We Bought a House

For anybody who isn't friends with me on Facebook or isn't related to me and yet somehow still reads my blog,  Eric and I bought a house. We closed almost 2 weeks ago now (wow) and moved in just over one week ago (wow again). It is a huge adjustment moving into a house. We've lived in 3 different apartments during our marriage, with 2 years being the longest apartment stay, and yet I feel like I transitioned into those changes a lot more easily than I have with a house. Maybe it's because we have more that we are responsible for and so much that we have to buy and get done and combine that with everything else in our life including a child which we didn't have before we last moved, it's a lot different. We've barely had time to unpack, and actually there are still boxes in our extra bedroom that need to get taken care of. Fortunately, the only thing that is really left is getting pictures on the walls and home decor unpacked and set up so that our house looks more homey. I can't wait until our house looks and feels more like a home.

Like I said, it's a huge adjustment, but we're getting there. What's going to make it rough is the fact that I have my youth group mission trip next week so I've been really busy with that, and since I won't be here for a week there is a lot that I won't be able to help with. Since Eric will be responsible for Charlotte by himself for the week, he probably won't get too much done while she's awake either! I hope to get some things done during the days I am at home, especially weeding our 2 small garden areas. And I mean small. Somehow they each have more weeds than plants in them though, and unfortunately we have absolutely no gardening tools to speak of.

Eventually we want to have a house-warming party, hopefully we can do that before Charlotte's 2nd birthday! It will be really nice to be able to celebrate her birthday in our own home. It was great that we had family willing to let us use their house for her baptism and birthday, but it will be great to start having our own family celebrations in our family home!

Writer's Block

I have had the worst writer's block recently. It's not that I don't have anything to write about, because I do. There has been so much going on in my life and in the world that would make for some great blogging material. It's more that I haven't had the desire, energy, or motivation to write. The thoughts are there, but they just refuse to come out and onto the computer screen. The longer I go without writing something, though, the harder it seems to write. So here I am, sitting in front of my computer, trying to think of something to write which is worth reading. I don't think I'm succeeding.

Holier Than Thou

I recently finished a book called Holier Than Thou, by Mark Hart and Greg Iwinski. It's from LifeTeen and geared mostly towards teens, but it's still a decent book giving the amazing stories of some of the canonized saints, quite a few of which I've never even heard of before. But then again, when it comes to the saints, I'm not very well versed at all.

I do have a favorite saint, however: St. Anthony of Padua. If you're Catholic and have ever lost something, chances are someone has told you to pray to St. Anthony. Despite my intense organization, I somehow still manage to lose stuff with alarming regularity. Thank God (quite literally) for St. Anthony. He even gets his own little prayer. It goes something like this: Tony, Tony, please look around, (insert lost item here) is lost and can't be found. Quite simple, yet very effective. I usually add my own little desperate prayer too. And St. Anthony has always come through for me. He even helped me find my car key when I lost it a little while back. And while I consider him my own personal saint (wish I would have picked him for my confirmation name!), he's just one of many, many holy people up in heaven who are watching out for their brothers and sisters still on earth trying to live a life in Christ.

As a Catholic, I greatly appreciate having numerous saints who have gone before me and who are praying for me and looking out for me up in heaven. Of course, everything good comes from God, but saints are our family in the faith who have been there, done that, and can give us guidance and help and encouragement in addition to already being in heaven and closer to God than we are and therefore helping our prayers get answered. If you're not Catholic, you probably don't really "do" the saint thing, and that's a little bit too bad, because there are definitely saints up there, praying for you and for me and asking them for help can be quite effective.

Cutting Back

If you are a regular reader (do I even have any of those) you may have noticed I've cut out my Theological Thoughts and Book Remarks pages. I just don't write on them enough, and when I do I was often taking away from things that I could write about as a regular post. So I cut them. Now hopefully I will have more ideas to write about on a regular basis...yeah sure, we'll see how that works out. Although I do have a "book remarks" like thing to write about. I'm putting together a 2012 book list to hopefully help me keep on track with my resolution. So far I have The Brothers Karamazov, Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, Wild at Heart, and some general ideas of types of books I'd like to read. Clearly, I'm off to a good start.

New Year's Again

Does a New Year's resolution count if it's a repeat from the previous year? Or if it's one that wasn't successful, does that not matter? Most of my resolutions are copycats from 2011, but since I wasn't fully successful with one of them (and completely unsuccessful with another) I don't really care.

My resolutions aren't as numerous or challenging (in some ways) as last year, but I don't care. I made them based on what I need to improve on in 2012. So, I'm going to exercise at least 3 times I week. I completely failed with exercising last year. In fact, I think I exercised the least amount I've ever exercised in my whole entire life. Unless you count chasing after my daughter as exercise. In which case, I didn't do so bad. My second resolution is an exact replica from last year: read one new fiction and one non-fiction book each month. I was almost successful with this but failed around November. Ah well, another year, another chance. And this year I'm going to get through The Brothers Karamazov. And maybe City of God, if only I can find a good copy.

Finally, I have another spiritual resolution too but that is simply to pray for a certain amount of time each day. I did really well with reading the Bible and Catechism but I think I need to set aside a certain, more specific amount of time each day to pray. I'm not disclosing how much because I don't want anyone to judge me by the amount of time I'm praying.

Well, there they are. My 3 resolutions to being a better me in 2012.

My Pages

I'm thinking about deleting a couple of my pages. Mostly Book Remarks and Theological Thoughts. Eric says to keep the Theological Thoughts one, but says maybe get rid of the other one. The book remarks one actually has some comments which mean people have read it and liked it (or hated it) enough to comment at one point. I feel like I hardly ever update them and therefore they might not be worth it to keep. Anybody have an opinion? Does anybody actually read those parts of my blog, and if so, do you like them? Should I keep up with them? I'm definitely keeping up with Parenting Shenanigans because I always have stuff to say about that. Usually I just forget to write and by the time I find time to update it I've already forgotten a million things that I wanted to write. The other two pages though, I'm unsure about. Post a comment with your opinion, if you have one.

Dream Trends

Do you ever dream the same dream? Or, have the same theme recurring through your dreams, if not every night, at least weekly or monthly, or frequently enough that it could be called a recurring theme? Apparently I frequently dream about being chased, in variations. Sometimes scary, sometimes not, but I guess it happens often enough that Eric, who hears about my dreams almost daily, finally said something about how often I get chased in my dreams. I knew it happened occasionally, and in many of my nightmares I am usually running away from someone or something, but I didn't think it happened all that often. I decided to keep track of my dreams for awhile to see if he was right. Turns out, so far he is. The past 3 nights there has been some variation of being chased/running away from something in my dreams. I'm still in the middle of the experiment (I'm going to track it for at least a week) but it's starting to look like a trend. Huh. I'm no dream expert, nor do I completely buy into the theory that dreams mean a whole lot, but I'm still curious what it may mean, and if other people have trends in their dreams and if they think that represents something. Who knows, maybe I've just dreamed about running a lot lately because I know I need to get back in shape and get running again. It's as good a theory as any, right?