Embrace Life

A Week In The Life 2012 | A Success

Starting a project like A Week In the Life while on the road is not ideal, though it definitely focuses the effort and simplifies the approach! I thought I'd share a peek at my week with a "photo of the day" - only a hint of what my day looked like through the week.

MONDAY, APRIL 23
Location: Tucson, AZ
Hilight: LOVE the underwater treadmill at Canyon Ranch

TUESDAY, APRIL 24
Location: Tucson, AZ
Hilight: Oatmeal Bruleé, Chicken Sausage and Kefir - perfect start

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25
Location: En Route from Tucson, AZ to Oakville, ON via Denver, CO
Hilight: Last morning, capturing my surroundings

THURSDAY, APRIL 26
Location: Oakville, ON
Hilight: Home just in time for "dress down" day at school

FRIDAY, APRIL 27
Location: Oakville, ON
Hilight: The boys enjoyed Camp Lee for their (surprise to me) PA Day

SATURDAY, APRIL 28
Location: Oakville, ON
Hilight: Claire on stage in RENT

SUNDAY, APRIL 29
Location: Oakville, ON
Hilight: Morning dragonboat meeting and practice

The plan? Simple.

Simple Fonts.

Simple Templates.

Simple Process.

I will be combining our collective stories of our week and putting it all together into a 12x12 digital book! I'm very excited about this and am anxious to show the final results ... once they're organized and ready to be shown.

What about you? Did you participate in A Week in the Life this year? Let me see what you created!

I hope to be able to show you how the whole project is coming along soon, but as you can imagine, life is full and it may take some time to get it all together. As far as projects come and go, this one is worth the effort, and I will get it done :)

PMM | Never Too Late

One thing about my girl, she loves a challenge!

Ten years ago, when she was six, I encouraged her to go to a little neighbourhood dance program. That idea was met with absolute and loud refusal. She might look all sweet and frothy, but she's one determined chick.

And that's a good thing since ten years later she's decided she wants to dance.

She and her Contemporary Dance group entered into a Kiwanis Dance Festival in Richmond Hill and won a Gold. They were thrilled!

I personally think she's just a fan of the false eyelashes and BRIGHT RED LIPSTICK!

It was so nice of her friend Austin - a real dancer - to come all the way from his own dance class in Etobicoke (45 minutes away) to offer his support for her effort. Claire really was very good and it didn't show at all that this was her very first year.

So we'll sign her up for a second year.

As always, I am so very proud.

Returning to ME

I used to have as many dreams as there are stars in the sky.

I've had some thoughts swirling through my head for a while about my journey of the past couple of years. The place I was, where I am now and where I hope to go in the future. To be honest, it's the dream - plans for the future - part I struggle with, not the dealing with the here-and-now. I live a very goal-oriented life, filled with short-term, practical, goals.

I read Jenny's article and realized that I too, over the course of this journey, have lost part of my identity, a significant part of it. I have been so busy being mum to my four kids and wife to someone who didn't want to be married that I got lost somewhere in the crazy of it all. One line in Jenny's article stood out to me: "I had to sit down and remind myself what I liked and what excited me that wasn’t related to Jeff or the kids."

Being so firmly grounded in the needs of my family, I have lost touch with my myself. I have lost touch with my dreams. Bits are coming back and I'm in the middle of mulling those ideas and putting a pretty ambitious (though far more limited than Jenny's!) list together.

In the meantime, I don't want my kids to lose sight of their dreams. As I've learned first-hand, it is so easy to do while dealing with the demands of every day. I wish I had a list of my dreams when I was a teen, even when I was in my mid-20s. I really can't, for the life of me, remember what I wanted to do before my life became what it is today. Following Jenny's lead, I've asked my kids what their dreams are for the future. This is what they provided me:

CLAIRE:

1. Meet at least two of my favourite bands.
2. Travel around Europe. All of it.
3. Learn guitar.
4. Graduate and get into some great universities (e.g. Acadia, Laurier, Guelph, Waterloo, even UBC)
5. Meet some of my favourite authors, such as John Green, Cassandra Clare, Suzanne Collins, etc.
6. Fall in love, get married and make sure it lasts a long time. (What can I say? I'm a hopeless romantic!)

COLE:

1. Travel the world
2. Bungee jump
3. Go to space
4. Get good enough at singing/acting that I can make a profit out of it, big or small doesn’t matter
5. Get a university degree

CHLOE:

1. Audition for a Broadway musical
2. Travel the World
3. Go whale watching in Hawaii or Australia
4. Spend a day baking
5. Learn to play the drums

CADEN:

1. Make the best video game ever :)
2. Get paid to make YouTube videos
3. Have a Guinness world record
4. Travel the world
5. Have 2 cats, 1 dog, and 3 guinea pigs(When I have my own house)

I often laugh to my friends that my children are "four points on a compass" but these lists confirm it! I find it pretty interesting to read that they all want to travel the world (and beyond) - and what they'd like to do. I have a vague recollection of similar ideas.

