1. Rice Paper Spring Roll Wrappers around sautéed beef and spinach

2. New Glasses

3.  Blogging from my phone

That’s 3 new things!

Ugh. Procrastination. I really wanted to put this post off for another week. 🙂

I work best under pressure, or at least that’s what I tell myself to justify waiting until the last minute! So…for day 9, I decided to have a day of no excuses and “do it nows”. Um, yeah, I missed the mark on that one. Big time.

Here’s what I did do. I made a list of the big things I needed to get done in the next few weeks. I listed an absolute date and then a goal date. Know what I learned? I’d better get busy!

Deliberate Choice #8:  Move my Body.   How’d I do?  Well…

I would love to be a runner.  I think runners are amazing.  I’ve tried Couch to 5K several times and I’ve ended up with pneumonia 3-4 weeks into it each time.  Ugh.  I don’t enjoy fast walks.  I never have.  But, with a family history of diabetes, high cholesterol,  high blood pressure, and my own broken thyroid, I know that I have to exercise.  I just can’t don’t want to.

All day yesterday (Day 8), I stressed over when I’d get outside to walk.  BUT…first the carpet installers were here and then it was carpool and then I needed to finish my Bible Study while child 2 was a swim and then it was piano lessons and then…

I think you get the point.  I’m not good at exercise but I’m really good at making excuses.  I’d decided to ask Adam if I could go for a 15 minute walk once the kids were in bed.  I don’t like walking at night, but I’d committed to moving my body at some point during the day.  Enter this conversation:

A:  Momma, I told Daddy I’d get up at 5 and go running with him.

Me:  Seriously?  You don’t even like to get up at 6:30??

A:  Well, if it helps Daddy exercise.

This conversation came up again at dinner.  It was decided that all 4 of us would get up at 5am and head outside.  And we did!  The kids bounced out of bed ready to move, so off we went.  Now it’s 6:45 and both are ready for school!

I won’t kid you.  It would be really, really, really, really easy to leave this deliberate choice off my daily list!  However, with the kids motivating us (and my inhaler handy), I might just be able to move my body more often!

Today I chose to be a listener.  I’m not sure what I’d hoped to accomplish with this deliberate choice.  Really, I think I just wanted to be there for my kids.

We started our early morning with a swim meet.  By 10:30 we were on the road back home.  You’d think a 4-hour road trip would be the perfect time for conversation.  Well…

The 5th grader had a little school project to finish, so she popped in the ear buds and got to work.  The boy popped in a DVD, watched about 4 minutes and promptly fell asleep!  Oh well!

What did I do?  I left the radio off.  Really, that is such a simple thing to do.  By having the radio off, I could hear the little sighs and such that Addie would make as she worked.  I could ask what she was thinking, where she was stuck, what was on her mind.  I treasure all these little nuggets of conversation.

I learned a major lesson from today’s deliberate choice:  Listening is hard.  You can decided to listen, but you can’t force anyone to talk.  My job as a wife and a momma is to be ready to listen when I’m needed.

These 2 have a swim meet!  That means a road-trip and Momma-time.  So…I’ve chosen to unplug for the weekend.  With these exceptions:

• instagram photos of their swims for Momo and Popo
• a blog post Saturday
• a blog post Sunday
• any phone calls from my family and texts from other swim families since we are out of town.

Now y’all…this is a tough challenge for me.  No FB, no Pinterest, no Twitter…

Let’s see how this deliberate choice works out!