Touching Your Heart

Hi everyone….it’s Monday again!! Boy time flies! It was once again a nice relaxing weekend at our house. Amanda strolled in early Friday evening and hit the homework almost immediately and worked on it quite a bit Saturday also. Busy girl! I don’t envy her one bit! 

Saturday the weather was yucky so Amanda decided we needed to make some homemade pretzels…we have been wanting to do this for years and just never seem to get it done. (Okay, so they weren’t completely homemade-we did make the dough in the bread machine…that is about as homemade as I get!) I am so glad she thought of it. We even got Mikey in on the action and I have to say they were pretty yummy!!  We started to feel a little cooped up so decided to go on a drive. We just picked a road and headed out. It was fun and relaxing. Amanda headed out for the evening, so hubby and I decided to head down to Deadwood. We left home at about 8 Saturday night and got home about 4am. Yep, 4 am!! Gulp, I know! We tend to do that occasionally. We like to be there when there aren’t quite as many people and when you can actually find a machine to sit down and play. For some reason, the minute we get to Deadwood, I immediately relax. It is like a “mini-mini vacation!” Strange, I know… but it is. I can feel all my cares and concerns slipping away, I don’t watch the clock and I just simply live in the moment. (And the free diet coke and popcorn put the icing on the cake! HA! We won’t talk about the money we tend to lose!)

Sunday, needless to say, was a very nonproductive but absolutely wonderful vegging-and-hiney-on-the-couch sort of day! But, I did manage to make breakfast for everyone, which is a very rare occurrence around here. Mikey is the breakfast maker in the family, so I managed to get in a few “brownie points!”

Amanda headed back to Bismarck this morning and I admit I did sleep in a bit since I didn’t have Emma.   I did manage to get moving and get my house picked up and at least surface-clean. Laundry has been going and I have managed to mark off a few things on my to-do list. I must admit, there is something almost therapeutic about my Mondays off. I love them. I am able to relax a bit on the weekend and then on Monday I get a chance to start the week right by getting myself a bit organized, I am able to kind-of-sort-of get the house back in order, and I get a little “me-time” and by Tuesday I am usually refreshed enough to start a new week.

I think we all need to feel that refreshed feeling sometimes and I think sometimes our bodies even try to tell us when it’s time to take a mini-mini vacation! (we just don’t always listen) We are so busy trying to accomplish everything we possibly can and I think we tend to get hooked on that adrenaline rush from the feeling of accomplishment. What we need to do is slow down and take some time to relax, regroup, and let ourselves just live in the moment and to realize we don’t need to constantly be doing “bigger and better things.” We can have some very special family moments just doing the simple things…like taking a drive and making pretzels

~just me and that’s enough~jodi

Hi everyone!! Once again, hoping you all had a great weekend!! It was a nice quiet, relaxing, kind of lazy weekend around here! But…I was in heaven It had been a busy and mentally tiring week so I was more than ready for some major relaxation and I sure got to do that!

Friday night I ended up getting to do a last minute ASAP transcription for a client for Solamar! It didn’t take long at all but it was another great experience for me and I was so excited and so glad that it worked out. I had some time after that to veg before Amanda came strolling in.

Saturday after I worked my usual MQ hours, Mike, Amanda and I went and worked out.  It felt great and I pushed way harder on the lovely DREADmill than I would have had my daughter not been there to push me.  Thanks dear daughter! None of us were quite ready to head home yet, so we decided to take  a little drive over west of Rhame to check out the wind towers again.  I loaded up on my sunflower seeds and Diet Coke and jumped in the backseat and happily let Amanda and hubby have control of the front. On the way over and on the way back they did their usual game of guessing what song is playing and who the singer is.  (They have done this for as long as Amanda has been able to participate with her dad and they are usually neck and neck as to who knows the most. I, on the otherhand…am ALWAYS the loser…I stink at this game….but I sure love sitting back listening to them. You would think I would be able to keep up after all these years, but I can’t..or maybe I choose not too just so I can listen to them. I like it that way-melts my heart!)  The wind towers look like they are all set up and ready to go, but they aren’t moving yet. Once again, if you haven’t seen them yet, it’s well worth the drive just to go check them out and see how big they really are!  The rest of the day we just pretty much lounged around and then BBQd for supper.