I'm inspired.

ME:

1. Get off Auto
2. Have my home be exactly what I want it to be, every inch of it
3. Sing, again
4. Travel the world (the part without wars - or highly contageous disease)
5. Lose all of the weight (then get it tucked)

I know, still a bit too goal-oriented rather than dream-oriented, but it is still a stretch for me at the moment.

[A note to Jenny: I have to thank you for your honesty and creativity. You give me the courage to be more true to myself and permission to tackle topics, openly, from which I might naturally shy away. Now I won't. Your blog resonates within me, every day.]

Return of Routine | Part 2

Delayed Post: I couldn't find the back-to-school photo!
Originally intended to post on Monday, September 12.

. . .

Caden has now had a week of school under his belt and he's loving it - having the same teacher as last year has really made it an easy transition in a time when nothing is easy. I am grateful.

It is now turn for the rest of the kids to head back!

CLAIRE is entering Senior 1 (Grade 11) and she is looking forward to a busy year. Her schedule has changed a few times with the flip flop between taking or not taking Physics. We decided three science courses would be too much and she's now settled on taking Drama instead. I think that is a good choice. She has gone back to the original plan to take kinesiology at University and that's how she chose her classes. Mid-term update: French was dropped and Media English is being studied instead. There is a plan to take French over the summer. We'll see how that goes! Claire seems to have settled in and is far more comfortable in the environment than she has been in a long time. She chose to be in music - singing in Appleby Rocks - for her first term elective and she was fantastic! Now she spends her weekends studying and practicing for the upcoming varsity volleyball season.

COLE is entering Upper 1 (Grade 9) and he is looking forward to his first year in high school. He doesn't have a lot of choice in his courses but he did make on interesting choice in his language elective: Mandarin. Um, okay. He never makes anything easy on himself. As of today the plan is to focus on engineering, though no one knows what discipline. No doubt that will change a few times in the next couple of years. Mid-term update: Cole is involved in two of the choirs and has just auditioned for the school play: Grease. Just today I received his first test mark for Mandarin ... 93%. He did manage to get hypothermia while in Temagami and within 24-hours decided to run instead of walk, the 21K walkathon, with no preparation. Sigh. I think this will be an interesting year for Cole as he figures out where he wants to fit in and the areas he wants to focus on.

CHLOE is starting her first year, Middle 1 (Grade 7) and she seems to be looking forward to this, her first day in a new environment. A uniform (she gets her tie at a ceremony today), a cafeteria - with hot meals, e-school (classes on computer), early starts and late days, 70+ new kids to get to know ... there will be a ton of adjustment. Chloé is a smart and engaging girl and I'm sure she'll find a great group of kids to hang out with. I know Claire and Cole will look out for her! Mid-term update: Chloé is settling into the long days and new routine with very little upset. She has a great group of friends and is very supportive of them and their endeavours. She played on the middle school basketball team and managed to walk the whole walkathon - in about four hours! The new community seems to suit my girl perfectly and I know she will thrive.

This is the first time in a long time, two years, I've had three kids in one school. Our mornings will prove busy as the olders head to school for first class at 8AM, Caden's first class is 8:45AM and I want to walk or swim every morning before my day starts. I'm also scheduled to volunteer at both schools which is a nice, and unexpected, change.

So though we are returning to routine in our days, our days have changed with new challenges and adventures ahead. I know the kids are looking forward to it, and so am I.

Digi Distraction

Last week, I was cleaning up my desktop and ran across a Word Document with some interviews I had conducted with my kids at the end of last summer. They were so fun I didn't want to just file them away, they had to be saved right away and not forgotten ... again! I went through my templates and couldn't find anything I wanted for this specific purpose, but I did find a perfect template from Cathy Zielske's Design Your Life course I had taken a couple of years ago at Big Picture Classes:

MATERIALS: Template: Cathy Zielske; Papers: Ali Edwards Transitions; Embellishments: Karla Dudley Digi Essentials 2, Digi-Stash; Fonts: Verdana, American Typewriter

I was so glad to get this little bit of our "life in 2011" recorded for posterity! Then I resumed my template search and headed over to Designer Digitals to find the perfect template for the interviews at hand. Now, if you've ever been over to Designer Digitals you'll know how distracting it can be! I got more than a little off course. Sigh. No suprise, I found it - and a few others!

