Disney Heroes, Homeschooling and Gratitude

I started playing a fun new game on my phone called Disney Heroes. Time will tell whether it’s something I continue to play or not but I’ve been enjoying it here lately. We’ve been having a good time with our Around the World curriculum so far even though I was nervous about starting something new. As part of this curriculum we have been reading aloud a book called The Very, Very, Far North and it’s pretty cute so far. A polar bear and an owl so far have been quite charming characters. It’s always nice when the read aloud can be enjoyed by both children and adults both. That was one of the things I knew would make good picks out of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, the knowing that I would enjoy revisiting them also. I find myself listening to the audiobook with more interest perhaps than the children sometimes. I always struggle to have good transitions in our day. Perhaps I need to look up some possible solutions and come up with a plan but for now we are just gonna have to struggle our way through from lunch break back into our studies. Motivation is hard sometimes for adults and kids. I try to take a gentle approach but also to be firm. It is a fine line sometimes but we do alright. I love learning with my kids and it is worth every ounce of struggle we endure to go through the process of learning with them and to spend this time with them building these memories of learning and growing together. It is absolutely priceless. I am grateful. Remembering to be grateful for the wonderful things in my life changes everything for the better so I try to remember a few things everyday that I have in my life to be grateful for. I hope you can think of a few things right now.

The eternal struggle for health

Welp, here we are again. Having had too many homemade cookies and not enough jogs around the block. I need to find a reminder of my why. Why do I wish to maintain a healthy lifestyle and a healthy weight. Let's see, I have two beautiful children that I need to be around for and that I don't want to miss out on. I cannot think of a more important why if I tried. So here is a brief reminder to self that food is not the enemy it is all about finding and keeping balance. Here is a reminder to be inspired by how great my mind and body feels when I am getting physical activity and eating good nutritious food. Here is my reminder that nutritious and healthy food is also super duper tasty. I need to refresh my recipe selection and find a way to get excited for healthy meal planning. Does anyone else struggle with finding balance in regards to having a healthy relationship with food and fitness? I feel like, for me, it is an uphill battle all the time. I am going to try to keep coming back and post things that I think are inspiring and create a space of inspiration and support for myself.

Weekly Book Recommendation

I'll keep this short and sweet. I've got another great Young Adult recommendation this time. I've been on a kick with YA Fiction lately. You might be familiar with the movie The Hate U Give. I haven't seen it but I read the book and thought it was great. I saw that the author Angie Thomas had another followup book called On the Come Up and decided to give it a go. It is just as good a read, if not better, than her first installment. I feel like it gives a real inside perspective on social justice, racial profiling and black culture in general. Since I am just a regular old white girl reading this it definitely gave me a broader perspective on some things and there were some things I had to look up in Urban Dictionary, I won't even lie. This author though is just so easy to read. Her characters are really easy to find yourself connecting with and rooting for. This book made tears well up more than once because it really hit me in the feels on a few occasions. It was a very fast read and this book as well as the previous one are books I will consider having my kids read when they are older as part of home school because I think they bring up some great talking points regarding real world issues. In the scary world where Black Lives Matter is growing traction and yet there are still too many sad stories of racial profiling and unnecessary and excessive force it is books like these that I think will change the world. Read it! Get it! It'll stick with you after reading it, for sure, at least it has for me.

Weekly Book Recommendation

This weeks book recommendation is A Mango-Shaped Space by Wendy Mass. It was interesting for sure. This is a young adult read. I do like adult books but even in my 30's young adult fiction just has a special place in my heart so I still read an awful lot of it.

Since I am such a bibliophile and end up spending more time reading than I do watching television and I am always on the hunt for my next great read I have decided to try and recommend a book once a week for others that wanna get their read on. I may change it to a monthly recommendation if I'm having a hard time keeping up.

A Mango-Shaped Space tugged at my heartstrings. It had a lot of the coming of age theme with our main character being a 13 year old girl who sees numbers and letters, words and sounds in colors and thinks she must be some kind of freak finding out she actually has something called synesthesia. She has hit that point where things are shifting in her life in regards to friendships, family, interest in the opposite gender and self identity.

I don't want to give anything big away here but it is full of delightful ups and downs. A great many things turn out to be not quite how she had anticipated. She deals with change and loss and how to roll with everything life throws your way. I feel like by the end she is a lot more comfortable with who she is and where her place is and I feel like she has established some new friendships and ways of seeing things.

