Jul
18
By: Angel | Discussion (0)

Grannie and Lily in the water in Wells, England.
17 June 2008

I’m ready to have another try at RomancePodcast.com.  The overwhelming fear stopped me dead in my tracks for a little while, but I’m ready for another pass at my personal opponent: my own lack of self-confidence.  I love to write, so I need to get past this little bump in the road to get back to something which I enjoy so much.

I think it’s time to make a list.  I’ve been feeling a little lost since our crazy summertime schedule ended, and lists help center and ground me.  The world is spinning around me and I’m very dizzy.  I need a list to anchor everything.

I love lists. 🙂



Jul
12
By: Angel | Discussion (2)


Lily got her first haircut yesterday.
The impetus: our tiny fashion diva wanted bangs.
11 July 2008

I have lived in Texas my entire life with a brief two-year hiatus my sophomore and junior years of high school.  I’m 40-years-old by the way, so that is 38 years of soaking up Texas culture in its various forms: from blue-collar Houston to white-collar Dallas, from conservative rural College Station to liberal funky Austin, from the strong Hispanic culture of San Antonio to the deep religious right of East Texas to the sparsely populated southwest feel of West Texas to the German-influenced cowboy culture of Central Texas.  From the mountains and the desert in the west to the bayous and the pine forests in the east, from the Great Plains in the north to the Gulf Coast in the south, for 38 years Texas has been my home.

And as such, I truly enjoy reading an outsider’s view of Texas, especially if it is humorous.  And that is what I found with this blog entry over at Suburban Kamikaze.  Her blog entry could have easily been about my family.



Jul
10
By: Angel | Discussion (0)

Lily, Sophia, Damian, and Logan
racing cars down the sloped patio.
Conroe, Texas
01 July 2008

I am so tired.  We have been on the go for a month.  This is the crazy schedule my family was just on:

July 13 – July 25: England
July 25 – July 30: Home, unpack, catch-up on house, laundry, pack
July 1 – July 8: Conroe (we got over the last of our jetlag in Conroe)
July 1 – July 12: Mom and Paul in town

By the time my mom flies out this coming Saturday, we will have been crazy busy and out-of-routine for a month.  My mom said that she wants to come down for a month at Christmas, and I told her that a month is too long to be away from your home.  She said that after seeing how we looked this month, she agrees and will probably only come down for three weeks.

I’m sooooooooooooooooooooooo glad to be home.  So very very glad to be home.  Matt said that we are not making any more plans until Thanksgiving in November, and even then it will just be a large family dinner here in Round Rock; we’re not planning on leaving our home.

Needless to say however, there will be lots of vacation photos for the next few blog entries.

Now to figure out where I left off with my life plans a month ago… where’s my pen and DIY planner…



Jun
27
By: Angel | Discussion (0)

I’m overweight and old. In a society that values petite, young women, I am discarded… as many of us are.  And, when we become outcasts — trodden down by our society’s collective unconscious — we personally take part in the attack and erosion of our self-belief and self-esteem.  The mind churns out a repetitive tape of negative criticism regarding our looks.  We counter-attack our own thoughts as best we can, but as we step out of our doors completely aware of what strangers and friends alike will see when they look at us, the looped tape begins again.

And how does one get off this hellish circular ride?  By truly seeing beauty: the laughter, the love, the eternal potential that lies in all of us.  This is not an easy thing to do — to see past the apparent — and certainly not one that I have mastered.  But it’s a hope.  And a promise.

We really all are beautiful if you open your heart.  And that’s a true statement, not just a New Age, self-help Pollyanna platitude.  So look at those photos of yourself and see yourself again for the first time; see the laughter and love and finally  — finally – be free.

How did this philosophical introspection begin, you ask?  We just got back from England and I am in a lot of the photos with my round body and my red cherub face full of wrinkles.  I look like Mrs Clause in a short skirt.  Like many people, my immediate thought was, “I need to lose weight.  I look terrible.”  But instead of quickly skipping past the photos in shame, I decided to actually look at myself.  And in the end, I liked what I saw.  What matters in this life is our connection with people and our shared experiences, and that is what I saw underneath the extra weight and wrinkles.  For the first time, I saw me.