Evidence:

MATERIALS: Template: XX Things Template (Cathy Zielske); Papers: For Humanity Kit: Japan (Girls); dy-springbreeze-pp2 (aka unknown stash) (Boys); Fonts: Arial, Amelie, American Typewriter

It was so much fun to go back and look at the photos taken last summer - so many stories! Reading the little interviews and noticing all of the subtle and bigger changes in my kids in a few short months. It is days like this, putting memories together in the form of stories, in this case, an interview in the words of my kids, that remind me why I love this hobby which is so much more than a simple past-time.

Jungian Personalities

About a year ago, I went through a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test to find out what it would reveal about me. More specifically, I was in a place of discomfort and misdirection and needed to get myself back on track. I found it fascinating - the test and the results. I was recently reading about Carl Jung for something else and stumbled on another version of the same test. This time I took it and, not surprising, I got the exact same results.

[source]

I am ISTJ (Introverted sensing with thinking): These are dependable pillars of strength. They often try to reform their mates and other people. They make good bank examiners, auditors, accountants, tax examiners, supervisors in libraries and hospitals, business, home ec., and phys. ed. teachers, and boy or girl scouts!

I have to say I was a bit disappointed to have nothing "creative" on my list, it all looks a bit dry and boring, but I have to say, the people who make me laugh the most are accountants. I know, weird! And, at the moment, I'm feeling far more like an ancient and crumbly pillar! I've been taking this, and similar tests, for over a decade, at least I'm consistent. I don't remember ever receiving a different result.

Then I was curious and sent the test to my older kids. I know they do not yet have fully formed personalities, but I really can't see them changing in any fundamental way:

Claire is both ENFP and INFP (I'm sure the I and E will get sorted out over time).

ENFP (Extroverted intuiting with feeling): These people love novelty and surprises. They are big on emotions and expression. They are susceptible to muscle tension and tend to be hyperalert. they tend to feel self-conscious. They are good at sales, advertising, politics, and acting.

INFP (Introverted feeling with intuiting): These people are idealistic, self-sacrificing, and somewhat cool or reserved. They are very family and home oriented, but don't relax well. You find them in psychology, architecture, and religion, but never in business.

Her response: "I like that one (INFP)! I’m just a combo of both then! :D I’m awesome."

Yes, yes you are, Claire.

Cole is a conundrum! The only area in which he is overwhelming anything is INTROVERT which may be surprising to those who don't know him well. As far as I can tell, as his mama, he is one of either:

INTJ (Introverted intuiting with thinking): These are the most independent of all types. They love logic and ideas and are drawn to scientific research. They can be rather single-minded, though.

INTP (Introverted thinking with intuiting): Faithful, preoccupied, and forgetful, these are the bookworms. They tend to be very precise in their use of language. They are good at logic and math and make good philosophers and theoretical scientists, but not writers or salespeople.

I find the study of people really fascinating - which is part of my journey into the Jung research. Early in the research process last week I ran across this article which lead me to this test.

Have you taken the test or something similar? What are you? Any surprises?

Family Day: Amazing Layouts

Last week I immersed myself in many digi projects. Most taking the form of selecting, purging and organizing what is left to do in iPhoto that I didn't get to during my Digital Detox. To give myself a break, I made a few layouts and finished up Claire and Caden's - on Family Day. The irony? My kids were busy elsewhere!

I enjoyed making the conversations layouts earlier, here, here and here - where my kids answered questions about themselves. These "amazing" layouts give me a chance to offer observations I've made about each of my kids - recently. This is a great project to slip into their scrapbooks (when I get them back from the printer once I find/decide where to send them - 8 1/2 x 11 is not a normal size in these parts!). Years ago I got bogged down with making four similar yet different layouts for each of the kids to include in their books and stopped due to utter ovewhelm. I think I may just have twigged on the thing that will make their books a bit more complete!

I enjoy Cathy Zielske's layered templates and will make more, for sure. I have, of course, downloaded a bunch of other templates and I've spent some time trying to manipulate those I already have to make them more functional in other projects. I'm stuck on a few things, but that's part of the fun. The fear is almost all gone - whoot! The intimidation and not wanting my layouts to look like CZs is almost all gone too. I love her work and it is distinctly her work - I think I've found a way to incorporate the best that is CZ with what I consider to be the best of me.

A lot of my new found comfort is the discovery of digi-paper I like. I'm thrilled to have discovered Michelle Martin over at Designer Digitals as she has some lovely papers; as well as Ashalee Wall at Design Pink Ink with her gorgeous paper collections. I'm far more a photo + story + paper scrapbooker than I am a bling and dimension scrapbooker - even digitally, so it was a thrill to find simple and sophisticated patterns and colours.

The only thing left to conquer are brushes and overlays. Working on it!