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mandimormon-blog · 7 years

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5 To-Do Lists, You Can’t Live Without

Where have I been? Well, blogging world, I’ll tell you where I’ve been… not here. Not here because a few shorts week ago, I acquired an adorable little notebook. In my handy dandy notebook (yes, I’ve used this Blue’s Clues reference half a dozen times, *yawn*) I make to-do lists. Plural. I’m absolutely obsessed with to-do lists. I like the sense of accomplishment you get from placing a check-mark on the paper next to the job completed. If I’m having a good day, I’ll even put a circle around that check-mark. If my day isn’t as positive, I will scribble the words out on the line ferociously, while scrunching up my nose.

I had read once to avoid becoming overwhelmed or stressed, your to-do list should consist of three things. Then after accomplishing those three things, make a new list of just three things. Homie don’t play that game. Homie is an overachiever.

At the beginning of the week, I had roughly 32 items on my “priority to-do list” and if you’re wondering why I’ve coined this a thing it’s because those items have to be done, there’s not waiting until the last minute, I need to rock them out. Sometimes I’ll create an “Advanced Planning to-do List” and I’ll jump around and give myself a window of completion. Procrastination eats me alive. I’m not saying I never procrastinate, I do, A LOT. I’m just saying it’s unnatural for me to procrastinate without having that feeling you get that’s kind of like impending doom.

Oh, allow me to add, on my beautifully printed “priority to-do list” I added a small box in my right column and added the header, “ALLEN” to it. That’s my husband’s name. I created him a priority list, too, so he didn’t feel left out, of course. I will blame it on the fact he told me he wouldn’t buy me a saw. He doesn’t trust me with one. But I always have this puffed up, I-can-take-on-the-world-feeling when I leave Hobby Lobby, so I requested one. My request was denied.

Blogging has fallen off of my Sunday Priority List, even considering Sunday is my “day of rest” that I usually do a bare minimum if anything. My computer has changed the method in which it uploads my camera roll, now, too. So, the ease no longer exists. Instead it throws all of my photos onto the date they were captured and since I can’t remember was happened 24 minutes ago, I’m not having much luck remembering what happened almost three weeks ago.

I do, however, have one little note in my iPhone. It reads:

Before my oldest daughter, Reis, tells everyone (that would be her fifth grade class and “squad”…. A tennis instructor, piano teacher, grandmother, Sunday School Teacher, church friends, the mail lady, anyone who happens to be near her at the moment of remembrance) about me. Yes, me.. her mother, the idiot. I thought I would beat her to the punch. (But I didn’t.)

I still have my prepositions memorized. Yes, I can basically rap or auctioneer those darn words, at lightning speed. Over the week of the 15th, I had a great time helping my fifth grader out with memorizing those words, impressing myself mostly, due to my impeccable memorization skills.

One evening, immediately after studying, just before saying our family prayer together, I was still jotting things down in my handy-dandy notebook, and as I was doing this I reiterated the fact I still had these words memorized from 7th Grade, Mrs. Smith’s class. Then, I tried doing the math.

On the bottom of the page, I scribbled out to the side 2017 minus 1999 jotted my answer down and said to her, without the slightest hesitation, I blurted, “See! 28 years ago.”

Instantly, from across the hallway in my other daughter’s room I hear, “Wow. You really can’t do Math. Can you?” (That was my husband, obviously eavesdropping on my conversation with my oldest daughter.)

Reis began laughing uncontrollably (seriously), “Yeah, Mom! 28 years ago you were two. Did you memorize them then?” The laughter continued.

I’m pretty sure I stared at her like that emoji with the line straight across, eyes open. :- |

“I meant 18.” I said with a little bit of attitude because no one likes to be picked on. Am I right? Still, no one in my household cared and they cared even less that I still had in my memory bank from 18 years ago, every darn one of those prepositions. They only cared that I couldn’t subtract.

After the laughter began to die down, Reis asked me to remove my paper from my notebook. I ripped it out and handed it to her. She carefully folded the paper in half and put it into her messenger bag. “I’m taking this to school tomorrow to prove how horrible you are at Math.”

It may be 12:59 a.m. and I’m writing a blog in the first hour of Wednesday, but let’s face it, with my to-do lists, and our two-week Spring Break, I haven’t had a lot of extra free or me time. I hear from a lot of strangers, “Two weeks for Spring Break? Wow, that must be nice!”

Ummm…..

I love my children, I love them to the moon and back. I would do anything for my children. I like to support them in all of their endeavors and be there for them as their cheerleader. I love to have teaching moments with them and observe them. Each of them are so different and unique but I love them all with my whole heart.

