BLLLLAAAAH!

Let’s just say that I royally suck at these self inflicted blogs where I force myself to write about certain things every day (ie. my 30 Questions Game). I should just know my personality and remember to just say no next time I even try. I’m just telling you all now to yell at me any time I think these things would be a good idea. I just can’t focus enough.

Incidentally, I had a strange conversation with Dan’s cousin’s wife the other day about how she has diagnosed herself with ADD. When I told her I’m pretty sure I don’t have ADD, she went on to share some of the things that qualify as ADD and I strangely had most of them.

Hmm. I should look into that.

I can’t believe it’s New Year’s Eve and in just a few short hours we will be in 2013. I was thinking about how I will be pregnant for half of the year and that was an odd thought because that’s never been the case for me. I like it.

Anyway, onto my stupid 30 Questions Game

List 5 Weaknesses

1. Lack of focus

As previously mentioned. I like to consider it “multitasking”, but usually that involves finishing projects. This girl has issues with starting something and then finishing it without doing other projects in the meantime. Whether I’m cleaning the house or creating a crafty project, it doesn’t seem to matter what it is, I will probably have trouble finishing it.

2. Avoiding Conflict

This became an issue once I got married. Oddly enough I could get away with it for the most part before marriage, but there’s only so far you can get away from your spouse in the house. I’ve learned that I hate conflict and would rather just not talk about it. It’s a bad habit that needs more work.

3. Can’t confront people when needed

This is much like the problem above. I was a terrible boss because of this. I could not do the work that needed to be done because I did not like ruffling feathers. It also makes it hard to not feel like a Door Mat when others are using me for their purposes. I just suffer through and keep my mouth shut.

4. Disorganized Choas

I love a clean home and an organized home. I’ve just realized that I am not good at maintaining it or even getting the house to that place. I wish it was more ingrained in me, but it’s just not. It’s sort of like how I clean. I love a clean home, but hate getting it there. I am not very good a really cleaning. I like to do the bare minimum. At the end of the day, my house may look disorganized, but I usually know where things are.

5. Impatient

This creeps up most days. Standing in line at the store. Driving. Walking behind slow people. Fast forwarding through commercials. Waiting for dinner to finish cooking/baking. It’s terrible. I have a very hard time waiting.

 

Ok, here’s to hoping I will be back tomorrow! Wish me luck and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

5 Things That Make Me Happy

We’re back from Wisconsin, so it’s time to face reality. Our Christmas break is winding down and I need to get back to things I have ignored for a week (ie. exercise, blogging, cleaning, cooking, life).

So let’s pretend we haven’t missed a day in my 30 Questions Quest!

The next Question on my list is: What are the 5 things that make you happiest right now?

**First things first, the only thing in my life that gives me joy is my God, my husband, my family and friends. This list is about what is making me “happy” right now, so it’s going to be trivial things that I love. Let’s begin.**

1) Pee Wee’s Christmas Special

My family went to Five Below after lunch the other day and I found a DVD of Pee Wee’s Christmas Special. I watch this show every Christmas, but I usually watch it on YouTube where I have to watch it in 5 minute segments. When I found an actual copy of it for $5, I knew it must be mine. I used to watch Pee Wee with my brother every Saturday morning before his indecent exposure. I know he’s a creeptastic man, but he is funny and makes me laugh and I love him. Watching this movie brings back good memories and ain’t no one gonna tell me otherwise.

2) Christmas Break

I love working and being in my daily routine because I crave consistency and predictability in my life; however, it is very nice to have a little break every now and again. I love that the alarm doesn’t go off early and I don’t feel as stressed about my day. There’s no racing to the gym or pushing my way through old people at the grocery store to make sure I have dinner on the table. There’s no need to even get out of my new sweet sweat pants that are uber comfy. It’s just life with my husband by my side and family around as well. I love it.

3) New clothes

I have received about a gagillion new to me clothes from my sister-in-law’s who are shedding their maternity wardrobe in an effort to give me clothes for my expanding belly. I love getting new clothes and there’s no better reason than actually needing the clothes. I have bought a couple things for myself as well because they were cute and I will eventually need them. The only problem is going to be finding space for them all when I have two closets and two dressers filled to the brim already. I have clothes that live on the bottom of my closet as is and now I have about two full suitcases of clothes to add to the mix.

4) Costco Membership

We just switched from Sam’s Club to Costco and we couldn’t be more thrilled with our decision. We have already been to Costco three times since we got our membership and are planning another run this weekend. We have used our membership to Costco more in the past two weeks than we used our Sam’s Club membership over the course of a year. The prices are cheaper and there is more variety and we love all the free food.

5) It’s snowing!

I love snow, especially on a lazy Saturday. I am not so much a fan of it when I have to be places and scrape my car off in the wee hours of the morning to get to work. It’s not that I don’t like driving in it, I just don’t like it slowing me down. I run my day like a well oiled machine. I have everything timed out perfectly to get to where I need to be and snow just adds time. But today? Yes I love it!!

