New Year’s Day is always so fresh, so hopeful, so inspiring.  It offers a new start with no mistakes in it yet.  Seven days into the new year and I already ditched my long weekend run and the house is a mess.

The good news is that tomorrow can be just as new, just as fresh, just as inspiring, and just as blemish free as midnight New Year’s day when we watched all the fireworks go off, blew those funny little whistles, and yelled “Happy New Year!”

Tomorrow is a fresh start.  Pull that funny whistle out if you need to and yell, “Happy New Day!”

P.S. In my defense, I was fighting a cold all weekend and we started remodeling our bedroom.

It happens every time I get away from my blog for a while.  I sit down and think, “What can I write that anyone would read?”  It’s been so long since I’ve posted, I wonder if anybody still reads.  When was the last time I posted? (goes off to look) OCTOBER 28! Practically a whole month has passed without me sitting down here. What happened?

Oh yeah, I remember–We went to a wedding. Then when we got back I got my wisdom teeth removed (4 impacted teeth, lucky me). Sunday, while I was still recovering from wisdom teeth extraction, Wiggles got sick (Roseola we think). After a few night of getting little to no sleep, I had to recover a few days before sitting back down at the computer.

Here I am. I’m not sure we are out of the chaos yet. Looking around the house, I’m actually quite sure we haven’t recovered from the chaos yet. (Do I get a “get out of house cleaning free” pass for this week?) I do think I am getting my feet back under me, and the late nights when I couldn’t sleep have given me some “thinking time” that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

I’m thinking I need to stay up till after midnight every night.

Parenting is a lot like running, you just keep falling forward and hope you get your feet under you before your face hits the ground.  Shuffle shuffle shuffle, dirty diapers, screaming baby.  Shuffle shuffle shuffle, pick up the whole box of mega legos dumped in the middle of the floor.  Shuffle shuffle shuffle, wipe the smashed peaches off the wall from a well timed dinner sneeze.  Shuffle shuffle shuffle, fold the clothes again from where he pulled them off the neatly folded pile on the couch.  Shuffle shuffle trip, unexpected visitors.

While making apologies for the condition of the house, they say, “Cherish these moments, If you blink you’ll miss it.”  My heart skips a beat and after they leave, I sit in the pile of mega legos dumped in the middle of the floor again, blink three times and say, “There’s no place like college.  There’s no place like college.  There’s no place like college.”  I open my eyes to find screaming baby, dirty diaper and living room covered in toys.

I sigh and get about changing the diaper and putting him down for a nap.  Peace, sweet peace.  It never lasts long enough and just about the time I am unwound and ready to start cleaning he wimpers and wakes.

I go to pick him up out of the crib.  He is holding on to the side rail, not crying just wimpering loud enough so I know he is awake.  I pick him up and groan.  “You are getting so big!” I tell him.  Then I think, “Weren’t you a newborn when I put you down for your nap?”

I spend the rest of the day playing with legos.

trying. not. to. blink.

Larry Burkett Says that we spend the first 5-7 years of marriage trying to reach the same standard of living as our parents, only it took them 30 years to get there.

After 5 years, I’m still looking for that 1972 velvet sofa.

Being overweight has been one of the most soul-crushing things that I have ever faced.  I hate looking in the mirror and thinking, “I should be doing more.”  I hate seeing my body ravaged by the symptoms of Poly Cystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS).

Losing weight is hard.  Waking up at 4 a.m. so I can get uninterrupted work out time and time for a quick shower after, is hard.  Having tired muscles all day from early morning strength training is hard.  Having your hamstrings so tight that you can’t bend over and pick up cheerios off the floor is hard.   Building new habits and patterns of life is hard.

Self-discipline is hard, but all that stuff goes away quickly.  Losing weight is hard, but staying overweight and unhealthy is even harder.   Risking getting sick with heart disease or diabetes while I am still young isn’t just hard, it is soul crushing.  Wondering if I are going to see your kids and grandkids grow up because I’m not taking my health seriously, that’s hard.  Having to hold back on activities I love is hard.  Ending every hike or workout with a migraine is hard.  Missing out on my baby’s life because of migraines is hard.  Crying through infertility because of PCOS and weight is hard.  That kind of hard doesn’t go away.  That kind of hard is soul crushing, and even after that kind of hard is over, it hurts.

I want this and I am going to give it 100%

I used to think that Moms love naptime because it offers them a few moments peace during the day.  The eye of the storm, peace in the middle of the hurricane.  Maybe even time to clean the babyfood off the ceiling.

Now I know that it’s really all about being able to go to the bathroom all alone.

