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Monday Motivation – It’s Winter in Chicago!

Posted by html404 on December 6, 2010
in Blog Stuff, Monday Motivation

You know that old saying on Ground Hog Day about “in like a lion, out like lamb” or something to that affect, well, that’s how I felt last week with the start of December. We have had such a beautiful fall here, then bam! winter smacks us in the face with cold, wind and even snow. I have my favorite winter time activities and as I was saying to some of our children, if I could enjoy them winter wouldn’t be so long and unenjoyable (for the most part and is that even a word?) to be. But I am usually pregnant, recovering from a miscarriage, have an infant…that I really haven’t enjoyed winter like I use to do.

This is one of the first Decembers in the past six years I have started without much of a rain cloud over my head. November 30th marked the sixth anniversary of our losing our son Matthew 18 weeks into my pregnancy. It was a shock to go into my appointment expecting to hear a little heart beat only to discover none. Then going through the ordeal of an ultrasound confirming it, the inside of my head screaming “why?!” and then the trip home to share the news with my husband and five young children who were anticipating a new baby. And finally even harder still was the decisions to be made, the very negative experience we had to go through when we opted to get Matthew taken care of as soon as possible so I could heal and get back to taking care of our other children and the grief that was yet to come. Nope, not easy at all. I didn’t know what grief meant until I lost a child that far into a pregnancy. For me grief took on a whole new form and it took me a long time to process it. To this day I avoid looking at the pictures we were given of Matthew because of the sadness it brings to me. They are tucked away in a special box that has been packed away because I cannot go through the emotion of reliving my experience when the children have asked to see the pictures. Pretty sad, eh? And what a way to start off the week! I am serious, reflective and even sad, but this is the first year that I can actually get through writing about Matthew without crying. Now that is
progress.

Writing about Matthew kept coming to my mind throughout the past week and since I really haven’t made this blog a personal, personal blog due to, again, a past experience, I thought maybe sharing this would show all of you another side of me. It isn’t easy to open up to people I don’t know. I use to be an open book and able to hide behind my keyboard. However, age has made me slow to take the chances I once did when I was naive and younger. Printed words are too easily misconstrued, just are a person’s actions, motivations and verbal words.

On a more positive note….

Following up on last week’s Monday Motivation:

~ The ongoing cleaning and purging is…well…ongoing. We were able to get our tree up and decorated much to the pleasure and enjoyment of the children.

~ No business plan finished. We ended up getting sick with colds, so Sunday and Monday, even Tuesday was sluggish, so I was unable to get at it with the rest of life going on.

~ We did get to the Thrift Store after we got our tree on Saturday (that was a great outing!) and found some needed items. But due to being sick we have not got to the YMCA.

~ We have played Christmas music a number of days, but not every day. And we still need to watch a classic Christmas movie.

~ Still no laptop. It’s been a war over our pc for me to get my work done and the children to get their school done, but we are managing somehow. The computer guy has been great, but he’s trying to solve a puzzle he’s never had to solve and each time we talk I end up giving him a missing piece of information. So he’s hopeful and I will remain so as well for now.

This week’s Motivation:Do I have anything new? Just a couple. I’ll be going to my CSA course, worked on my homework this past weekend so I could hand it in. I need to research antifungal diets and figure out how I am going to manage to survive on one, as I need to help get rid of baby’s thrush and the cause of it. First baby to have thrush, unbelievable.

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Monday Motivation

Posted by html404 on November 29, 2010
in Blog Stuff, Cleaning

Sorry I missed last week’s Monday Motivation, but things really haven’t changed much. We had a busy week working on blog stuff, giveaways, writing reviews, besides getting ready for Thanksgiving. Plus this week I am back to work full throttle with my client I took some time off from (but still worked 4-8 hours/week so it really wasn’t a vacation. It was a semi vacation.)

