Following Your Dreams

Emmy came home singing a new version of "Jingle Bells", aka "Stinky Bells" two weeks ago.  I had my suspicions where she learned it. They were confirmed two days later when I overhead two moms talking outside of her preschool classroom.

This past weekend, Em suprised me again by the things she picks up with her little ears.  My husband was putting her train tracks back together.  Emmy stood next to him watching intently.

All of a sudden, she patted his arm and said, "Follow your dreams, Daddy.  Follow your dreams."

My husband who is rarely floored just looked at her and called out to me from the other room, "Where does she learn this stuff?"

Uhm... us, tv, conversations she overhears in the grocery store...

I could go on.

We laughed at her statement and also told her that was a very sweet thing to say since we should always follow our dreams.

Yet, how often do we really follow our own dreams once we are parents?

Last week I wrote about my New Year's Resolutions.  They were my goals for the upcoming year but also things I wanted for my family-not just myself.


What are my dreams?  What are the things I enjoy?  Traveling...learning.  I think I want to add going back to school this year to my resolution list.  Not to teach. Certainly not to earn a degree.  I already have two of those and have no interest in adding homework to my to-do list.  But, our local community college has all kinds of classes that I could find myself enjoying.

Cooking classes, craft classes, flower arranging...classes where I can learn something new.  I didn't realize I missed that until I sat down and thought about what I wanted for myself this new year.

What I want for myself seems to get lost in the shuffle of parenthood. I don't mind that because I love being a mom.  Occasionally, I go out with friends but I have never gone away for a weekend alone.  Unless you count the time I went to Florida to stay with friends who had just lost their father and father-in-law. Usually, when my husband asks what I he can do or what I want, I ask for an hour alone.   Just reading or laying around if that is what I fancy.

I keep saying I am going to go away for a weekend with friends but I never do.  I need to.  This year I am putting that on my list to.  Just for a weekend.  The decision will be where.  It really is true that you feel a lift in your mood when you plan a trip.  Just thinking about it has made me excited.  Maybe New York City or even Hershey.  I love the hustle and bustle of the city and it has been to long since I have seen a Broadway show.  Who wouldn't love to be pampered at The Hotel Hershey?  Taking a bath in chocolate, a chocolate fondue wrap, and even a cocoa facial?  I would think I have died and gone to heaven.

It took my daughter's innocent comment to her dad to really make me think about what my dreams are for the New Year.

What dreams do you have for the New Year?

A Fresh Start

As I started writing this first post of the New Year, I wanted to lead off with a quote pertaining to New Year's.  I was looking for something to inspire me as I wrote about all the new possibilities for the New Year.  I ended up laughing to myself as I was inspired by not one but many quotes, many of them humorous and poking fun at our attempts to reform our bad habits. 

Youth is when you're allowed to stay up late on New Year's Eve.  Middle age is when you're forced to.  ~Bill Vaughn

First, Happy New Year, Everyone!  Here is to new friends, endless possibilities, and a fresh start.  How did you spend your New Year's Eve?  Alone in the quiet, with cheerful friends, in a merry crowd of strangers, in the cold winter night watching a ball drop...I did not ring in the New Year, I snored it in.  I was sound asleep by 11:30.  I tried, I really did, to watch the ball drop in NYC on TV, but I just couldn't stay awake.  I was yawning frequently by 10:00 pm and my eyelids were starting to droop.  My husband warned me that I wasn't going to stay awake.  I kept telling him he was mistaken.  He just shook his head and kept his comments to himself after that.  I made the mistake of climbing into my nice warm cozy bed to watch the ball drop.  I dropped off-into sleep that is.

We had made last minute plans to have friends over on New Year's Eve.  Our whole family has been ill over Christmas break with bad colds.  We were all over the worst of it and no longer contagious by New Year's Eve.  My husband made the calls the day before New Year's Eve to see if our friends were up for a "Lame New Years Party" as my husband was describing it (and not quite in those words).  All of our friends have toddlers and infants (all under 6 months of age).  We were a weary ragtag group of parents.  Everyone left by 10 pm to go home to put the kids in bed.  We were all lamenting how things have changed. There were comments on how we were going to have to set our alarm clocks at home to make sure we didn't miss the last minute countdown so that we could join millions of other people in welcoming in the New Year.  

The bottle of Korbel that our friend put in the freezer to chill was forgotten.  It just got taken out of the freezer today along with the bottle of sparkling grape juice.  A perfectly good bottle of champagne down the drain.  It also leaked all over the ice box so we had to dispose of all the ice and clean out the ice box.

 Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.  ~Oprah Winfrey

Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.  ~Benjamin Franklin

I thought for weeks about what my New Year's resolution would be this year.  A new year promises a fresh start just as Mondays promise a new week.  All of our transgressions of the previous year are behind us and endless days of possibilities lie before us.  How will we greet the first of these days? 


I have failed for year's to become more punctual and to stop procrastinating.   I have kept my New Year's resolutions of previous years in regards to finances and being more "green".  We are more frugal and not as wasteful with our spending.  We recycle religiously.  Some weeks, we have more recycling than garbage (of course I should mention that our recycling is picked up every other week).  I had also been pretty good about eating healthier and exercising (I just haven't gotten back on track since giving birth six months ago).  It seems resolutions dealing with character traits are the most difficult to keep.  


I think Oprah and Benjamin Franklin got it right.  We should always be striving to improve ourselves.  The fresh start to a new year should be used as a chance to reflect and honestly assess ourselves and who we are.  We should strive to better ourselves so we can be better neighbors, friends, spouses...

New Year's Day:  Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions.  Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.  ~Mark Twain

Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath.  Today, we are a pious and exemplary community.  Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever.  ~Mark Twain

Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.  ~Oscar Wilde

It's all about good intentions.  An attempt to be successful is still an attempt even if we are not successful.  Tomorrow we can start all over again.




Quotes from Quote Garden.