Do you think of Sunday as the start of the week or the end of the week?  My husband and I differ about this.

To me, Sunday is the last day of the week.  The day of rest.  God created the world in six days and on the seventh, he rested…or however it goes.  I’m not overly religious, but this is how I think of the week.  Sunday is a day of rest, to spend with family or whatever, at the end of the week…recharging so to speak, before the next week begins….on MONDAY.

My husband thinks of  Sunday as the first day of the week.  This makes no sense to me, therefore I cannot even argue his point.  Weirdo Australian.

What do you think?

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I will be taking a hiatus from all things bloggy, both writing and reading, until I feel like I can do something more than half-ass and feel good about it and myself again.  If you knew me at all, you would know that by even making such a statement that I’m having some problems.  I have always been a very confident, capable and organized person.

Over the last four years of staying at home with my two boys, I have lost something…and it’s finally coming to a head.  Maybe I just need a few days off or maybe I need go go back to work.

What I need, I am not sure.  But, there it is.  I am not sure when or if I will be back to this blog.  I need to get back to what is real for me.   And right now, that means getting offline.

Thanks for reading and making comments.  I will probably see you at some point in the comments section of your blogs, if you have one, soon.

Related posts:

1. Spending Less and Earning Extra

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Is it just me or are October and November always really busy months?  I have been getting more and more stressed at the mounting things I need to get done by December.  I tick one thing off the list and something else gets added.

I am amazed at how so many mom bloggers out there are able to keep up with it all and their blogs too.  There are a lot of amazing women out there.   And honestly, if my neighbor, who has four children, brings me baked goods one more time…well, actually, I will thank her profusely as she a brilliant baker and just continue to call her supermom behind her back.

Went to a pumpkin farm last weekend.  Got two pumpkins.  It’s was beautiful on Saturday and a perfect day to spend outside on a farm.  Crap on Sunday.  But that’s okay.  I went to the mall and actually started my Christmas shopping.  Mind you, I detest Christmas shopping.  And for those of you with tween girls, I found this fabulous light up journal at Justice.  So cool.  And lots of 50% stuff at Barnes and Noble.

But, I digress.

We are keeping it simple this Christmas.  Just a few toys and books.  And low stress.  Planning on getting nearly everything I can off of Amazon.  Shipped right to my door.  It’s always cheaper than the shops anyway, plus I don’t have to drive or be around mad shoppers.  Perfect.

Also started looking for a few plane toys for our trip.  Found this cool mini eye spy game on Etsy.  Think I will get it for the trip home since it’s a day flight (14 hours from Brisbane to LA).  Flying over is at night, so fingers crossed there will be some sleeping…at least for the kids if no one else.  If all else fails, there are always movies and walking around the plane.

Having my bi-annual clothing swap this coming Saturday morning.  Siked.  Think we will have more clothes/participants than we did in the Spring.  I’m hoping to find a decent pair of jeans.  Will be making some muffins and my co-host is making sausage balls and limosas (champagne and grapefruit juice).  Yum!

But there are so many things going on, I’ve started running again in a feeble attempt to beat down the stress.  I feel enormously snowed under right now and running is the only way I can clear my head.  Doesn’t get anything done unfortunately, but at least I’m feeling a little better and getting in better shape.  And it’s helping me sleep, which I wasn’t doing a great job of before.

Now, if only I hadn’t bought that bag of cashews at Trader Joe’s, I might actually lose that leftover baby tummy that keeps hanging around.

How do you manage it all when activities and ‘to do’s’ start piling up?

Image by Cindy Funk

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“…what else does a mother have but a heart that has expanded wide as the universe, and can’t be contained, and so it flows out her eyes.”

This is how I feel so much of the time when I look at my boys.  The gratitude for their being is so overwhelming that my eyes fill up.

I was having a heart to heart with one of my best friends yesterday.  It’s often hard being a Mom.  As Moms, we often give up too much of ourselves.  Especially as a single one, which she is.  It’s also hard to remember how fortunate you are sometimes when you are caught up with having a pity party for yourself, for whatever reason, which we both have been lately.  We are both fortunate for different reasons, but comparatively speaking, very fortunate.