Checking In

We’re still rolling through my 30 Questions, which is quickly becoming a two month project. Sorry! With the other blog (shameless plug: Little Fockels) and Christmas coming and Dan and I hosting Christmas this year for my side of the family, I have been quite busy!

I just can’t write about fun things when I know so many people are grieving and brokenhearted. I am so devastated by what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary. I haven’t been able to watch the news much because I can’t stomach the sorrow. I am praying for the families and for the whole community of Newtown, CT that God’s comfort, peace and mercy would permeate through the town. While I can’t understand why something like this could even be possible, all I know is that God is still Sovereign. He is Love and He is present in the midst of our pain and grief. My prayer is that He will be glorified through this tragedy and that He is the one to heal those who suffer.

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” Psalm 147:3

 

Pet Peeves

20 Pet Peeves

This should be fun. I always like visiting the things that drive me crazy, don’t you? Well here they are in no particular order…

1. When eating and feel a hair in my mouth. Ew.

2. Putting in a workout DVD and having to sit though a five minute introduction. Just get to it or let me skip it!

3. A house that gets dirty hours after I clean it and this is before we have a baby!

4. Commercials I can’t fast forward through.

5. When people don’t know how to use self check outs at grocery stores and then need the attendant to come over every 5 seconds.

6. Having to pee so much on an airplane and needing to ask the person in the aisle to get up every 10 minutes. I’m sure they feel the same way about me.

7. People who text and drive! It’s so incredibly dangerous. You are not only endangering your life, but mine as well and all the other fellow drivers.

8. When my razor falls into the bathtub and the razor separates from the handle. It happens at least once while I’m showering.

9. Poor Grammar.

10. Running on the treadmill next to someone who smells of cigarette smoke.

11. Cat hair anywhere around the house.

12. People who eat bananas with their mouth open- it does not sound attractive.

13. Traffic of any sort.

14. People who drive under the speed limit, especially in the fast lane. Move over!

15. Girls who wear high heels or wedges to amusement parks. Didn’t you know you would be walking around all day?

16. The rainbow beach ball that comes up way too often on my computer.

17. People who are late. You know when you need to be somewhere, so plan accordingly. I know stuff happens, but that’s why you plan for the unexpected.

18. Spaghetti sauce stains on my Tupperware.

19. Dirty tissues that have not made it into the trash can.

20. Posting a blog, only to then read it and find more typos.

Wow, this makes me seem like I am some crotchety old woman. I promise I am not, but I suppose it’s the nature of the list.

Super Powers

Let’s continue to go through my 30 days of questions, shall we?

If I could have a superpower, what would it be?

Hmmmm..

I don’t really consider this a super power because it’s more of Harry Potter reference, but if I could travel by Floo Powder or Apparate to places, that would be a dream!

 

 

It’s not that I hate traveling, I just hate the time it takes to get places. Think of all the time we waste just getting ourselves from one place to the next. It’s probably years of our lives!

If I could cut out that time then I could be more productive with those years. Plus, I could travel to Europe on the fly, like head there for a lunch break and then be back home by dinner time. There would be no need for hotels and money to fund the travel, just money to get around once I was there. It’s BRILLIANT!!

Just a reminder to head over to Little Fockels for updates on our baby!

We’re Expecting…

We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog, to share a bit of news with you…

We are expecting a baby this July! Wahooo! No, not on my birthday, but two weeks before, July 8. I have been dying to tell you all, but we wanted to make sure Baby Fockel was doing well. We had our first ultrasound this past Thursday and the baby is looking great. He/she is pretty content in there. I’m excited to share all the little bits and pieces of this new adventure with you, but I will do so over at a new blog called Little Fockels. You can find it at http://www.littlefockels.wordpress.com. I will continue to post random junk here as this is my main blog, but if you care to share in the progress of our little one then you can visit me over at the other blog too. I did it this way in case you absolutely are not the least bit interested in how fat I’m getting or any other of my pregnancy woes, then you won’t even hear about it, but I hope that you do care. 🙂

Or you can just click this link —-> Little Fockels

20 Random Facts

Days are going by so fast and it doesn’t help that it’s Christmas and I am a busy gal, but here is a fun list today. This is 20 Random Facts about me. What’s interesting is how easy it was for me to come up with these. I know I can be pretty random, but I didn’t know I as that random. I suppose whenever you look at some of the things you do on a daily basis, it seems normal to you, but when you start to think about it more closely you realize that not everyone does these things. Without further ado…

20 Random Things About Moi:

1) I am prone to dizzy spells at any point of the day. I get them a lot. Sometimes the dizziness lasts for days at a time, especially during extremely stressful times in my life. I have learned to deal with it for the most part.