I thought this book was unexpectedly good. I had it on my to read list and had looked at it before and when I needed something to read finally checked it out and ended up breezing through it in just 2 or 3 evenings.

Definitely check it out if you are: a cat lover, a fan of the coming of age story, a young adult reader, someone who has ever felt like they didn't fit it or that no one understands them or someone who just likes a story about someone who sees the world a little different than most people do.

If you've read it, drop me a line and let me know what you thought of it!

Have a good evening and I hope you are enjoying your summer!

Journey to Wellness

I've been feeling rather inspired lately! I have taken on a 30 day Yoga for Weight Loss video series with Julia Marie (here) and I just found myself starting week 2. I feel wonderful physically and mentally both. It seems to be a pretty comprehensive program that focuses on a very well rounded perspective of fitness. There are, of course, the 20 minute or so work out followed by the resting period and then some bonus tips. I've been pretty impressed with the bonus tips which cover obvious things, such as being sure to drink enough water and reduce sugar intake, as well as some things that may not be so readily apparent but are incredibly helpful.

I have found the concept of journaling my fitness to be particularly helpful. I always enjoy journaling anyway both to work my brain through things that may be kinda gummed up in my head as well as to have a record to refer back to later and reflect on growth and changes. Journaling also provides a way for me to put my thoughts in a safe place and feel free to let them go instead of feeling trapped carrying something heavy as my mind continues to just cycle through the same thoughts. Rinse, Wash, Repeat. That often comes up for me as part of my Bipolar Disorder. I will become fixated on certain thoughts or topics and it's like the hamster on the wheel, I can't seem to stop spinning and get off the ride.

I have also found the idea of goal setting, and reward systems to help program the brain into making positive changes stick to be a very valuable bit of information. Julia talks about the concept of SMART goal setting, which I thought was really great!

I have decided that in order to foster wellness and health both physically and mentally that I would like to start making goals regularly and utilize a rewards system to try to reinforce these positive habits. My first reward was treating myself to a yoga block to add to my workout gear that I am able to put into immediate use with the videos and that I have wanted for quite sometime. It seemed appropriate as I've really been trying to broaden my yoga practice lately. Yoga is one of the many tools I like to utilize to help me manage my mental health without pharmaceutical medications. (disclaimer: There is nothing wrong with using these medications to manage your mental health if that is what you need and/or want to do, I worked with a doctor to stop taking medications and did not quit taking these types of medications cold turkey. If you decide to stop taking any kind of medications you most definitely should do so with the assistance of your healthcare provider.)

I like to think of having a toolbox full of tools in regards to the way I manage my mental health. Yoga is one of those tools. Some of the other tools in my toolbox are things like journaling, reading a book, deep breathing, guided meditation, visualization, affirmations, mindfulness, drawing or coloring, music, (though that can make things worse if I do not use great care in my choices) herbal tea, essential oils, eating a healthy diet, drinking enough water, getting enough sleep on a regular basis, getting outside for fresh air and into nature. It has taken me a good bit of time and trial and error to figure out what tools to stock my toolbox with.

The tools that work for me may not work for someone else. It is very different for everyone. Someone else might like to knit something, or go for a run or ride a horse, or go for a drive. It takes time to figure out what works for you. I have had the help of IREST yoga when I attended Mizzou, Therapy sessions that have taught me about different coping methods. There are a lot of books and websites that are a wonderful source of information that can be helpful for building up a toolbox.

I have learned that a positive and grateful mindset will do an awful lot to combat negative effects of my mood disorder. That being said, my mood disorder makes it difficult sometimes to stay in that mindset. I have decided to utilize goal setting and a gratitude practice to try to help train my brain to naturally think more positive and grateful. My first goal is to begin a gratitude journal. I am keeping it simple and everyday I intend to write down 3 things that I am grateful for. Sometimes when I am feeling a high level of anxiety I will just start listing off things I am grateful for and it doesn't have to be any sort of big or profound things, though those are okay as well. I often just start small and think of the everyday things I use and depend on that are often taken for granted.

Sometimes I start by saying to myself I am grateful for electricity. I am grateful for clean water. I am grateful for the internet. I am grateful for a safe home for my family to live in. I am grateful for a refrigerator full of healthy, nourishing food. I am grateful for a washer and dryer and also for clean clothes to wear. I am grateful for warm blankets and cups of coffee. I am grateful for my beautiful family. I am grateful for my loving and sweet pets. I am grateful for so many more things but it helps to start with that is right in front of me and to just start naming, listing or even just thinking about every single thing that comes to me and take a moment to realize that I am grateful for these things that so often are not even considered.