Sunday morning Amanda and I went over to Hettinger for Baby Shay Dschaak’s Benefit.  It looked like they had a great turnout and you can read more about that in the blog I posted at http://helpchelseagive.ning.com/ under Witnessing “Making a Difference” in action…Baby Shay Dschaak’s Benefit. When we got home we lounged a bit more….ahh…heavenly! (Told ya there was a whole lot of relaxing going on!) Don’t think the hubby enjoyed it near as much as we did, but he survived and did keep busy cooking in the kitchen!! Amanda had to head back to Bismarck so hubby decided that we would go with her as far as Dickinson, take her out for supper at Wendy’s (we LOVE that place..and hubby and I had been craving it after seeing commercials earlier in the week). We also did a quick spurt of shopping at Walmart and then we sent her on her way and we headed back home.

On the way home I was thinking about the weekend and what I realized is that though we had a pretty laid back weekend, we did a few things that we have done with Amanda ever since she was little.  We worked out together (she used to always go with us to the rec center when she was little and she loved it), father and daughter got to play their little radio game (as I said they have done this for ages), and we took a last minute road trip to Dickinson for supper and a little shopping (we used to do that quite often before she hit the teenage-wanna-hang-with-my-friends age).  The only difference is that this time at the end of the day we went our separate ways instead of coming home together….but it is all good…..and the way it should be right now in all of our lives, but it is so nice and heartwarming to this ole Ma (and Pa too) to know that though life is changing for all of us in so many ways….there are still a few things that are the same.

So, this week I leave you wishing you a little bit of nostalgia in remembering how things used to be….but yet how they just might be the same!

~just me and that’s enough~ jodi

Hi everyone! As most of you know by my multiple posts on Facebook this weekend, my daughter was home!! Yay for me! She got home Friday night and left this morning. Friday we had a little bit of time before we were heading out for supper with friends, so I asked her help in figuring out how to get my foot pedal working in sync with my laptop for transcribing and downloading the audio files. In no time at all she had it figured out for me and yes…I took notes!! (DETAILED!) Thanks dear daughter! I was close, I had the right idea on what I needed to do! Anyway, we headed out shortly after that for a wonderful supper with friends and had a great time laughing, eating and catching up!

Saturday I worked for a bit and hubby went and helped a friend do some shingling. (I know lots of you can relate as many of us got nailed by that wind/hailstorm last fall and have some work to do this spring! The Tivey’s included!!)  My dear daughter decided we needed to dig out some photos and frames to work on that I had been whining about for quite some time but never seeming to get down to it! So, we spent the afternoon working on those, which I am happy to report we made great progress. Not quite done, but I am proud of us and so thrilled she made me work on it (with her direction of course!). We had many fun quick visits from Robin throughout the day!  Mikey and I went to work out and while we were gone, my amazing daughter once again used her computer knowledge and was able to get my printer installed on my laptop. I had tried and tried and had given up….and she finally got it. She worked at it for quite a while too, but it eventually worked for her! YAY!!! We just vegged and took it easy the rest of the evening…pretty low key…let’s put it this way, there were 4 of us here, and 1 was on the computer in the living room watching a movie, 1 was doing crossword puzzles, 1 was playing cards on my phone and I was reading magazines!! It was wonderful!! Sometimes silence is a comfortable silence and sometimes a not so comfortable silence, but that evening was heavenly! All together, but yet doing our own thing. Sound familiar?? LOL

Sunday Amanda volunteered to work at ENT for a few hours, Mikey kicked into gear and worked on washing Amanda’s car and my car (THANK YOU HUBBY) and I was very lazy! Putzed around the house a bit but didn’t accomplish a whole lot. Kubista’s came over to visit in the afternoon for a bit so it was great to catchup with them. We once again spent the evening eating supper and relaxing/vegging in front of the tv. Yep, I am the first to admit I love my couch/tv time!!!

