Bring on the NEW YEAR!

This past year has been full of changes, surprises, unanswered questions, hope, sorrow, happiness, determination and so much more.  Things have happened this past year that I am thrilled about and others I wish had never happened or I could have handled so much better.  This next year I full intend to use what worked and fix what didn't so that 2013 will be so much better then 2012.

My main struggle in 2012 was my ability to handle stress.  Toward the end of the year I was able to regain some peace but it is still not there.  It just so happened that a few weeks ago the sermon was about having the peace with God which reduces stress and brings peace to your life.  My mission for 2013 - obtain this peace.  Which brings me to resolution #1 - read new testament.  Since my time is strapped with going back to school I know I will not have the time to dedicate to reading the whole Bible in a year so I have my reading plan to finish the New Testament in the year.

Now I am an reasonable person and know that giving my worries to God does not include a magic angel to clean my house so my resolution #2 is to clean something every day so my weekends are open for relaxation and I won't be overwhelmed with the mess of the house.  My plan was to get my house completely clean and organized for the new year...well that hasn't happened yet but I am steadily working at it.

While money has been a big stressor this past year, resolution #3 is to do something every week to get out of debt.  While I know I wont be able to fully get out of debt since I am currently going back to school and adding more to student loans each semester, but all other debt is at my fingertips and I fully intend to destroy it.  If this means packing every lunch and even dinners on school days, then so be it.  If this means no more Parker's cokes, well, I gave up cokes for 2 years before picking it back up, why not give it up again?

I have stressed so much about my family; worrying about what we are doing wrong vs. what we are doing right with raising the kids.  Worrying that I'm not being a good mommy because my little girl half the time wants nothing to do with me and only wants her daddy.  Worrying that I am too strict, worrying that I am not strict enough, worrying that I am no fun, worrying that I am worrying too much - see the problem here?  I don't know how to formulate this one in a resolution, nonetheless, I will do what I can to be the best wife and mommy I can be.

A few other things I would like to accomplish this year...
- Make my photo books as the year goes rather then go through a years worth of photos at one time.

- Learn photography so I have reason to use the nice camera rather then the happy snaps, phone cameras and the IPad.  

- Learn to sew better, especially since Colleen is really getting into her "babies", would be so cute to make them matching jammies or matching blankets.  One of her babies at least needs a dress to wear, I don't know where the clothes for that one went...

So lets bring on the new year!

Marriage wake up call...

This past weekend we traveled to Texas for a wedding and generally when you go to a wedding you get that "awwwww" gushy effect, but for me I had a incredibly guilty feeling.  Sitting in the chapel, listening to the preacher talk about love and marriage and the choices you make on the day you get married and every day after that made me realize I haven't been living and loving my husband as I should.

I should love my husband for him but I am constantly wanting him to change and getting mad when he doesn't.  I want him to do things my way rather then accepting and working around how he does things.  I push him to show me love how I want to be loved rather then accepting his way of showing love.  I rationalize that he should want to change the way he does things to make me happy but at the same time I should be changing how I do things as well to better accommodate him.  I desperately want us to be on the same page but can't seem to figure out how to get there.

I am impatient (which pretty much everyone knows about me).  I want things to be great RIGHT NOW, but know in my head that things like a wonderful marriage takes time.  I feel awful because Mark has figured out how to accept my faults as just being a part of me, but I haven't figured out how to do the same for him.

I am more comfortable with order and I do everything I can to make sure there is order in my life, even if it creates conflict in the process.  I haven't REALLY figured out compromise, I say I do, and know the idea of compromise but I don't think I really put it into practice.  I know there are some things that I feel is important but I don't know at what level of importance I should compromise on.  My father always says "pick the hill you will die on" but there are so many hills I think at the moment I will die on.  How do you know what hill you really will die on?  Perhaps if I can answer this question I will then finally figure out the art of compromise.

Part of having the wonderful marriage is knowing who you are, Mark knows who he is, I just don't know fully who I am.  I am always so busy taking care of others, I don't take the time to take care for myself.  This next year, one of my resolutions is to figure out me...in the next 16 days of this year I will attempt to figure the best method to do that.

Baby or no baby...

Baby or no baby, that is the question...

Two weeks ago I took a pregnancy test to rule a pregnancy out when I was having to pee every 5 minutes.  I thought I had a UTI or something but since there was no pain a "what if" crossed my mind.  Once I took the test the plus sign was almost immediate.  Disbelief was my first reaction, how did this happen?  I have been on birth control for almost a year and have still been very careful.  A baby was not in the plans I had for my life, I thought I was done having kids, that Colleen was enough...

I took a second test just to confirm, however this one came back negative, as did the next 3.  According to Google, a false positive was VERY uncommon so I went to the midwife to have a blood test done.  Six days after the positive test I got the call that confirmed, there is no trace of the "baby hormone" and I was not pregnant.

I had 6 days of thinking there was a strong possibility I was pregnant, 6 days of planning out what I was going to do with school, money and even pick out names.  I had it all figured out; If I couldn't do independent study for the classes that semester then I would take that time off school and use it to study and take the CPA exam, therefore the timeline of school and getting my license wouldn't be delayed, just rearranged.

For 6 days, I wanted another child, I wanted to have another delivery, another baby to hold and train to be a momma's baby since my little girl is a daddy's girl all the way.  Now that I am not pregnant all the doubts of having another child is back and I don't know what to do.  I am too practical, I know the finances are tight and another baby would only make it tighter, I know that I need to finish school and having another child would only make it harder. I also know that if I don't have another baby soon there will be a larger age gap then I would want between the kids and my husband is not getting any younger either.

Now I don't know what to do...deciding to have or not to have another baby is a big decision and can come up with every excuse to have or not to have.  This is the reason I was happy for the "oops" cause the decision was out of my hands, what was done was done.  Now it is back to decision time, do we try or find a more long term method of birth control?  Why can't decisions be easy?