2). I am not sure how long I have noticed the constant ringing in my ears, but I do know it’s been years. I have always had inner ear problems, hence my lack of balance and what not. It’s s not super loud, but it can get annoying if the world around me is too silent.

3) I love, love, love scary movies. Not necessarily gory scary, but spooky, creepy scary. I am enjoying American Horror Story right now and I love a good mystery that comes with the creepiness.

4) I only eat cereal on weekends. This is a rule I initiated about a year ago. I have a bad habit of eating cereal like I’m never going to taste it again. One bowl is never just one bowl, it must be two or three, and sometimes an extra half. It’s like a bag of chips, you can never eat just one chip. Because of my lack of self control, I banished it to only weekend eating and only for breakfast. The rest of the week I eat a lot more sensibly, heck even on the weekends I eat pretty healthy, but my cereal is my one vice. A vice I will never give up, I just can’t eat it whenever I want to anymore. Like breakfast, lunch and dinner.

5) I have to get a German chocolate Christmas advent calendar every year. It started when I was little and we lived in Germany and we actually got the real deal. I loved opening up a piece of chocolate every morning. It felt like Christmas. Even now, I still have to buy one, it doesn’t feel like Christmas without one. And since I became an adult, I have decided to eat a piece of chocolate every morning, not just at Christmas time. One piece of low sugar milk chocolate from Trader Joe’s every day keeps the doctor away.

6) I’ve kept all of the McDonald’s toys I got from childhood. They are in the attic awaiting our first born child’s admiration. And boy did we eat a lot of McDonald’s when I was growing up. I hope our children will barely know what a McDonald’s looks like, but they will certainly be able to play with momma’s collection.

7) Every once in a while I will break out an R.L. Stine book and give it a read. I still have quite a few up in our attic and they are fun, quick reads that remind me of years gone by.

8) I worked at Bath and Body Works twice and quit twice. Not just quit, but like never showed up again quit. I am not proud of this. And it was two separate locations. I would never expect to be hired back by them in my lifetime.

9) I can’t really swim. I mean I can hold my breath under water, I can doggie paddle and I can sorta tread water, but drop me off into the deep end and expect me to stay a float for a few minutes and you might be calling the lifeguard over for a quick rescue and a scene.

10) I could eat a panini every day of my life and never get tired of them. Sure, there are so many variations it would be easy to do, but I just love a good sandwich with melted cheese and warm bread and some good veggies shoved inside!

11) My favorite weather to run in is 50 degrees. It’s not too cold, not too hot. Just right. And once I get going, I get really sweaty and it’s still a little breezy out to keep me cool.

12) I had this stupid rule in high school that I would only wear tank tops with jeans and long sleeve shirts with shorts. In winter I could wear long sleeves with jeans and all, but it was during the summer I care about this rule. I didn’t like my body and was afraid that I would be showing to much of myself if I wore tank tops with shorts. I know, who does that right? Now, anything goes!

13) I still get excited when I see that there is a Boy Meets World episode on TV. This excitement also includes Full House, Clarrisa Explains It All (which is never on TV anymore) or something similar.

14) I used to not even be able to run a full mile in high school. For the past year I have consistently run 10 miles every week day.

15) I don’t want to be one of those people who is so obsessed with Disney World that they dress in the clothes and decorate their house with Mickey years, but I really do love Disney. When we went to Disney World last year, it was the best vacation. Seriously.

16) In middle school I would make my own lunch and then go ask my mom for lunch money. I would pocket the cash and save up to buy clothes and other things I wanted.

17) When I was little, I would force my parents to repeat “Good night, I love you, see you in the morning” about 5 times before I went to bed. Even now my dad will say it to me when signing off of Facetime. I have tried to get Dan to say it, but he doesn’t like to say it at all.

18) I actually really love doing laundry. Probably because I like having clean clothes, but it’s the one chore that doesn’t feel like a chore to me.

19) I have only skied once in my life and it took me  two hours to get down the bunny slope, twice. Don’t ask.

20) I had a library fine once of about $45 because I forgot to return my items before we left for Disney World last year (see #15).

My Love Language

Question #4. What is my love language?

 

You’ve heard of Love Languages, right? They are ways that you like to receive love from other people and/or ways you like to show love.

 

The Five Love Languages are:

1. Quality Time

2. Acts of Service

3. Physical touch

4. Words of Affirmation

5. Gift Giving

 

While I would love to receive all of these, I think the one that stands out the most is Quality Time. I would rather spend a full hour with someone I love than do anything else. It doesn’t matter what we do or where we are, but it usually consists of talking and catching up, learning more about each other and swapping stories.

This is how I love to give love as well. It’s more important to me to spend some time every day with Dan talking through our day and just being a couple, for example, than for me to do something nice for him. Though I know he appreciates Acts of Service more, so I try to do things for him that serve him so that he feels loved.