Lindsey and I in London
18 June 2008


Ben and Allison’s Wedding
21 June 2008


At Ben and Allison’s Wedding
21 June 2008


Eating ice cream at the wedding breakfast
21 June 2008


At the park
Wells-next-the-sea, England
22 June 2008


At the park
Wells-next-the-sea, England
22 June 2008


In the back garden
Wells-next-the-sea, England
22 June 2008


At Sandringham
24 June 2008


At Sandringham
24 June 2008


In the car driving back from Sandringham
24 June 2008

And that’s my challenge to the folks who read this blog entry.  Find your self in your photos.  You’re there, waiting to be seen.



Jun
12
By: Angel | Discussion (0)


The kids and I
08 June 2008

Everytime I see this wall plaque, I think of my husband:

He is the kind of boy that won’t make you cry. 🙂



Jun
11
By: Angel | Discussion (0)

Today’s blog entry is another photography lesson.  Today we will be discussing flash vs. natural lighting.  A camera flash, though it gets the job done and is necessary for low-light situations, creates a very flat picture.


Damian
08 June 2008


Damian
08 June 2008

Natural light bestows an ethereal quality onto a photo.


Damian
08 June 2008


Damian
08 June 2008

Sure it’s an extra $500 for the “fast” lens that goes all the way down to F2, but it enables you to use natural lighting in low-light situations and is therefore definitely worth the money.  🙂



Jun
10
By: Angel | Discussion (0)


Wouldn’t you love to see the world
through a child’s eyes for just a few moments?
It seems to be all laughter and beauty sometimes.
Damian
08 June 2008

We leave for England on Friday.  Matt is not flying with us, and I refuse to travel internationally with two small children, so Lindsey is going with us to England to help me with the children on the journey.  Matt will be joining us next week.

I don’t handle stress well… I don’t handle it well at all.  So, as this large trip approaches, I am slowing down, freaking out, and becoming very irritable.  Hopefully myself and my family will come through the preparations for this trip emotionally unscarred, but I’m not making any promises.



Jun
07
By: Angel | Discussion (0)


Lily in the computer room.
29 May 2008


Daddy and Lily at Destiny’s birthday party.
31 May 2008

No entry today.  Just a couple of pictures for Grannie and Grandpa over the sea. 🙂



Jun
03
By: Angel | Discussion (2)


Uncle Steve, Lily and Clara
over Memorial weekend.
25 May 2008

As I have mentioned (several times by this point, I think), I love my DIY Planner.  I even made a 2-pages per day template and submitted it to the DIY Planner site.  Last night, I tweaked my daily template design to fit the FlyLady system for keeping a house.  I LOVE my new daily pages that now have my Morning, Afternoon, and Evening routines in them.

However, as wonderful as my little DIY Planner is, full of its scheduled appointments, routines, and task lists, it does have one drawback: sometimes I feel like I’m not working fast enough or hard enough.  When my little checkboxes remain unchecked, I get sad and feel like a loser.

That was not my original intent when I created my beautiful DIY Planner.  It was to be a tool to stay focused and bring about desired personal change — a tool for manifestation, if we would like to venture into the world of New Age terminology.  And it has brought about a great deal of wonderful change.  It does help me stay focused on what is important to me…

… but it also makes me feel like a loser sometimes.

Now that is a personal problem I have to work through.  My little DIY Planner is just an object.  The emotions… well, that’s all me.  And I don’t like having negative emotions around something that I created and love so much.  So, I’ll be working through those feelings over the next couple of days.

Well, that was a wonderful session!  Who needs a therapist when you have a blog? 🙂



Jun
02
By: Angel | Discussion (0)


Matt, Lily and I
25 May 2008

I’m writing in my journal because it is on my to-do list.  There.  Now I can check that one off. 😉