However, a two-week Spring Break without any real travel plans and with Mother Nature’s temperament has been a challenge, to say the least. Sure, if you’re sitting on a beach somewhere south of here where it’s 20 degrees + warmer with your children, I’m sure that sunshine is adding a sparkle to your day. The sun did not even come out today, not once, and yesterday it came out for a millisecond.

Our schedule is just off. It’s off because if we begin getting something together, (which believe it or not with only 5 days left of the 13 day break, we are… finally) it will be back to school, again.

The first day or two, our youngest two did about 16 laps in 3 minute around the couch and bar. Did I mention Jude had his “ninja stick” in his hand? Yep. I didn’t know who’s eye was gonna get it that day. Remi? Jude? Mine? Who knew?

Productivity was what was needed to keep our house in order. I don’t mean watching six hours non-stop of Stampy Cat on YouTubeKids. If you have younger kids you may know exactly what I’m talking about. The obnoxious laugh? The Minecraft tutorial? This wasn’t an option for me in my childhood. The closest thing to that I had was when I was in upper elementary and it was called a Giga Pet I got from KB Toys, ironically on the Village Mall where the Humane Society sets up shop, now. My Giga Pet died all of the time, if it lived longer than a day, it was a miracle from above.

This past weekend, we did a little inventory magic. In Remi’s bedroom sits my 3 foot tall Barbie doll house from when I was younger. Inside of this house and a canvas hamper specifically for toys, were Barbies. Lots and lots of Barbies. I told both girls, they were to remove all of the dolls, and figure out which ones they didn’t play with or would like to donate. Then they were to count the dolls, and select 20 of their favorites to keep out. The rest would be stored inside a tote and they could change them out, during the year. Lo and beyond, the girls counted 62 Barbies (not even including the baby or Kelly-sized dolls). 62. We aren’t excessive buyers. You have to believe me when I tell you that.

They’ve acquired several as gifts and even more from my mother. She allowed the girls to take home dolls that were mine when I was a little girl. I loved my dolls and played with them for hours and hours, probably because Stampy Cat wasn’t an option, like I said. My sister and I each had our own doll house in our basement, and I remember plugging in my AM/FM Radio / Alarm / CD Player, and they would have dance competitions. I usually would have them perform to “Movie Luv”. I have a feeling anyone reading this will enjoy this playlist from Movie Luv:

1. (I've Had) The Time Of My Life (Dirty Dancing) - Bill Medley And Jennifer Warnes

2. A Whole New World (Aladdin's Theme) (Aladdin) - Peabo Bryson And Regina Belle

3. Take My Breath Away (Top Gun) - Berlin

4. Colors Of The Wind (Pocahontas) - Vanessa Williams

5. I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) {Benny And Joon} - The Proclaimers

6. I'd Die Without You (Boomerang) - P.M. Dawn

7. Gangsta's Paradise (Dangerous Minds) - Coolio

8. Stay (I Missed You) (Reality Bites) - Lisa Loeb And Nine Stories

9. Unchained Melody (Ghost) - The Righteous Brothers

10. It Must Have Been Love (Pretty Woman) - Roxette

11. I Don't Wanna Fight (What's Love Got To Do With..) - Tina Turner

12. Can You Feel The Love Tonight (The Lion King) - Elton John

This was actually one of the first CD’s I ever owned. I remember going to a slumber party and listening to LeeAnn Rimes “Blue” and Spice Girls “Wannabe” and I begged my parents for a CD player. I needed this kind of music in my life. I even remember staring at the square compact disc case wrapped in plastic, after shopping at Hills. Life was grand. I was probably close to Reis’s age, at that time. The closest thing I had to an iPhone or iPod was Dream Phone, the board game, with the hot pink “Night at the Roxbury” style phone.

I will refrain from doing the math to tell you exactly how long ago that was. But, in 2017, my daughters, Reis and Remi decided to each select 10 dolls to equal the 20 keepers. They had no problems whatsoever with parting, temporarily with the other dolls. This made a world of difference in decluttering, too. I highly recommend it, girlmoms. Out of the organizational patterns in my brain, I kept receiving the same prompting over and over, again, to designate a specific number of hangers for their closets, too. X # of hangers for pants, and X # of hangers for tops, so then it would force minimalism upon them. But I decided, slowly… very slowly. Plus, their closets don’t even look bad, at the moment. I think it’s because they panicked when it was super warm once or twice in February and packed up their winter clothing and drug out all of their summer things. Summer apparel has much less material than winter.