Today~ I had Emma this morning for a bit before preschool again (priceless time as always) and Amanda went with to take her to preschool and then headed out shortly after saying goodbye to her dad. I putzed on my house, (and am still putzing), trying to regroup from the weekend…I am learning to let things go on the weekend and use Monday’s as my house catch up day! My daughter has taught me to slow down and LIVE life….and what I mean by that is she makes me do those things I always say I don’t have time for, whether it be working on photos, scrapbooking, or simply taking the time to visit with friends and family. I am blessed I had my second Team Call for SolamarMarketing today with Jessica and Chelsea! I just love those calls! There is so much to learn from them and their energy and ideas are endless! This ole lady is going to have to turn it up a notch or two to keep up with these two! Mikey was working out of town, so went and had lunch with Steph, Robin and the girls and then came home and have been attempting to continue to work on the house..but am easily distracted with the blog today and familiarizing myself with some of Chelsea’s sites and work!

On that note, the floors still need vacuuming, I still need to dust, the to-do list has lots of things NOT marked off yet, so I best get moving….but, if something should come up along the way, say a visit from a loved one, or an email that catches my attention…I can guarantee the housework will wait and I will choose to LIVE LIFE instead

~just me and that’s enough~ jodi

Hello everyone!! Hoping you all had a fun-productive-weekend! I know I did…and it left me sore and tired…but a GOOD sore and tired! Yardwork…need I say more?

Anyway, Friday night hubby and I went and grabbed Pa and went for supper at Eat’s N Treat’s of course..yummy! Then we decided to take a “quick drive” over to see the wind towers west of Rhame. If you haven’t been over to see them, it’s worth a quick drive to go see them. It is so amazing to see those things so up close and to think we have them right here! Our “quick” trip turned into a drive over to Baker to see if Runnings was still open…which we found out it wasn’t once we got there. However, it was a nice relaxing drive. Thanks for hanging with us Pa!

Saturday I worked my usual shift, then hubby and I went and worked out…gulp-had to jump rope again..ugh. I am not kidding…if you haven’t jumped rope in a while, you need to try it. It is NOT as easy as it looks. My workout for the day was 5 minutes run treadmill followed by 5 minutes jumping rope, repeat for 30 minutes! Good Lord!! We then came home and got everything ready to work on the yard….3 hours later the yard was mowed, thatched, thatching picked up, and flower beds dug up. It was a perfect day to work on the yard and of course my visit from Robin and Olivia game me a nice quick break! Mikey headed up to Dickinson with Pa to get a new mower and I ventured out to Kubista’s and Vinci and I got the potatoes planted! Yea! She thinks we might have some by the Fourth of July if we are lucky! Needless to say, after all of that I came home and showered and vegged the rest of the night. I was whipped!

Sunday we headed over to Pa’s to help him with his yard…wasn’t as nice of a day, but we had fun and got the job done! And, it was extra time with Pa, so we always like that. Diane P and I met up to work on our project (thanks again by the way to all of you for your great advice…keep it coming!!) and then I came home and took a nap! Yep, you know how I love my naps! And, spent the rest of the evening vegging…..yep, in love with my couch!

Today has been pretty productive indoors, not as much as I had hoped, but have gotten sidetracked a bit. Had Emma this morning, went and had coffee with hubby at work and then came home and worked on the TouchingYourHeart.net site. So excited about that! And…more great news….my search for a different job/career/something to supplement my current job is going extremely well, better than I could have hoped for. More on that soon!! Now off to finish the spaghetti pie I am working on for supper, work on bills, go through paperwork, go workout, and then…who knows! I am guessing probably another date with my couch! 

At any rate, I am refreshed and ready to go after the weekend of hard work and fresh air…and with the launch of our new blog and a positive step for my career, I am doing a few happy spazzy dances and walking with a bit of a lighter step…and find myself really looking forward to a new week! Wishing the same for you!

~just me and that’s enough~ jodi