I just finished reading The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver.  It’s one of those beautiful books where the characters are real and gracious and a sobering reminder of our often forgotten fortunes.  I like being reminded of this.  Not because it makes me feel better in comparison.  But because it helps me to be grounded and thankful for what I have.  I have so much to be thankful and grateful for and I want to feel that every day so that I can live each day with the open heart and graciousness that it deserves.

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I often feel like I don’t have a lot to contribute to adult conversations since my days are spent playing pretend police and house games, changing poopy diapers, making snacks and lunches, and building with blocks.  This of course all while trying to fit in some emails, dishes, laundry, dinner, a shower (can I get an amen!?) and a dozen other things that fall to me from finances/bills to keeping track of family birthdays and events to just keeping the house moving along.

Then, after the day is done and long after I should have gone to bed, I stumble across this blog of a girl and her bucket list.  She has a GREAT list.  I’m into bucket lists lately and have even started my own.  I started reading some of what is on hers and realize that I have done many of the things on her list.

The feeling of having already done something that is on someone else’s bucket list is pretty heady.  It made me feel as if my life is not so boring after all.

I started to feel quite a bit better about myself.  And I started to think about how often things that I think are no big deal, others think are fantastic and vice versa.  For example, others think it’s great that I have traveled and lived overseas.  To me, it’s no big deal.  But the fact that my friend Anne can sew a dress!  Well, to me, that is amazing.  I can sew on a button.  By hand.  I can’t do sewing machines.  I have broken sewing machines before.  It’s not pretty.  I have wanted to learn to sew for as long as I can remember.   It’s very daunting to me, while to others it’s something they’ve been doing for ages and not a big deal.

So, no matter who you are and what might be on your bucket list, there is a very good chance that something you have done or can do, whether it be to travel, scrapbook, finish college, live in Manhattan, climb a mountain, go camping, sew a dress, knit a scarf, write a story, take a pottery class, save money with coupons, fly somewhere, cook Thanksgiving dinner, get out of debt, become a parent, skydive…whatever…it is more than likely on somebody else’s bucket list.

When I think about it that way, I’ve done and can do some pretty cool stuff.  And I’m guessing the same is true for you.

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But then, there is always a silver lining.  At least it’s not dust.  I think I would hate that more.

On the East Coast of Australia just had a massive red dust storm.  The biggest in 70 years!!  Many cities along the coast are covered in dust.  On Facebook, we have family in Sydney and the Sunshine Coast complaining about dust.

Florida Girl in Sydney blogged about it and below is a photo of the Sydney Opera House.  You can barely see it there is so much dust!

And to think that most Australians would have gone to bed with their windows open, only to wake up with a fine layer of red dust all over everything!  How annoying would that be!

This photo is on www.news.com.au, along with others.

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Oh wait, is that just me?  Well, anyway.  I HAVE to get my shopping done early this year.  We are traveling to Australia for Christmas and I have to PACK all of the gifts.  And still have room to bring them back, plus others.  It’s going to be interesting.

So, first of all…saving MONEY. My family and my husband’s family all decided a few years ago to draw names for the adults.  With my family, for example, it’s me, my husband, my sister and her husband, one of my Aunts, one of my cousins, and my parents.  These are the people I would usually buy for before we did the name drawing, with the exception of my cousin, but she wanted to participate in the draw names, so she’s in!

We all agreed on a dollar amount.  We chose $50.  This way everyone can get one good gift, opposed to a bunch of little things worth ten bucks that you don’t really want anyway.

We use Elfster.  You enter all who are participating and you can also exclude certain people, like husband’s/wives from getting each other, which is cool.  Then, it randomly generates your pick and emails it to you, secretly.  We always keep it a secret who we have.  Though, I always know who my hubby has since I do all the shopping.   It’s also got a place where you can put your wish list for your Santa to see what you want.

We only do Elfster for the adults since everyone wants to buy for all the kids.  So, we save money with our niece and nephews in Australia by buying things here and taking (or mailing) it to Australia.  Good stuff is way cheap here in comparison.  I’m talking WAY less.  Plus, I can get summer stuff on sale, since they are going into summer in a few months.

