If you could compare motherhood to formal education, you might say that about eight months ago I joined some extra-curricular activities.

I committed myself to these activities with the hopes that I would impress people, or gain their respect. A great part of my insecurities stem from my perception of other’s opinion of me.

A marvelous thing has occurred over the course of my extracurricular journey. I found a new self-confidence arising, which was exactly what I had hoped for. But a couple weeks ago I realized something very critical. I realized that my self-assurance didn’t come from the respect and admiration I had been seeking. To be honest I have no idea if my peers view me any differently knowing the new ways I spend my time.

My confidence came from knowing that I was capable of hard things. It came from knowing that I had set goals and accomplished them. And the beauty of it was that I didn’t have to consciously tell myself those things, I just knew them, and it changed the way I felt about myself in wonderful way.

I’m still a long way from not needing outside approval. But progress…

Yesterday I ran my second 10k. I cut ten minutes from my original time and I was on top of the world. I am not a psychologist. But I believe that you can read book after book about self-respect but nothing will really change inside you the way that going out and doing something hard, and then doing it again will change you.

So whether it is putting together a delicious meal, taking a yoga class or volunteering somewhere the sacrifice it takes to get you there will be worth the emotional reward. In the words of Dr. Laura:

“Get off your butt and go sign up for kick boxing.”

It seems that we are reaching a milestone in our marriage. It isn’t the “Seven-Year Itch” (not quite there yet) or a major anniversary (not there yet either). It is what I have creatively named “THE 5 YEAR APPLIANCE BREAKDOWN”.

When we got married we outfitted our house through one of two sources. The first was the generosity of our friends (and mostly our parents’ friends) who bought us the obligatory appliance. (Some were good quality, some were not.)

The second source was hand-me downs. It seems that we have reached a milestone where our poor quality gifted blender and especially our garage sale vacuum are going the way of the … landfill?

I’m not sure where we got this iron, I think it was Richard’s from his bachelor days. But you can see the brown spots? That is from when he (somewhat recently but too long ago for me to admit we haven’t been ironing) dropped it on the floor and the carpet fibers melted to it. I made the mistake of trying to use this and stained Cameron’s white church shirt with brown spots. Dang it.
In addition to the smoking blender, the vacuum that doesn’t suck, and the melted-carpet iron our dvd player recently died forcing us to READ for entertainment. And while we can continue to have poorly vacuumed floors and wrinkly clothing, we can not survive without a dvd player.

Yes, I am shamelessy admitting that the dvd player was the last of our electronics to sub-perform and the first to be replaced.

Last night Eli was caught red-handed coloring our new floors with black crayon. He was punished, lectured, etc. I was telling my friend who was here to witness the incident that Cameron “never did stuff like that”.
It was forgotton for the evening and this morning Cameron made a confession. “I colored on the floor.” I was a little surprised, because as I mentioned Cameron has never been the destructive child. But not surprised at all because if in fact Cameron was coloring on the floor first, of course Eli would take over the task when abandoned by Cameron – because Eli copies his every move. And Eli has no inhibitions with regard to vandalism.

You know, the kind of email that makes you want to not even OWN them. But I do own them, because I owe the survival of my children to them for making these episodes relatively painless and forgivable and making me a much less angry mother.

I had to laugh at the pictures because Cameron is wearing his boots.

Oh well, it’s only Utah we’re dealing with here.

If you want to donate please contact me through the email address on my blog. If you live in the Treasure Valley I will be happy to come by and pick up.

If not, and you still want to donate I will email my address to you.

I won’t get on my hands and knees to beg for a penpal. But I will get on my hands and knees to beg for your help, if I have to. My promise to you is that I will make my best effort to personally photograph the recipients of your donations and either send them to you or post them here.

To check legitimacy of my cause go here.

** First of all, Venice and Vienna are practically the same city, right? (Okay, wrong, but there isn’t an Austrian restaurant in Boise that I am aware of.)

**Second- those heels either gave me tendonitis or exacerbated tendonitis I already had, resulting in my inability to train for a certain goal I have. Anyway, the heels have been banished, probably until next Christmas.

My generous older brother Bryan and his wife Brit combined Christmas and birthday gifts for Richard and I this year in order to really spoil us with a night on the town. A Night in Vienna, actually. Well, not the REAL Vienna. They gave us a gift certificate to an Italian restaurant in downtown Boise, Gino’s, and tickets to the Boise Philharmonic’s performance of “A Night in Vienna”. The performance was three Viennese inspired compositions by Mozart, Schubert and Shoenberg.

what odd faces we are making…

Our experiences in the Morrison Center have lead us to believe that “anything goes” when it comes to the dress code. But we decided to dress up and doing so made the evening feel important and romantic. And it was nice to get further use out of my black party dress and those incredible heels.

It was really a wonderful evening. The food was delicioso and the violin soloist was enchanting. It is nice to appreciate the arts occasionally and feel like there is more to me than worn out tennis shoes and jeans stained by grubby toddler hands.

Although, at about 10:00 I was dying for those tennis shoes…

When I was a kid I was dying for a certain pair of shoes. They were KangaRoos. These shoes had a special feature, they had a small pocket (or pouch if you will) on the side. Now, as an adult, I am not so sure what was so exciting about that little pocket but I was dying for those shoes. When it came to be end of summer, school shopping time my dear mother let me get these shoes. I put various small things in that little pouch like a penny and my CTR ring. I loved those shoes.

The other day I was doing a little shopping on oldnavy.com and there was a special going on. Any purchase from Piperlime got you free shipping on your items from old navy. Shipping is $7 so I figured it was equivalent to a $7 off coupon at Piperlime. When I saw these shoes, and they were on sale, I was sold.

Eli is so lucky. In fact, I am surprised at his level of appreciation considering he isn’t even two years old. He loves them. Come on by and he’ll show them to you with pride. Truly my son.