Monday Motivation two weeks ago:

~ Cleaning and purging. Cleaning Walls and hoping to start painting! But I fully realize that my aspirations are much greater than I could ever humanly accomplish with this large family of mine. So by God’s grace, I will get done what I am meant to get done. Some of the walls got cleaned….and got dirtied again…as far as we’ve got. I received a Merry Maids gift card in the mail that I fully intend to use in December! Thanks to the Munchkins, Inc. (I cannot even remember what I did, but I did something in the blogging world and forgot about this little stipend of a Merry Maids gift card. What a wonderful surprise to find that envelope in the mail! I have never had a cleaning company come in and clean my home so this will be a new experience. I feel like I have to clean in order for them to clean! Bizzare, I know. Anyone ever use a cleaning service before?

~ I start a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) course this week and have a few meetings away from home. Thankfully, my husband’s work schedule is flexible that he is able to be with the children while I am gone.This went really well. Sir Eats Alot did great at my four hour meeting and again in the evening during my class. The class is going to be very beneficial, I think. Looking forward to the next 8 or 9 classes spread out over the next few months.

~ Finish up our business plan finally and finally submit it. This is my weekdend project.

~ Get to the Thrift Store. Nope, didn’t get there. Too many things at home to keep us busy.

~ 77Kids holiday charity event! Looking forward to that! Thanks to The Motherhood and 77Kids. As you already know, we enjoyed this outing very much.

Hope you all are staying motivated as we head into winter. I’d love to hear some of your ideas for staying on top of things and keeping your motivation running so you remain an effective mommy/parent/friend/sister/daughter etc.

This week’s Motivation:

~ Ongoing: Cleaning and purging. Cleaning Walls and hoping to start painting! But I fully realize that my aspirations are much greater than I could ever humanly accomplish with this large family of mine. So by God’s grace, I will get done what I am meant to get done.

~ Finish up our business plan finally and finally submit it. I really mean it this time. My laptop crashed this week so I even paid to have my hard drive ripped so I could finish it this past weekend. My goal is November 30th at the latest.

~ Get to the Thrift Store and YMCA.

~ Play Christmas music every day and watch at least one classic Christmas movie.

~ Hopefully get my laptop back in one piece saving on the expense of purchasing another one. If we do have to purchase another one, we are going to get a Mac (Apple MacIntosh). We’ve heard how little they crash.

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12 Days of Christmas Giveaways!

Posted by html404 on November 19, 2010
in Blog Stuff, Faith and Family Reviews Friday Giveaway, Giveaways

We have a change of plans. Instead of our normal Faith and Family Reviews Giveaway today, on Sunday we will be featuring 12 Days of Christmas Giveaways! We had a ton of reviews and giveaways to feature and as we were scheduling them we discovered some of them were getting pretty close to Christmas and many of these things would make wonderful Christmas gifts. That’s when we decided to do a week’s worth of giveaways to give you all a chance to win these products and receive them in time for Christmas. We may still feature our Friday Giveaways in December, but we may also take the month off. So gear your typing fingers up to enter some great giveaways! A huge thank you to the generosity of the companies sponsoring the giveaways: Organic Boutique, Big Skinny, Diamond Earrings, Frecklebox, Lillebaby Eurotote (via Mom Spark and Happy, Healthy Moms Product Review Team) , Progresso (via MyBlogSpark), 77kids (via The Motherhood), EZ Socks, EllaWrap.

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I Want to Go to Blissdom 2011!

Posted by html404 on November 9, 2010
in Blog Stuff, Giveaways

One2One Network is offering The Great BlissDom Conference Package Giveaway and I have entered to win. I have never been to a blogging conference yet and would love to attend this one, which is being held in Nashville, TN. This post is earns me another entry to the giveaway! I came across another opportunity to post about another giveaway offering a Blissdom conference pass, so bear with me. I’ll be sure to spread them out though! Can’t tell that I really, really, want to go, eh?

Here’s what they said:

We are going to be giving away conference passes to three lucky One2One bloggers for BlissDom’11 in Nashville, TN January 27-28. There are three levels of prizing and all include a full conference pass ($399 value).

BlissDom is the premiere conference for women who find and express their bliss by publishing online. Speakers and panels feature the best blogging, public relations and social media pros gathering to mentor new and old friends alike.

This is Blissdom’s most exciting year, with even more incredible content, events, networking and surprises scheduled than ever before. This year’s mantra – Think Big. Be Bold. Create Your Bliss. Whether you are a blogging newbie or maven, BlissDom’11 is designed to superserve everyone!

