Resolutions...

Isn't it funny that we wait till the bitter end of the year to make resolutions? It's only at the bitter end of the year, when we've made all of our mistakes and have had enough time to reflect and regret a lot of our decisions. It is only after we've spent ginormous amounts of money on Christmas gifts that will probably end up in the closet or lost in a junk drawer that we give our selves permission to purge and regurgitate the wastes of of our lives.

I'm guilty of it for sure.

The daunting questions of what my resolutions are for 2011 aren't complicated at all. I think after a few years, your resolutions seem to repeat itself since they were never resolved the year before. And so as I am making my mental list of what my resolutions are for the upcoming year, I'm slowly realizing that this "list" is starting to become a "bucket list." I mean, how many times does a resolution have to hit your resolution list before it becomes the "do it before you die" item feature of the year? or lifetime for that matter.

As depressing as that sounds, I'm kind of excited for the following year. I don't have many obligations this year and so, find no reason or excuses to not live life to the fullest. Yeah sure! Apparently the world is going to end at the end of 2012 so a bucket list seems appropriate if that is the truth, right? But if not, I'll just make another resolution list and update the ole' bucket list.

Weight loss has been my nemesis since giving birth to my third child. Realistically, I'm never going to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight without looking like a bulimic teenage girl, so my expectations are just going to be a little more realistic... like just lose enough weight where your body doesn't move by itself. All joking aside, I just want to be toned, fit, and feel better about me for me!

So I'm back on the WW plan and have every intention to hit the gym every day. I've come to the conclusion that the only reason to remain this way is my lack of motivation. I don't really need a partner to go with to the gym, because it's those solitary moments that I ache for. I don't really need praise, because I think I'm a pretty damn good cheerleader. And the only person I cheat on WW is myself, and the results SHOW if I am cheating.

Being Selfish, yes... this is a BAD thing in most cases. But when you've spent your entire life doing things to please others and getting absolutely nothing in return worth mentioning, it gets tiring. So I've promised myself to do things for me that I can appreciate without caring if someone else finds the same value. Now, don't go around thinking I'm going to neglect my marriage or my children, or any common sense obligations I have. I just mean simple things, like letting the laundry go, eating out a little bit more, buying myself something for a change instead of waiting for someone else to get the hints only to find they weren't paying attention in the first place. Yes... I'm going to be selfish in a self constructive way.

SCHOOL! Oh my gosh, this has been on my list forever!! But it kind of goes hand in hand with the whole selfish thing. My priorities were everyone else but me. School is the one thing that I want to accomplish more than anything else right now on this list. And when I do, it'll be mine... all mine.

Now, I understand that my priorities of course my marriage and children, but I'm wondering more and more in as much as I have sacrificed to allow their lives to be idea, why haven't I taken the initiative to put that much effort into my own goals? It's simple really, I've made excuses and put the blame on others when realistically I haven't motivated myself and have convinced myself that I'm too old. SCREW THAT!

A Better Life for me. Does this even need a description?

So there, it's a simple yet daunting list. A lot of my struggles will mostly come from myself. But I'm not discouraged. I know I'll accomplish all of these things with time. Most of it is just letting go of the unrealistic goals, the regret of not accomplishing what I've wanted than falling into a silent depression, and instead of being selfless, be selfish.

Turning The Dirrty - 3-0!!

Up till about about a month ago, it never occured to me just how difficult turning 30 might be. Maybe it was because I wasn't really paying attention to the fact that my birthday was fast approaching, or maybe because I was so busy with the move back home and unpacking, or maybe I was in silent denial.

The day before I turned the Dirrrty 3-0, it started to attack my emotional being like a bad break up. A break up that I was having with my twenties. In all seriousness, I sat and moped in my pajamas on the last day of twenties, crying and then panicking every two hours.

What have I accomplished?

What haven't I accomplished?

Crap! Will I have time to accomplish?

And even if I did accomplish everything or had tons of time to accomplish the things I haven't accomplished, who was I doing it for? Yes, I was having an emotional break down over the death of my 20's.

I went to bed that night, fighting tears of acceptance that in just a few short hours I would soon have to bubble in "that" category of 30-35 when filling out paperwork

.

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I didn't sleep much that morning, so ended up waking up super late. I dashed out the doo

r with all the kids, searching my purse for lunch money since I didn't have tim

e to pack them a lunch and walked out the door to find my car like this....

Yep, my sister got me back for her Post-It Note Birthday Pimp My Car Stunt

She ended up joining forces with a few friends and saran wrapped, ribboned up, balloon tied, and beer can stringed my car. Unfortunately, I had about 2 minutes to spare in absolute shock and had to take my boys and the carpool to school.

Yes, it says ANAL on the side - a nickname I've picked up since my name never fit

s on screens and conveniently stops at L. What you don't see, and what I failed to see b

efore the boys did was the B-Word written all over the front of my car. Mortified, I ended up dropping the boys off at the corner of the school and told them to bolt.

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Later in the afternoon, my sister and good friend Cynthia came over with a surprise Portos birthday cake for the hubby and I (our birthdays are two days apart). Then surpris

ed me AGAIN with a surprise dinner with a very special group of friends...

