A New Year and looking Towards the Future

New Years Eve started with a picnic style dinner of chicken fingers, pasta salad, and sliced raw vegetables.

After dinner the kid's party started.  At their request, we put on some kid's dance videos from YouTube and they danced around the living room to such hits as "Head and Shoulders Knees and Toes" and "Whip my Hair".

After about half an hour of dancing excitedly, they were tired and ready to curl up on the couch for a movie.  E choose Leapfrog: Adventures in Shapeville Park.

It's a cute little movie.  Scout is the dog from E's Leap Pad toy and I'd have to admit he's fairly cute as cartoon dogs go.

In this particular video Scout and his friends, other various cartoon animals, learn about shapes and measuring and build a playground with the help of some "measuring" mice.

After the movie it was 8:30pm.  We had told E that she could stay up until 9:00pm but it was clear that she was tired as she actually requested to do the countdown early so she could go to bed.

Luckily for us Netflix came through again with their countdown to "midnight" with King Julien.  E really enjoyed it.  We all had a small glass of gingerale to toast with and afterwards tucked her into bed with a story and the excitement of knowing that when she woke up it would be a new year.


With the kids in bed hubby and I were free to do our own thing.  We chose to watch a movie on Netflix as well.  The movie was entitled "Midnight in Paris".  I was hoping to find a romantic comedy and I wasn't sure about this particular movie but it was interesting.

In Midnight in Paris, a writer and his fiancee go to Paris for a vacation and he finds himself mysteriously going back to the 1920s every day at midnight. The idea of time travel is something that has always really intrigued me and the time periods shown in the movie intrigued me as well.  I'm a bit of a romantic and would have loved to so easily visited those times and returned to the comforts of home as well.  Overall it was a good movie though I'm not sure I would watch it again as it was a bit slow at times but the concept was good.

We interrupted our movie about 3/4 of the way though to watch the Ball drop in New York online, had some wine and a kiss, wished a few people "Happy New Year!" and went back to watching the end.

It wasn't as eventful as New Year's Eves that hubby and I have celebrated together in the past but it was peaceful and relaxing and we had a good time together.

So to answer the questions,  "If the way you spent your New Year’s Eve is any indication of how the rest of the year will go, how would you say your future is looking right about now?" I think the future looks good.  Overall it was a happy evening shared with family with lots of laughs and love.

My Word of the Year. . Envision

:to think of (something that you believe might exist or happen in the future) : to picture (something) in your mind.

My word of the year for 2015 is Envision.

This is the first time I've ever chosen a word of the year and I had a hard time figuring out which word to choose.  I wanted a word that would encourage me as we continue to push forward, and to help me stay strong.  Sometimes when you're waiting for something to happen you can feel kind of stuck, like you're just treading water rather than swimming to the next place, where you actually want to be.

I've put a lot of thought into choosing my word.  To begin with I was going to choose the word "possible" because for 2015 I want to focus on what is possible some day, hopefully in the near future: ie buying a house, adopting a second child, etc.  I'm sure there are lots of possibilities out there for me to discover.

However, in the long run I decided that "possible" isn't really something I'm in control of.  It doesn't come from me it happens to me.  Like they say "Anything is possible" but I feel a need to take a grasp on the possibilities, and gain more control and so I'll Envision it: I'll dream about it and if there are steps I can take I'll take them and if not I'll try to focus on the present and enjoy what life throws at me.

Dreams

"Late at night my mind would come alive with voices and stories and friends as dear to me as any in the real world. I gave myself up to it, longing for transformation." ~ Little Women 1994

I have always been a dreamer by nature; a writer, and sometimes a poet.  I've always related to the quote from Little women, especially when I was in high school as I would find myself forced awake by a vivid dream, bounding out of bed, digging through my desk drawer looking for a piece of paper because I just had to write something down before my brain would let me sleep.

Apart from high school, and a series of PTSD related dreams that briefly haunted me in 2003, by the time I reached the post college and onto the marriage portion of my life I seemed to remember very few of my dreams.

That is until I got pregnant with E. Suddenly I had all sorts of vivid dreams.

Some of these dreams were downright scary: reliving things in my past that I thought were far behind me with twisted horror movie scenarios far worse than I'd ever experienced in real life. The mind truly is a powerful thing!

However pregnancy also brought one vivid dream that was different than all the others; a dream that played in my head like a movie that i would repeat over and over again nearly nightly. I dreamt about a little girl probably around four or five years old with beautiful blond hair and blue eyes who giggled and ran through a field of white daisies, coming down a hill toward me on a beautiful sunny day, with a huge smile on her face. Call me crazy but I felt at the time that maybe I was dreaming of the child I carried within me. The child that is now our E.

Who knows but my husband and I both have brown eyes and E has blue eyes and pretty blond hair.

These days I do still have vivid dreams on occasion.  Usually they seem to relate to some kind of stress though I find it funny that they often feature a giraffe.  My mom would find this funny as well as I used to wake up as a child screaming that there was a giraffe looking in my window. . .but that's another story. :)

This post was inspired by the writing prompt by Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop: 

4.) Describe the most vivid dream you can remember.

30 Day Blog Challenge - Day 9

If you could have any job in the world what would it be?


Since I can remember I've wanted to own and operate my own hotel.  It's been a dream since I was a child.  Driving down the highway on vacation we'd often see run down and abandoned hotel or motel properties and I was always saying to my mom, "I would love to buy one of those and fix it up!" She never shared my interest in older buildings and would say something along the lines of "that thing needs to be torn down. You'd never get it to look like anything decent." lol.  Still I dream. . .


The day that Alma College burned to the ground I was heartbroken.  I saw so much potential in the old building.  .it would have made such an awesome hotel, given the opportunity.


My hotel wouldn't be an elaborate hotel like Alma would have made or a large scale hotel like a Best Western or a Radisson, but instead would probably have 18 to 20 rooms.  It would probably look something along these lines:

Every morning we'd serve a relaxing complete breakfast in the dining room.  A full Gluten free breakfast would be available. 

After a long day our guests could relax in the Jacuzzi in their rooms.

As the owner/ operator of a hotel I would also have to have a facility where I could have weddings and I would offer wedding and event planning services.  As I've mentioned before, I love to plan and organize events. . providing people show up for them. lol.  In the case of weddings, you would hope that wouldn't be a problem. lol.  


The chapel in my hotel would hopefully have a window like this one.  It's a compromise for me for the type of wedding that I wanted when I was getting married.  I wanted an outdoor wedding and my mom wanted a church wedding to make sure it was blessed by God.  In this case I would build a chapel somewhere with an amazing view so that both desires would hopefully be met.

As you can probably see I've put a lot of thought into my perfect job and perfect job location.  There is much more I could share but I wouldn't want anyone to steal all of my ideas. :) lol.  Someday I hope this will be a reality but in the meantime I'm enjoying my time as a stay at home mom for my little girl. :)