Anyway, along with this purging/de-cluttering effort, I went to the local hardware store and grabbed every paint sample I could see with colors I was drawn to. In that same afternoon, (this was the afternoon on their last day of school before Spring Break) I choose colors for my living room, dining room, bathroom, hall, and stairwell. I also picked up some prepping items and paint supplies.

My husband is incredibly particular about prep work. I am not. That may seem contradictory since I’m a list person, but wall painting is one thing I’ve never been a perfectionist about, at least until this day. My sweet, incredibly particular about prep work husband had pulled his back out on Sunday, the day before this day. Therefore, if I wanted the paint done in a lickity-split kind of way, I needed to help as much as I could. Naturally, when he gets injured I will give him the commission to do something hard to challenge his skills. That’s exactly how it went down. He pulled his back out and I said it looks like a great time to paint the entire house. It’s honestly strategic, believe me. He began to one-time (or spackle) the divots and holes in the drywall. One word, “countless”. Let’s see, we moved into this home in 2013, I believe. You know the drill, you do the math. In 2013 my children were even younger - sticks and stones and brooms and nails driven by mini-hammers, you name it, it’s been repelled or slammed against our drywall. After my husband and I had finished spackling, our son, Jude, said, “It looks like the walls have polka dots or the pox. Are we leaving them that way?”

I picked up some cheap sandpaper at Dollar General, but didn’t really work on it much until the next day. But as I did the first two spots and they were ehhh.. so-so, with that sandpaper. My husband came waltzing through the front door with a miracle. They call it, “a sander”. Maybe to you it’s ridiculous I didn’t know what one was or had never thought about using one, but to me this was one of those “Aha!” moments. My husband advised me to cease using the sandpaper sheets, and to use this tool. At first, I asked him if I could potentially chop my fingers off. He assured me I couldn’t but to keep it flat. He showed me and handed it over. I fell in love. He left, again, but when he returned, I showed him what a great job I did and even in the places we hadn’t spackled that felt mildly uneven or bumpy, I hit those, too. This tool was the most amazing thing and my walls were almost new (without the new paint). I told him I was so good at it that he could hire me. We’d be a local-brand of Fixer Upper. I added that I could only use this tool though, because that’s where my talent lies, and I don’t really feel like I’d enjoy working a full eight-hour day, but if he needed the image, I was in and could probably put in a solid 1-3 hours, depending on whether or not it was running season.

I did get a stellar half workout in with my roller. I’m short-ish or average, I think, for a female. Even with the extension on the roller, I had to calf raise to reach the top of the walls where it intersected with the line that my husband cut in along the ceiling. Even though he cut that in and all I did was roll everything, I still managed to get paint on the ceiling in three places.

While I painted and cleaned, I decided my oven needed dissected. Thank you, Pinterest, you are the best ever! I found a pin describing how to clean in between those glass panels – after taking the oven door apart (no joke) I was about to scrub that grease off, and my oven looks like new. I also allowed a baking soda, salt, vinegar mix to coat the inside overnight and voila! It looks like new!

I also made an executive decision to repaint my dining room chairs… oh and reupholster them. Owned it. Seriously, what a different a little fabric makes.

Anyway, the entire Operation Cottage Renovation was completed in just 2.5 short days. Just in time, because on Monday, we held an Ice Cream Social + Family Night in our little cottage, and forty people showed up. That’s a lot to cram under one tiny roof, but it was so great!

You know I love to plan parties. That’s just one of my favorite things to do in life. I’m serious. Unfortunately, Covington isn’t exactly the target market for that kind of expertise, so I just plan a lot of parties for my family and my children.

Pottery Barn Kids happens to have a free ice cream party printable set. I recycled my turquoise blue strawberry baskets, found 4 sets of ice cream bowls for $.88/set, which is incredible and not to mention the frugality of reusing those suckers, over and over, again. My husband and I went out on Saturday night, which wasn’t the norm and I’ll discuss why in like two seconds. During our date, we ate (we always eat, food is life) and we got party supplies, those being toppings for ice cream sundaes. Anything you could imagine, really, it was great. We also snatched up supplies for our “Family Night” portion of the event. Wooden sticks, rods, pipe cleaners, foam blocks, playdoh, duct tape, etc. Right now you may be wondering what on earth we were doing with those materials and why, and I’ll tell you.

Like a broken record, on Monday nights it’s Family Home Evening. Since many that aren’t of our faith don’t understand that terminology we called it, “Family Night”. My husband explained to our large group, we do this as a family to build unity, every week. He also described our evening as being a “Family Home Evening… on steroids”.

We left out the formality of it all and had our Elders (Young Boy Missionaries 19+) explain a little bit about the Book of Mormon. Many people don’t understand it’s a history, like history of any textbook or journals, ancient writings, in this case – those of the people in the Americas.