...and Patron - LOTS AND LOTS OF PATRON!

The pictures don't do the experience justice, I am so very very lucky to have a group great girlfriends that I can trust and depend on and for that I count my blessings with each and everyone of you.

Turning 30 wasn't as bad as I thought it would be because of all of your kindness, practical jokes, support, trust, and love. I love my girls =D

Thank you Karen, Cynthia, Aliw, Akit, Tricia, Ana, and Ada - friendships are not counted by the quantity in which you are surrounded by, but by the quality of those friendships you hold dear.

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A hangover and almost a week later, I've come to terms with having to admit that I am NOW 30 years old. I feel accomplished in so many levels and instead of saying that i have never done this or haven't done this or will never do that I pay tribute to the twenties in which I lived a life people in their 30's have yet to experience.

• When I turned 20, I got to give birth to my future and saw Love at First Sight stare right back at me.
  
• When I turned 23, I got engaged to the love of my life and was never more confident to say yes in less than a second
• When I turned 24, I gave birth to love and my future again. Then 3 short months later walked down the church aisle into the arms of the man who will love me always and forever
• When I turned 26, we bought our first home.
  
• When I turned 27, I gave birth to love and the future yet again. Learning more about myself as a mother.
• When I turned 28, I learned that deception and friendship DO go hand in hand, then learned that my real friends were always there by me though I turned my back a few times.
  

It wasn't an easy road, but a road less traveled or seen by bystanders too afraid to take the first step. Although I will never say I'm a 20-something year old again, I'm okay with it.

It was in my teens I made a lot of dumb decisions, it was in my twenties I learned to accept those decisions, and it will be in my thirties where I will value those decisions and embrace them.

A Closet Full of Chaos

So, I think I pushed myself into exhaustion today, unpacking 4 years of my life into neat and tidy stacks of organized life. I managed to unpack 3 bedrooms worth of clothes, toys, and memories - of course, while sorting through the MANY items that were kept simply for nostalgia.

At the end, I chucked over 4 trash bags full of clothes and 3 trash bags of trash. As I sorted through the many things that we accumulated through the years, I had to actively stop myself constantly from stopping and remembering where I got a shirt, who wore the shirt, where I was when I bought the shirt, and what that shirt meant to me. For goodness sakes it's just a shirt! I noticed after about 30 minutes that I was seriously getting no where fast! So I made a rule, that if I thought too long it's wrong and then straight into the trash it went. I figured if we went 9 months without it and didn't die from the aching distance from an item, it was okay to part with it.

I gave myself permission to let go of the memories and the past. I gave myself permission to just never see it again.

I needed to make space for my new memories.

Granted.

These were my boys' clothes and toys, I haven't dared to enter my walk in closet - which is currently vomiting into my master bathroom and through the pathway to my bed. I stare at the many boxes and piles of clothing currently occupying my space and just think stress.

But I'm on a mission. and hopefully by this time tomorrow night I'll be blogging about how I FREAKIN' ROCKED! Because I normally do so I don't expect less =P

Off to bed, for another stressful sleep. I'll sleep well next week! HAHA!

December Days - Tis' The Season to be Grateful

Do you know where I am blogging from right now? I'm blogging live from my home. The orginal home. The home that burned to near ashes nine months ago and I can't tell you how grateful I am to finally be home.

Though our home seems like a storage unit with piles of boxes stacked upon our surrounding walls, I can't feel help but feel a sense of peace and solace. This is our home and I couldn't be more in place though everything is out of place.

We officially moved back in the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and moved our entire family and about 75% of our belongings from our rental to our home. It was a bittersweet holiday for our family. We still drove to my cousin's home 2 hours away and still had the traditional Thanksgiving dinner and still had the best time amongst our family as we mingled and shared stories that made headlines in our family circle. We still wanted our children to celebrate despite the fact that we were in the middle of the most challenging moves our family has faced with.

We spent the entire holiday weekend moving our funiture, unpacking boxes, and waiting - waiting for the internet connection, waiting for the cable, waiting for our mattresses. Just waiting a frustrating wait. Time stood still in our home and seemed to never tick away, leaving us with the same problems on repeat. It was frustrating and it was hard.

Eventually, everything we waited for soon came and little by little we started to feel home again. There are still many things we are waiting for - calls, emails, response to many questions and uncertainty, but all those things are irrelevant so long as we are home. Home - something I haven't been able to relate to since coming leaving nearly 9 months ago.

But life still goes on, children must go to continue to go to school, I have to finish my semester off, my husband continues to work, and I continue unraveling and rebuilding the life that was once built to perfection.

Many times this past 9 months, I wondered why such a horrible thing happened to our family. And I wondered why people speak so badly of us, despise the devastating events that happened. Then I realized that everything happens for a reason. Perhaps, this event happened to remind me that everything is replaceable so long as my family is in tact with all it's imperfections and that there are seasons in life where we must weed out the toxic from the beautiful.

We've been given an opportunity to start all over again, exactly where we started. A clean slate without compromising our life that we intended for when we moved into this home 4 years ago. We've been given the opportunity to do it right this time. This time our lives and our home will be filled with a lot of love, understanding, and gratitude encompassing the family who resides in it. Everything else is just gravy.