saturday night and Reagan, dressed as "Ariel" from the Little Mermaid got to trick or treat in our neighborhood, she had a blast! Hayden and Gracen really enjoyed each other's company and one of them even sucked the other's toe, but we won't mention any names, Gracen :). So glad they were all able to stop by and celebrate together. As promised I took a couple photos of the new candle holders I mentioned in an earlier post. These are the holders that Brian has been working so hard to make and after I got some candles and some pretty fall ribbon we lined the driveway for all the kids. They were a big hit and I am so proud of them. They are gorgeous. Can't wait to decorate them for Christmas as well.

I have a very busy week ahead of me. I am leaving in the morning for Orange Beach and won't return home until Friday afternoon. I will miss Brian and Hayden so much, but I have full faith that Brian can handle things here at home just fine on his own. We decided after much thought and prayer that since I have to travel so much, that now is as good a time as any for Brian to attempt his first couple of overnights on his own. I just pray that Hayden will behave for him and they can have a lot of bonding time together. I know they will be just fine. I will update more when I return home, I am sure I will have some funny stories.