We briefly read in the Book of Alma (which is from the Book of Mormon) about what Captain Moroni did to prepare his cities for hard times. In this particular evening, we were focusing on one of the preparations which was “fortifying” or strengthening their cities. This included building a large fortress with trenches and defense mechanisms for that time period, even though they were not currently under attack. This prepared them for when they did fall under attack, the sight alone of these beefed up fortresses caused the enemy to retreat. You may be thinking, nice story, get on with the point.

That point is how it’s important to reflect on what we can do to build ourselves up and strengthen ourselves while things are smooth sailing, to endure the harder times. If we don’t prepare, we’ll fall apart.

My commission to the children and families in my home that evening was to build their own fortress to defend themselves. Object lessons are my favorite with small children. Seriously, they’re fantastic.

As soon as everything was cleaned up and the house resumed to normal, I began “listing” the next actions in my life. One of those being creating a Ninjago Birthday Invitation and to evaluate my shopping list for this upcoming party – can I just say, It’s gonna be great?!

Jude is highly involved in his party preparation. An example of this would be evidenced by the fact that when I asked him what he wanted to have as a party theme, he quickly answered, “Ninjago” and didn’t back down. No biggie. I honestly thought it would be Lego Batman since that’s been all of the hype this year, or even Minions or Minecraft, but nope. Ninjago and after extensive Pinterest research, I’m ready to execute this plan.

I showed him my board and ran ideas past him. He then took my cell phone from me and began pinning what he liked to his board labeled, “Jude Party”. I didn’t send his cake request to the cake decorator, it was a three dimensional gold Lego Ninjago Lloyd, but I did send another super cool one he liked that was still pretty extravagant.

I’ll be working on crafting my husband a kimono-type ensemble to he can be Sensai. This age group I’m guessing will be slightly squirmy so we will plan game after game and backup games. Jude has requested his buddies attend Ninja Training and unlock their potential to be Masters of Spinjitzu.

This is great because there’s only like 300 pins about Ninja training games for parties. I’m loving the “fire” jumping, hoop crossing, plank walking, brick wall breaking, shirikin tossing, balsa wood breaking obstacle course. Can you tell I’m stoked? This only downside to all of this is planning it on a dime. For real though, usually, I buy here and there and everywhere and then my husband will say, “Hey… you only have X more to spend.” This time, from the get-go I’ve had a budget. Budgeting is SO HARD for the compulsiveness inside of me.

How have I been surviving this long Spring Break? Can I just say it’s nothing like summer because in summer, we go to the pool, daily. As far as we’ve gone is Conner Prairie and that finally happened yesterday (Tuesday). Another Spring Break survival hacks for non-travelers would be seeing a movie, twice. I went to see Beauty and the Beast on Friday night with my mother and we met up with my sister. It was a great time and I loved this movie! It was my scout-out of the movie, of course, I had to make sure it was child appropriate (due to reviews I’d read which were completely off), and not scary. So, while I watched it with my sister and mother, my children watched the animated version for the first time, ever. I know… parenting fail. I grew up in love with animated Disney movie classics and my kids have watched maybe ¼ of them. We’re working on it, though.

Over the weekend my oldest daughter and her bestie had convinced us in order to keep the house looking nice and neat, before our ice cream social, we should go to see Beauty and the Beast. Actually, they brought this up in front of my mother and of course, grandma saves the day with the funds needed to attend this movie. I ran and cleaned up and set up what I could that day, then the girls and I left for Champaign to see it. The boys ran errands for us and did their own thing. Jude didn’t even like the half of the animated version he watched so he wasn’t all about seeing it, again.

We were so confused as to why the movie was so expensive, but realized when we arrived it was being it was being shown in the BIG D theater. Of course, we climbed to the tippy top of this ginormous theater. I honestly felt winded after coasting up the steps a couple of times. I may run but my body denies inclines at all costs. There were only about four other movie-goers in the theater with us, which was amazing, too. My favorite kind of movie, restaurant, amusement park, grocery store, is one with only a handful of people in it with me.

I mentioned Conner Prairie, oh yes. Today, we traveled to Fishers for an interactive historical tour. We learned about Indians, Pioneers, the Civil War, tested out the new Treehouse exhibit which is marvelous. I asked my husband to observe the structure and examine it closely, because I feel the Covington City Park would benefit from a version of that. Maybe not four stories, but I do love the height. It was the best part! Of course, Jude would tell you the best part had to be the rifle range, where he learned how to handle his “bayonet”, march, and fight in a battle.

