September 4, 2011: Labor Day Weekend...

Ali got ahold of the camera long enough to give us a close up of her toys...

Heaveno!

Hey, thank you again to everyone for your birthday wishes and donations (again) to PUCK.  I really appreciate it.  After looking at the last post, I don't really have anything near as cool to share tonight!  I will tell you how generous Bruno Serato from the Anaheim White House is one more time... he took the time to come to the blog and read the blog post!  He thanked me profusely for sharing his work with you and asked me to correct one piece of info I shared which is that CNN has not told him he is in the top 10, he wishes to be in the top 10.  He asked me to change that and I did, but I also wanted to restate it to be sure I corrected that with everyone who had already read the post.



This weekend has been pretty low key.  It was Ali's first full week of school and Friday night felt earned!  A three-day weekend after the first full week is a nice reward as well!  The funny realization I had this week was how even though Ali is the one going to school, I end up with the new, rigid schedule in the morning as well!  I am not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination, so working for myself allows me some freedom in terms of how I start my day.  Well, I feel like I am back in elementary school again!  Not someplace I really want to revisit.  Oh well.  One thing I also struggle with, which very well be a shortcoming, is aversion to repetition in my schedule.  Even at this stage of my business, I structure my schedule so that I do not do the same thing two days in a row.  I'm sure this has its cons, but my overactive over creative brain craves change on a daily basis.  It's a wonder I ever finish anything!









In other news, Reader's Digest is hosting a contest called, "Your Life... the Reader's Digest Version."  Thanks to our dear friend Denise for pointing it out to me.  It's a great contest for me; you have to write a story, insight, something, but it can only be 150 words.  THAT is a challenge for me!  It's been good practice in honing down my messages I want to share with the world.  If there is something you are passionate about that you really want to be confident sharing about, do this exercise:  write out the whole scope of what it is in 150 words.  It really makes you think about what words/angles you are going to highlight with such a limited number of options to achieve maximum impact.  I wish I had done this before my American Idol audition.  This was a PERFECT exercise for that setting!  Anyway, here is one of the drafts I worked on that I won't be submitting as my official entry, but shared it on facebook and got a lot of positive feedback.  Here goes...

Having just turned 39, here are some lessons I've learned:


1.  The best gift I ever gave myself was the gift of faith.  Faith is something you give your self.  No one can make you have it, and no one can take it away.


2. I will get knocked down, and when I do, my friends, family, and faith will be there to help me up.


3.  Wisdom does not come from experience alone; it comes from the willingness to learn from experience.  Many get bitter while I choose to get better.


These are themes I have written about countless times on this blog, so they won't seem new to you, but notice how concise I am?  Shocking, I know.  Good practice for anyone with a message.



multitasking!


I am listening to lullabies while typing the blog one handed, and the songs are working on ME!  I just fell asleep here and need to wrap things up! Life is good here in the nest.  Mommy is getting a little stir crazy, but outside of that, life is good.

God night.