Wiggles has started cruising around the room hanging on to the furniture.  Actually, he hasn’t made it around the room, just from one end of the couch to the other.  He won’t bother trying to cruise to come to Mommy or Daddy, but boy can he scoot when he spots an abandoned ink pen at the other end of the couch!

Brenton was working security and I was causing trouble.  He decided he had better keep his eyes on me; he hasn’t taken them off of me since.

I was a freshman in college starting out my second semester as a welding engineering major (I switched to psychology later).  Brenton was in his sophomore year studying to become a pilot (he switched to mechanical engineering later).

I had been out with some friends all Saturday and we were hanging out at Automotive Society (a club/organization at LeTourneau) to unwind from the day.  We were just talking and causing trouble when Brenton walked in.  Brenton was working on campus security that night from midnight to 8 a.m.

Brenton had just gone on shift when He stopped by to see who was there and say “Hello.”  He offered to take us out for donuts at 4 a.m. if we were still awake  None of us were planning on staying up that late, we were talking about heading to the dorms just as Brenton had walked in. On the way back to the dorms, I suggested that we check out the new dorm that was under construction and off limits to students.  After playing around in there, it was 2 a.m., so we decided to go ahead and stay up for some donuts.  The next few hours were spent climbing the statues around campus and just causing general mischief.  We found a door in Aviation Science 3 that hadn’t been properly locked so we went in and changed all the name plates on the office doors (a week later that door lock had been changed to a crash bar).  We called Brenton at 3:30 and he came to pick us up.  We crowded 7 people into the security Blazer and drove across campus to get another vehicle.  At Shipley’s donuts, Brenton insisted on buying donuts for all the girls.

It was love at first bite.

The first time Brenton noticed me, I was coming back from teaching a welding lab.  I was wearing combat boots and camouflage pants.  My face was covered in soot from welding, and I had racoon eyes from wearing safety glasses.  I was wearing amber colored safety glasses on my head like a head band and I had a dark smudge on my nose.

Brenton was always the security guard who locked down the lobbies in the Trinity dorms.  I always thought he was the nice security guard because he would let the girls stay late in the Mabee 1 lobby so we could finish our movie.

Our first date was on a motorcycle.  It was February, we had been working on homework together and I was bored.  I suggested that a motorcycle ride would be fun and he said, “I have a motorcycle.”  I ran back to my dorm room to change into some warmer clothes while he went to get his motorcycle.  I came out in black leather pants. (I can only assume that I was trying to scare off this nice missionary boy.)  We rode for several hours and when we got back, I was colder than I had ever been before or since.  I remember the really strange sensation of feeling cold on the back of my knee caps.

A few weeks later, I got an email from my dad that had some bad news in it.  Brenton was talking to me on the computer when I got the email.  He immediately sensed that something was wrong and insisted on seeing me.  He ran through pouring rain to meet me in the Gilbert Hall lobby.  For several hours, he just sat there with me while I cried.  That night, I started the DTR conversation.

We dated for a year and a half—-lots of motorcycle rides, early morning donuts, watching the sunrise on the berm.  Brenton asked for permission to marry me at Thanksgiving 2003.  My dad insisted on talking to both of us.  He wanted to see that we had a clue about how we would survive our last year of college.  That night, he told Brenton, “At this point, it’s not a matter of who, but when.  I’m not ready to give you an answer yet.”  Two weeks later, when I got home for Christmas, my dad told me to call Brenton and tell him we could get married.

When February rolled around and Brenton still hadn’t proposed, I was beginning to wonder if he was getting cold feet.  I wasn’t making it easy for him either.  He was trying to surprise me with the proposal and every so often I would look at him and say, “Sparkle?!?!”  Little did I know that I was ruining every opportunity for him to surprise me and propose.

The first week in February was a really busy week in classes.  I had tests all that week.  Brenton kept asking me to go out for walks or for a drive.  I kept expecting him to propose and then he would drop me off at the dorms without proposing.  Tuesday, he invited me out for a drive to Lake Of the Pines, but I had a big test the next day and I couldn’t take off.  Brenton had bought roses and had the whole proposal planned out at Lake of the Pines.  He put the roses in his apartment fridge and carried the ring around in his pocket for a bit longer.

That Friday evening, I was hanging out at his apartment and was hungry.  He went to get something out of the fridge and remembered the roses.  Since he couldn’t figure out how to keep me from seeing the roses, he decided to propose in the kitchen in his apartment.

On August 14, 2004 we said our vows beside a creek in Georgia.  5 years later…I still do.

Peekaboo and folded laundry don’t mix.  With each “peek”, another piece of laundry ends up in a crumpled heap on the floor.  The good news is that I can still fit all our clothes in the drawers folded or not.