Check out this video highlighting the experience at last year’s BlissDom:

BlissDom Conference 2010 from Blissful Media Group on Vimeo.

Follow @One2OneNetwork on Twitter
Join their Facebook Fan Page
One2One Network

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Wendy’s Bloggers and Friends Pick 2 Lunch Project Plus Midweek Giveaway! CLOSED

Posted by html404 on October 20, 2010
in Blog Stuff, Contests, Food and Treats, Giveaways, Restaurants

Congratulations to Jessie C! You won our Wendy’s giveaway! Thanks to all who entered and to Wendy’s and the Motherhood for sponsoring this giveaway.

Faith and Family Reviews received four Wendy’s gift cards valuing $7.00 each and a stipend in exchange for sharing about the Wendy’s Bloggers and Friends Pick 2 Lunch Project hosted by TheMotherhood.com and Wendys.com. While we consider it a privilege to receive free products/gift cards and stipend, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the Pick 2 menu.

Yesterday we went to lunch at Wendy’s for a bloggers event. This event was held with the purpose of trying Wendy’s new Pick 2 menu, which consists of four half salads – The Spicy Chicken Salad, The Cobb Salad, The Apple Pecan Salad and the Baja Salad. Then you have the choice of adding one side for the price of $4.99, but this did not include the price of a drink unless you chose to get a salad and water. The side choices were: a Dansi bottle of water, a small chili, a baked potato, Jr. Cheeseburger, Chicken wrap, small frosty or a variety of soft drinks.

We invited Grandma to come with us since most of my friends were otherwise occupied or lived too far to attend. We tried their new Pick 2 menu. My oldest, Virtuous, along with Grandma tried the Spicy Chicken salad with a baked potato/chili. My second oldest, Peanut, and I tried the Apple Pecan Salad with chili as our side. On the way home we thought that we could have all chosen one of each of the salads, but oh well, we didn’t. The Cobb looked good and I wasn’t sure what the Baja was until we discussed it after lunch.

Grandma thought the meal was very filling, she couldn’t even eat all the salad. However, she admits that she isn’t a big salad eater. She adds that she thought the chicken was very tasty and enjoyed her tomatoes. She really enjoyed the baked potato with its extra seasonings as she doesn’t usually dress up her baked potato with anything except butter.

Virtuous thought that the chicken was very spicy but it wasn’t to bad. Her chili was delicous she said.

Peanut and I thoroughly enjoyed our chili and Apple Pecan Salad. It had dried cranberries, pecans, and two different kinds of apples (one red skinned and one green skinned) and included a pomengrated vinaigrette topped with blue cheese. The only thing I didn’t like was the blue cheese as I am not a big fan of blue cheese. If I were to get it again I would ask them to leave off the blue cheese. The chili didn’t seem to have as many kidney beans as we are use to adding to ours but it was still delicious. I just like the extra kidney beans for fiber and protein.

It was great to see some moms we met at the 77Kids Do Good Day and meet a couple others. We actually pretty much packed the Wendy’s restaurant we met at and didn’t have a whole lot of time to interact with everyone eating, ordering, finding seating, having to take care of kids or get back home to those children getting home from school.

We have a surprise midweek giveaway! Enter to win two Wendy’s gift cards valuing $7.00 each and take your spouse, friend or child to lunch on Wendy’s and TheMotherhood.com!

Check out the menu!

Mandatory entry: Tell me which Pick 2 lunch you and your lunch guest would choose.

Extra entries are:

2 entries: Follow Faith and Family Reviews on Twitter.

2 entries: Follow TheMotherhood on Twitter.

2 entries: Follow Wendy’s on Twitter

2 entries: Tweet about this blog post including the hashtag #WendysPick2 using your own tweet or the one below:

Enter to win 2 Wendy’s gift cards! @faithandfamilyrewv

2 entries: Like Faith and Family Reviews on Facebook.

2 entries: Like TheMotherhood on Facebook.

2 entries: Like Wendy’s on Facebook.