My brain is starting to get sleepy on me now. I am grateful for a nice comfy bed and a handmade quilt from my mom and a new sheet set and I am grateful for a night of restful easy sleep and rejuvenation. I am grateful for the chance to ramble on in the hopes that someone might be interested enough to join me and my rambling thoughts and even if not, I am grateful for the chance to express my thoughts and to record them so they might serve as a tool for reflection and growth at a later point.

I shall end it on this. Namaste.

Everyone has Wi-Fi but we've lost the connection.

I have really been yearning for the days of chat rooms, message boards/forums and LiveJournal and the like. There are so many other forms of social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat but I feel like somehow, over time, much in the way a photo online will degrade the more you transfer it from one place to another that the same thing has happened in the form of social connection and interaction on the internet. It seems like all the sites have gotten fancier and snazzier. All the photos are prettier and more filtered. Everything has gotten sleeker, glossier and incites more desire to have the person or things pictured or to wish you were the person in the picture or that you could post a better picture.

Something has been lost and I can't help but feel like it was the most vital thing that made it worth something in the first place. The raw connection that I used to feel when I was plugged right into the deep underbelly of online communities, feeling like I was a part of multiple little close-knit families, has been severed somehow. I'm not sure what happened. I think maybe people used to be more raw and more real and share more of the dark and ugly bits of themselves along with their hopes and dreams and insecurities and small triumphs. Anymore it seems like people are more worried with keeping up with appearances. It is less about connection and more about competition.

Does that girl look better in her Instagram pictures? Will this Snapchat filter make people think I look hotter? Is that high school rivals family photos on Facebook nicer looking than mine? It has all become so superficial and trivial. We are not connecting on a meaningful level anymore. Where there used to be deep conversation via forums and chatrooms and long insightful blog posts now it is seeing how risque our Instagram photos can be or how awesome our family vacation seems in our Facebook post.

We are all plugged in and turned on but it seems like as technology has gotten sleeker and smarter we have somehow lost the connection.

Cigarettes and those Regrets

Well, it's been awhile since I blogged, thought I'd wait til I saved up a decent amount of stuff to talk about to make a decent entry. Well, it's been over a week now since I've had a cigarette. And I haven't cheated once. Not so much as one little puff off of a cigarette. I've completely dropped them. Saving me some money and aggravation...Let's see if I can keep it up. Here's the sucky part though, I've been suffering from insomnia and depression, I stayed up til like 7 am this morning because I couldn't sleep and I spent like a good hour or two just bawling like an idiot unable to control my emotions. I've missed some work lately because I've just felt blah and completely off and like I'm not even freaking with it at all, and just like unable to function. I hate when the depression kicks in to the point of dehabilitation. My mom made me call my doctor, but he can't get me in for like almost another month. So I guess I'll just keep taking more of my panic meds and just try to see if I can snap myself out of it. IDK. Mom says she also thinks that Josh (my boyfriend) being gone on vacation for about 2 weeks now is part of it and that once he is back she seems to think I'll snap out of it. I don't know what's going on, but as comfortable as I am slipping right back into depression. I like being happy :/ I want it back.


But onto some other topics, life is not all about me, it took me long enough to realize that. I've got some interesting tidbits for everyone to check out. This is a really cool little game: Cut the Rope! I had quite a bit of fun tooling around, and boy does the lil guy make ya feel bad if you don't get that candy to him.


on another note I found some hilarious harry potter comic things located here and they are DEFINITELY worth checking out, I about lawled right off my bed at these.


I also found a pretty cool artsy little unique comic, not too long, worth giving a look here @ Sarah and the Seed


If you do/did like Pokemon, these Pokemon redesigns will give you the willies. Go look them over here


When you start thinking about the good things God has done, it gets your mind off the negative and on the positive. I try to have a good attitude as much as I can because I know that is the most Christ-Like way to be, Jesus didn't stand around complaining about all the bad things he was dealing with, he tried to be thankful for the blessings before him and find a way to help anyone and everyone elses. Want to improve your attitude? Here are some pointers. Check em out.







New songs I found
the xx-islands
totally awesome, makes me think of Josh. I love it. great for my smitten playlist.
the xx-stars
also amazing, so lyrically talented. amazing vocals too. great vibe. just totally loving it.