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Jake
Jake is taking a nice amount of downtime this week. A rare vacation and well deserved. Which also means some wonderful downtime for me since he will be around more to help and be with the kids. It’s been so nice to have him around more than usual during the holidays and I am happy to have that continue for a bit.
karen
This week is about new beginnings for me. New projects. New leaps. My word, free, is something I plan to keep in the forefront of my mind every single day this year. I want to be productive but I also want to prioritize. Health and family are first and foremost this year. I also want to compartmentalize my days a bit so I focus better and more purposefully on a task and am not jumping from task to task too often. I also have to get going on my CHA samples. Very excited to be going alone this year so it will be much less stressful.
david
David goes back to school this week. He’s had a long time off and the routines have mostly gone haywire so we’ll see how much adjustment time he will need to get back on track. We have been reading quite a bit during his vacation and we did a lot of activities together but most of it has honestly been spent on the computer but he still writes his gratitude journal and does all of his chores so I let him play as much as he wants.
nathaniel
Nathaniel is all about the choo-choo lately. The first word out of his mouth when he wakes up is choo-choo and same when I go to get him from his nap. If we put anything else on besides Thomas, he throws himself on the ground and cries. He doesn’t even watch it but it must be on. If he’s sitting in his chair to eat, he will watch it and then get really upset during the sadder scenes. I have to calm him down and tell him it’s going to be ok. I am not sure how to handle this just yet but I am going to be patient and work with him. David went through a phase watching Baby Einstein just like this and then it went away so I am not freaking out just yet.
Us Right Now is a weekly project for 2011. You can read more about it here.
Hi Karen,
Happy New Year! Thank you for your kind words too! I’m feeling pretty good about 2011 as well. One thing I forgot to thank you for yesterday that you inspired me to do is to get myself into the pictures too. I’m always behind the camera, and I see myself in every picture that I take (do you get that sense too?) but no one else does. So I made a point of having a couple pictures taken of me on Christmas, and I will continue to do so. I already knew how important that is, but thank you for reminding me! Also, I love that you are doing family pictures regularly too, trust me that they will be very meaningful for all of you later.
My first husband died unexpectedly when he was very young. We were divorced by then, but very amicably, so we were all together frequently. Anyways, after he died, I realized that there is only ONE picture of him and I and our daughter together. One. And the family that is my husband and I, my (step)sons and daughter, I only have one picture of the 5 of us together, other than on our wedding day, and my son’s wedding day 19 years later! I don’t know how I let that happen! Now my son and daughter in law are divorcing, (and not so amicably) but I have them stand together and smile with Carmen every chance I get!
I like the newsletter, and I look forward to our journey through 2011. May it be a great year for us all.
Do you have a line (CHA) that I can look for? I would run right out to find almost anything you created.
Thank you so much for sharing yourself with us. And these templates you gave us are wonderful. I may try to get better about photographing my family — especially myself — this year.
you are so so kind. i don’t design products. just work with them 🙂 i do have the honor to design for both The Girls’ Paperie and Pink Paislee so you’ll see me using their lines often 🙂