2 entries: Follow Faith and Family Reviews on Google Friend.

1 entry for every comment left on other Faith and Family Reviews blog posts. We need some “Comment Love”

5 entries for blogging about this giveaway, linking to this post and TheMotherhood and Wendy’s

Please note that this giveaway will only last one week, ending on October 27 at noon! One winner will be chosen via Random.org and contacted on or before October 30th. Winner will be given 48 hours to respond via email with their mailing address. Winner will then be mailed two $7.00 Wendy’s gift cards via USPS first class ma

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Monday Motivation

Posted by html404 on October 18, 2010
in Blog Stuff, Family Stuff, Gardening, Monday Motivation

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Last week’s Monday Motivation:

~ My husband and I have an appointment with the Executive Director of a farm incubator program that we are interested in. This meeting went better than I expected feeling rather unprepared. Now to finish our business plan!

~ We really need to do our end of season garden clean up! My husband has been battling a cold but is feeling better so we should be able to do the garden this weekend. The weekend weather turned out great and everyone was healthy so we were able to accomplish quite a bit in this area.

~ Swim lessons for the children. We decided to take advantage of the YMCA’s no enrollment fee (at least for this month as we test drive this membership thing) and have been swimming every day since Friday. Yes, even I went swimming once. The children love it. I am hesitant to take Sir Eats Alot in the pool at his young age or else I would be in there as much as the other children. I grew up swimming all the time. My mom tells me that my sisters and I were swimming by four. We’ve been swimming most days and only one child has been complaining about it and lessons. I think our four year old and two year old could take off swimming any time. They just need to gain more confidence and arm strength.

So I actually exercised! My goal is to get exercise while teaching my children how to swim. All of them are at different levels but for not growing up swimming I think they are all doing great. It’s exciting that we can share the love of swimming together. Yep, I swam again, but this out of shape mama needs to go slow. Not as young as I use to be, unfortunately. But I am loving our family time at the YMCA.

Other than that I am just trying to manage home, children, homeschooling and work. It is definitely a juggling act. That’s why I may be taking most of November off from most of my work-at-home responsibilities except for one client whose busiest season is Christmas. I need to regroup and refocus a bit and hope that time off will help. Still juggling!

This week’s Motivation:

~ This week we have a mommy blogging event that TheMotherhood.com and Wendy’s have coordinated. So we will be going to lunch with grandma and other mommy bloggers.

~ We also have another CRAFT (Collaborative Regional Agricultural Farmer Training) Field Day to attend. Looking forward to that.

~ Writing our business plan and submitting it is a priority so we can see where it takes us and hopefully allow us to plan for the approaching new year.

~ De-junk. Organize. We already have two big bags and a box to giveaway and I hope to have more before Vietnam Vets pick up comes this week. We just don’t want to be cleaning stuff we don’t need. It is so crucial for our sanity to get down to bare minimum. Just the basics here please. But do you know how hard it is? Hard. Believe me! If you are the praying kind, please pray that we discover what our bare minimum is for our family and home.

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Monday Motivation

Posted by html404 on September 27, 2010
in Blog Stuff, Family Stuff, Monday Motivation

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Last week’s Monday Motivation:

This week we begin a new school schedule. I had planned to take the first month of Sir Eats Alot’s life to allow us time to enjoy his newborn days and not be rushed to get at school. Well, he turned a month old on Saturday and it was time to revamp our schedule, write some goals down and get the new school year underway. I even got the children’s school/chore lists written up for this week, handwriting for one child done for two weeks and spelling lists recorded on software that I am reviewing (another timely help that came to my door – Thank you Lord for knowing what we need!) So these alone are major accomplishments!

~ Get to the garden to begin gleaning anything left. We just haven’t got out there as often since baby came. We did this a couple of times and still need to get out there again. Not too much is remaining, but we seem to find enough when we go.

~ Sell any remaining produce at a Farmers Market. This will probably be one time at a private business. We had fun at the Farmers Market. Sold out of most of our produce and hope to sell at this market next season, Lord willing.

~ Declutter one area. Hmm….I think we cluttered more areas when a cold snap went through and we were scrambling for warmer clothing!