All of the kids enjoyed that at least until we did the hot air balloon. Yep, we did it. We’ve seen it there time and time, again, but this time it was checked and circled off of the bucket list.

It was a toss-up between whether my husband would go up or I would go up. He voted me, and I voted him and somehow he convinced be that I should go, although two things were very big deal breakers for me. Those were 1.) This was opening day of the outdoor experience, meaning our hot air balloon pilot was out of practice for months. 2.) It was windy. I visualize that cord being severed and us flying away never to be seen or heard from again.

However, all three of my children were game to go up and excited to the moon, so was I going to risk not flying to the moon with them? Nope… I went. I went and when the middle disappeared and we continued to ascend up to the 377 feet, taller than even the statue of liberty’s torch, I began to feel like I shouldn’t make any sudden moves. Of course, my darling children had expressions of pure delight and excitement while I stood there reminding them every 4.5 seconds to hold on to the sides, while each of my feet held pressure against the walls to immobilize me, while I clinched my teeth down. I did look around and take a few photos and a video, but I felt like we were going to blow over sideways, so really what was going through my brain was how I was going to instruct my three children. Another family was up in the sky with us, and the pilot had told them to look around, we only would be at the maximum height for 3 minutes before descending. They all seemed to gravitate toward us, making the balloon off balance, I bit down on my tongue to fight off the urge to scold them to get back to their own side and quit attempting to tip us out of the basket. Finally, we were going back down but near the ground it was described to us that our balloon was doing a “pendulum” effect. It began rocking and not landing steady and I prepared my mind for evacuation, but worst case scenarios considered, they weren’t needed.

Thankfully… we made it and I needed a timeout from that moment forward. Actually, I really just needed some lunch. Hypoglycemia gets the best of me, from time to time, creating short-temperedness and attitude. Omission from any meal or delay isn’t good for any member of our party.

I feel pretty satisfied after updating the blog and this wasn’t on a list, because the list it exists on is a mental or unwritten list. Just like the Pineapple Upside down cake I made my husband, last night, wasn’t on the list. So, I guess I don’t have to use a ‘list’ for everything as it had seemed. #talented < I’m totally kidding.

I hope my readers enjoy the memes. I stumbled across a fantastic application and I had to test them out in a very non-serious way.

While my husband and I attended a Youth Temple Trip, the Saturday before embarking on additional busyness including my cousin’s bowling birthday party which was loads of fun for everyone, I received a couple of impressions.

I was flipping through Doctrine and Covenants and randomly reading a scripture verse or two, and I happened to stumble across this one:

Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing, and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God; D&C 109:8

This is in my top five scripture verses. It also commits me to making this list my new checklist. Am I working on these things? How is my evaluation of myself and my home? New month, new goals.

That’s what I love about life. We are constantly reinventing ourselves. A better version of who we are, continual growth, gaining wisdom from mistakes and failed experimentation. Failure gives us exactly what we need to brush ourselves off, jump up, and move forward.

In fact, busyness is not what it’s all about. I’ve asked my husband, on a few different occasions recently, how do I become less busy? Less commitments? Dropping tasks? More efficient delegation? Saying no? Busyness doesn’t allow time for the Spirit to prompt you, for inspiration to come, to be present with family or children, I know for sure we weren’t designed to live life in the fast lane 95% of the time, as evidenced by those mini-panic attacks or rapid speech that accompany semi-meltdown moments.

So sure, I may have elaborated on five different lists (maybe even more, I lost count), but I’m really not wanting to achieve some sort of level of mastery for being busy. Even looking at the word busy is annoying. It looks like “bus” with a “y” it seems to have letters missing. Probably because they were too busy, too.

The list I’m keeping, going into the month of April, is that of D&C 109:8 - the goal I’m creating is Peace, Meditation, and Prayer. How will I get out of the habit of being busy or having less commitments? One at a time, I’ll finish what obligations I’ve begun, without taking on additional commitments (that are of a part-time or full-time nature or require multiple tasks per week). I’ll make sure to evaluate my progress to see if it’s improving me, as an individual.

I am going to make a commitment to going to bed early. The past couple of days, I’ve had roughly 4 hours of sleep, per night. When I opened this blog draft up, I mentioned to my best friend I didn’t even know what it says because I was so tired while writing it. It may be like reading a foreign language.

One last commitment -- this should honestly go without saying, seeing the good or positive in every situation and every person, I encounter. I’m extremely grateful General Conference is this coming weekend so I can be inspired and my questions can be answered. Now, I think I may go sit out in the beautiful sunshine. Namaste!

#LDS #mormonmommy #mothering #parenting #busy #springbreak #life

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