For our boys, I just keep reminding myself that it’s not HOW MUCH we spend.  Our youngest, doesn’t even know about Christmas, for starters.  And our oldest is happy with even a few things.  If it’s something he can pretend play with, he will be busy for hours.  Honestly, he would probably just be happy with candy, since he rarely gets any.  I just have to remember this and not get caught up in the Christmas buying frenzy.  Luckily, my husband’s family is further along the less is more end of the spectrum than my family.  I’m really looking forward to that this year, actually.

Now, for saving SPACE! Since we have to pack all (or at least most) of our gifts for the kids this year, we have to think SMALL.

So, I’ve been trolling Amazon looking for ideas for small, packable gifts that will still make an impact and be fun for our older son, who is four.  Our youngest (currently 13 months) won’t really care since he still won’t really know what’s going on and will really only want what his brother has anyway.  That’s how he rolls.

Here are some of what I’ve come up with so far:

• LED head lamp – like for camping.  He would LOVE this.
• Wikki stix – are these fun?
• stomp rocket
• Wishing Chair Again by Enid Blyton – I’ve been looking forever for the over sized version of this and finally got one off ebay for a steal!  So siked.  He asks me all the time if I’ve found it yet.  He loves the first one, Adventures of the Wishing Chair.
• Brain Quest -  these are great for planes too
• My Very Own Name book – we already got him this too as he wanted one after seeing the one we got our youngest for his birthday
• Gift voucher for something like a jumping castle place (you know those places that have about 10 jumpy houses).  We have one near our house and he’s always asking to go after going to a birthday party there.
• I want to crochet both my boys stockings before we go, but I am unsure if I can manage it.  I don’t know how to crochet, but my Mom is going to try to teach me this week.

Hmmm, I actually thought I had more ideas than this.  And frankly, I have no clue about what to get our youngest, who will be 15 months by then.

Any ideas ??

You can find more tips of all sorts at Works for Me Wednesday.

Related posts:

1. Spending Less and Earning Extra

They are often on Rove McManus’ show, Rove Live, in Australia…who is also pretty funny in my opinion.  They have recently however been on Jay Leno.  My Mom asked me if I’d seen them.  Admittedly, it’s been a while.  Then, my sister-in-law told me about this particular skit of theirs and so I had to find it.

It’s one of my faves.  This might be bad karma actually posting this…I fear my own boys doing this to me one day.

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1. Family Visits

It really nice when family from Australia comes to visit us in between our own visits over there.  It really makes it so much more bearable and is also so nice for them to see where and how we live and meet our friends and visit again with my family.

Since our oldest son was born four years ago, we have been over to Australia three times.  My in-laws have came over to the U.S. twice and now my sister-in-law.  That is more than some kids see their grandparents that live in a different state, much less a different country!

We feel very fortunate that we are able to do this.  Granted, we probably won’t be able to keep up this same rate, but our traveling will also get that much easier as our boys get older…so, you never know.  We knew when we got married we wanted to make it a priority for our family to do that one day, so that is what we are trying hard to do.

Next week my posting will get back to normal, I think…whatever that is.   I am planning a revamp of my blog too, so stay tuned!

Now, back to fun with my sis-in-law!

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However, as my husband stated a few weeks ago.  It’s like we have a Ferrari and we really only know how to drive an Altima.

So…I had stumbled upon Jessica Sprague’s website a couple of months ago.  She offers all sorts of scrap booking, as well as photography, tips and classes and forums, on her site.  The classes are very reasonably priced and she often offers FREE stuff as well, not to mention all the free tips you can glean from her and others through the posts and forums.

I signed up for Candice Stringham’s Oh Shoot photography class.  Super bargain, if you ask me.  $126 for six weeks of class assignments, tips, feedback, and more.  I’m in my 2nd week and have already learned lots of new things about our new camera and how to use it to take better photos.

So, if you are looking to up the ante on either your scrapbooking or photography skills, definitely check out this site.

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