~ Visit the YMCA regarding their homeschool gym/swim classes. I called.

~ Go for a walk at least two more times this week. Made it one more time, but I did get out shopping for a couple of hours with Sir Eats Alot and two daughters so that plus the standing working at our co-op day and the farmers market account for exercise too, right?

That’s about it. I could add more, but I am trying to only bite off what I can chew. Now I am off to get on with our new afternoon schedule! Enjoy yours!

This week’s Motivation:

~ Go for 2-3 walks.

~ Get most of our summer clothes packed up and winter clothes put away.

~ Work on our office. My area to declutter since it has gotten even more out of control since baby boy arrived.

That is all I am even going to attempt to do this week since I have quite a bit of work to do for clients, plus homeschooling and a number of phone calls.

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Motivation Monday

Posted by html404 on September 20, 2010
in Blog Stuff, Family Stuff, Monday Motivation

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Last week’s Monday Motivation:

~ Try and adopt a new work schedule amidst nursing a newborn and maybe even a daily walk. Got for one walk. Better than nothing, I guess and it’s a start.

~ Try and start getting caught up on my back log. Inching, but getting there.

~ My nesting seems to have kicked in postpartum and I want to purge our house of clutter and things that just take up our time. Things that are not adding value to our lives. Things like extra clothing and stuff we seem to move around and clean but do not necessarily need. Our house is waaaaay too small to have a bunch of stuff AND ten people, so the stuff has to go since the people are here to stay! This is ongoing, but we all seem to have come to an agreement that stuff needs to go! Before it was only me wanting to get rid of stuff, so to have 5-7 more people on board is progress alone!

~ One of our computer desks have completely fallen apart, so I have to clean off the cluttered one to fit the desk top PC and find a new place for the cluttered mess! Ughhhhh….we’ve been wanting to do this for the past week, but garbage day is tomorrow so it really needs to be done today.

This week’s Motivation:

~ Get to the garden to begin gleaning anything left. We just haven’t got out there as often since baby came.

~ Sell any remaining produce at a Farmers Market. This will probably be one time at a private business.

~ Declutter one area.

~ Visit the YMCA regarding their homeschool gym/swim classes.

~ Go for a walk at least two more times this week.

That’s about it. I could add more, but I am trying to only bite off what I can chew. Now I am off to get on with our new afternoon schedule! Enjoy yours!

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Monday Motivation

Posted by html404 on September 13, 2010
in Blog Stuff, Family Stuff, Monday Motivation

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Last week’s Monday Motivation:

~ Try and adopt a new work schedule amidst nursing a newborn and maybe even a daily walk.

~ Try and start getting caught up on my back log.

That’s about it. I could add more, but I am trying to only bite off what I can chew.

This week’s Motivation:

It looks like I am working on the same list as last week’s! I got work done for clients but my own blog stuff took a back seat and so did housework and cleaning….sooooo my list is the same. That makes for an easy post today, doesn’t it?! And I honestly was not planning to do that until I re-read last week’s post.

Gotta run as I have children that need the desktop, our oldest needs the laptop and I need to run to the bathroom (too much info, I know!) before I sit down for another marathon nursing session with Sir Eats Alot. Speaking of Sir Eats Alot, here’s a photo from today:

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Monday Motivation

Posted by html404 on September 6, 2010
in Blog Stuff, Family Stuff, Monday Motivation

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Last week’s Monday Motivation:

~ Not much on the agenda this week. Resting, nursing and a little bit of work here and there. That’s about it. That’s about all I got done!

My husband’s boss surprised us by giving him a week’s paid vacation, so we are very thankful for that blessing. Due to the change of ownership etc. that occurred last year we were not counting on any paid vacation time, so it was an unexpected blessing. We are very thankful to the Lord that when we got paid last week that my husband received his full two weeks of pay. What a blessing!

~ We also celebrated our son turning seven. He is the last birthday of the year in our family until January!

This week’s Motivation:

~ Try and adopt a new work schedule amidst nursing a newborn and maybe even a daily walk.

~ Try and start getting caught up on my back log.

That’s about it. I could add more, but I am trying to only bite off what I can chew.