Joys In My Life

What do I do as soon as I no longer have school work to worry about (technically I have one more paper to finish, but not a big deal)?  I break out the sewing machine that has not seen the light of day for the past 21 months!  It is spring-time here in Pennsylvania and we will still need to wear pants until about June; however, the boys only had two pairs of jeans (two for each of them) that did not have massive holes in the knees. My handy MIL had fixed a few already a few months ago, but I got the bug to learn to do this myself so the boys could get more wears out of them before we move on to shorts season.  The last thing I want to do right now is buy them more pants as I'm sure in the fall, they will be moving up a size in jeans, but then they will just need play clothes as they will be wearing uniforms to school.  I don't think I've posted recently about the school choice for the boys' Kindergarten, but will do that later.  They are going to our local Cath...

I'm at school for my last weekend before graduation!  We will be leaving in about one hour and then we will have graduation on May 17.  It was 21 months ago I began this journey to get my MBA and I'm so surprised it's over.  I've learned so much and have truly changed for the better.  I've learned more than just accounting, financial management, marketing and strategy.  I've learned how to manage my time better, focus on what's important and let go what is not. I have a huge thank you to my family: my amazing husband and fabulous daughter and sons!  They have been so supportive of me in the pursuit of my goals.  I look forward to having more time to spend with them and also find my next goals and dreams.

I am finding that for me losing weight over 40 is extremely difficult.  I have a lot of empathy right now for anyone that has tried to lose weight, as I'm finding it to be hard to achieve.  I've gained about 10 pounds while I've been in this EMBA program due to lack of exercise and comfort eating.  I've been trying for a few months now to get very serious about losing this weight, but now I've stepped it up in high gear.  Especially this week, I've been very good, but I've barely seen the scale budge. I managed to exercise three times this week, as I try to get back into that habit.  Unfortunately, it could not be more as we had a presentation at school this week and we had a lot of team conference calls to prepare for that.  But on top of that, I've been very good with my eating.    I'm drinking green tea and not coffee all week.  This reduces my sugar intake as I like sugar and milk in my coffee and nothing in tea other than lemon.  ...

My favorite water bottle has a very wide mouth.  I could say it has a big mouth, just like me!  I love it because I can then put lemon and cucumber slices in my water.  Makes it taste so yummy and it's so good for the body!  I love the pretty pictures on it too.  Very soothing, just like the water. I am definitely finding some great new blogs to read!  Some of my new favorites are as follows are Hungry Hungry Hippie and The Wellness Warrior . The other thing I have to say something about is the breakup of Gwyneth Paltrow and her husband.  I'm really not a huge fan of the media and the paparazzi and how they have to turn and twist everything to sell their papers or get traffic on their website.  I've looked at several of the articles and every one of them seems to be not very flattering.  I'd like just once to see something that indicates they seem to be doing this carefully for the children and don't want any drama for themselves, bu...

I cleaned out my blog list in Feedly today, as I was home sick and had been meaning to do so for quite some time.  I was surprised how many blogs I used to read are no longer around.  Originally my reason for blogging and reading blogs was dealing with infertility.  My blog has changed since having the boys and we know we will not be trying to make any more babies.  We really want to close that chapter in our life.  And the blogs I used to read seem to have closed that chapter as well, some had success and others may not have, but all seem to have moved on.  So I cleaned out those that are no longer updated or meet my needs in this phase of life and I am now ready to update with some shiny new to me blogs.  Here's the topics I'll be looking for: parenting especially twins, food, healthy living, photography and FLY Lady stuff.  I'll let you know what I find!

It's almost over and thank goodness!  What may you ask?  My MBA program at Villanova.  I only have two more weekends after today, both in April, and we walk in May for graduation.  This has been a long, hard journey, but I'm so glad I took it, and I'm so glad to see the end of it.  Below is a picture with me and a bunch of my classmates in South Africa last May.  We were about to tour the BMW plant floor.  What an amazing trip! But I'm very happy to see the end of this journey.  I have so much new stuff to do.  Work is busy and keeps ramping up more and more, but I also want to spend more time with family, friends and home.  The boys are now registered for Kindergarten in the fall.  They are going to the local Catholic school for Kindergarten as it is full day, where our public is still half day, and we won't need after care as they will be on Phoebe's bus home and she will babysit them until we get home from work.  T...

Looking for graphics for my word of the year, I found a few people that had it as their word of the year last year or the year before.  Let's review what my words have been:  2012 - "Dream" and 2013 - "Smart".  Which makes "Move" perfect for this year.  I am looking to "move" forward with a lot of aspects of my life:  I will be graduating with my MBA from Villanova in May, I want to decide what my next career objectives are and what I want to build for our future life as this time consumer of my life (school) will be ending.  I am getting back to exercising, so I am literally "moving":  elliptical machine, Tracey Anderson Method and yoga.  It also refers to how I feel about our home.  I either want to move forward with making changes and decorating (with that free time I'll have) or maybe we'll move to a new home local to where we are now with more land and no homeowner's association, so I can build a huge garden and...