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Knitting while I read

Posted on January 29, 2010 12:00 am by TheAngelForever

Call it the teacher in me, but I really like to read. In recent years, I have fallen behind on reading books that are for me. When I was teaching, it was materials for the classroom. I read a lot of chapter books to keep up with Children’s Literature. Then, it was reading to my boys. I could tell you all about the latest adventure of Jack and Annie in the Magic Treehouse books, but I could not keep up with books on the NY Times Best Sellers list.

I would sit and read my friend Nancy’s blog about all of the books that has read and wish I had read more of them. Yes, I could have read if I really wanted to. After all, I read all of the Harry Potter books, Twilight Series and others since I had my boys. The dilemma that I had over the last two and a half years since having JSL is I found another past time that I love. That passion is for knitting. Hearing the clicking and clacking of my needles as I work on a project is therapeutic. I love making things for my family, friends and others.

A solution was to find books on CD and listen to them while knitting. I even used an audio book in my classroom once and the kids loved this different strategy to literature (great for listening comprehension skills). I tried listening to books on CD, but did not like them while knitting. Hauling my computer was a pain and I still heard everything else in the background.

The other day it dawned on me. There are MP3’s of books that I can get from our library. Duh, I have an MP3 player and can put them onto it. Sunday, I put The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs onto my MP3 player. I sat there and heard chapter after chapter as I knitted away on my soon to be born nephew’s blanket. As I type this, I only have a few chapters left to listen to and the blanket is onto the third skein. I already have my next MP3 book waiting to "read" while I multitask.

Since I am so behind on must-read books for adults, my question for this week is:

What book(s) do you recommend for me to try to get on MP3 to "read" while knitting? Thanks in advance for any suggestions, I really appreciate it.

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Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #84

Categories:
Aloha Friday books decisions knitting me moments

Shoes for Disney World and beyond

Posted on January 26, 2010 12:00 am by TheAngelForever

When I was teaching, I learned a tough lesson with shoes and my poor feet. I was young, naive and wanted to wear heels. I already knew that buying cheap shoes was not a good plan. I spent a little bit of extra money and bought nicer shoes that would make me a bit taller than my students. After my oldest son was born and I went back to teaching, my poor feet had had it. They no longer could tolerate standing for hours on end in the classroom in heels. I quickly became a creature of comfort. Aerosoles became my best friend since I could find them all over.

After our honeymoon at Disney World, I also knew that comfortable shoes at Disney were a must. Just before our trip in May, we went out to look for new shoes. The boys got new sneakers, hubby a pair of sandals and I got Teva. I was intrigued with Crocs, but nobody locally had any at the time for me to try on. My father mentioned that he loved his Teva, so I tried them on. My feet melted into them.

While at Disney, I thought I would wear my sneakers a lot. My feet showed me differently. I was happier in my Teva. I wore them almost every day there and the entire summer. Putting them away for the fall/winter months has been rough.

Since the summer, I have fallen in love with the wide variety of shoes available from Crocs. I have a pair of their Sassari wedges, Nadia boots, LA Dodger (for around the house) and recently added the Juneau.

When the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration came up, I immediately started to think about shoes. What was I going to wear on my feet that would be practical not only for a conference, but also for wearing/walking at Disney World. I figured the Sassari may be good at night, the Juneau for during the day. Still, I wanted something else for Disney and beyond. While shopping at Kohls and armed with a 30% off coupons I bought a pair of Sketchers Biker’s – Step Up.

Want to see photos? Here are my shoes (sans sneakers) for the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration:

So I think I am all set. My only wish is that I could swing a pair of Crocs new Frances.

Crocs Frances

As much as I like the Sassari, I think the wider toe area on the Frances would make it more comfortable for me (high arch make shoes a pain to get at times). A girl can dream right of owning a pair – right?!

So what shoes do you like to wear at conferences? What about when you go to places like Disney World?

Categories:
Disney me moments shopping

An Eeyore kind of evening

Posted on January 19, 2010 8:34 pm by TheAngelForever

Keeping this short right now. At this exact minute, the world is not spinning. Unfortunately, for much of the afternoon/evening my world has felt like I was on a roller coaster. Just before I went to pick up NHL from school, I bent over to dance with JSL. As I did this, the world started to spin. If I kept my head still, I was fine. As you can imagine, chasing after a two year old does not allow for a lot of quiet, still head time. The world was moving around in waves and I was feeling down right green from this.

When JL got home from work, a really bad wave hit me. I went into our room with the light off and put my head down. At first I thought this was a huge mistake because, once I closed my eyes, it was much worse. I believe I fell asleep for about 30 minutes and woke up to the boys eating dinner.

I have a feeling I will be spending most of the night in bed trying not to move my head around too much. Hopefully, in the morning things will be better, if not I may be heading to the doctor to have my ears checked. So right now I feel a lot like my favorite Disney character.

As Eeyore would say, "Thanks for noticing me!"

Categories:
me moments sickness vent

My new Leslie Sansone DVD and booster

Posted on January 17, 2010 7:13 pm by TheAngelForever

Raise your hand if you need to move it more. . . . picture me sitting over here wildly flailing my arms around. I fully admit that I slacked off and got way too lazy. Of course, I had no control over some of it. I may have wanted to workout, but I couldn’t. It had nothing to do with lack of time, place or anything like this. I literally could not breathe to do my beloved Leslie Sansone workouts. Thanks to H1N1 in early October, it took me until January to feel like I could workout. Just walking across the room left me winded and needing my inhaler.

For the New Year, I finally felt like I had the stamina to get my rear in gear and do some walking and kicking with Leslie Sansone. Over the last few weeks, I have dusted off my Omron Pedometer and DVDs to get moving. Monday morning I was ready for my third workout in a row, but something stopped me and woke me out of my sound sleep. I had a huge split in my heel and could not walk (also quite pink looking). I took a day off to treat it with antibiotics. The following day, I worked out and felt good with two miles. Yesterday, we were running around at stores getting lots of walking in. I also bought new batteries for my pedometer since mine died Friday night.

Today, while we were out at Target looking for some items, I went down the special sale aisles. Out of the corner of my eyes, I spotted the following:

I had read about these last summer when they came out. They are Leslie Sansone DVDs that come with workout boosters. Unfortunately, the Targets in our area did not carry them. I figured one day they would show up here. Today was apparently that day.

They had the following:

There I was at Target unsure of which one to try. I knew I was not interested in the one with the Walk Belt since I already have a DVD for that, along with a Belt. The Toning Bands was not high on my list since we have EA Sports Active for Wii. The other three were quite interesting to me. In the end, I went with the following since it was very different than anything else I have.

So tonight, I am hoping to test this out and see how it goes. Hoping that these will help me to get ready to walk up a storm at Disney World for the Social Media Moms Celebration. I know that doing these last year were huge in getting me ready for our May trip. No, I may not drop a lot of weight before the trip, but at least I can get myself some great exercise.

Categories:
Disney exercise looking back me moments

Girl Scouting days gone by

Posted on January 15, 2010 12:00 am by TheAngelForever

The other night at a PTA meeting, one of the mothers took our a Girl Scout cookie sheet. It pulled at my heart strings. All of the memories of Girl Scouts: selling cookies, going to camp in the summer, winter camp outs in the lodge, earning badges, doing service projects and more. I started Girl Scouts as a Brownie in first grade and continued with scouting until middle school. I was lucky enough to have my mother as our troop leader for most of that time (Thanks Mom!). Our core group expanded in numbers and we all bonded as we grew and learned together from first to sixth grades. As we moved onto middle school, most of us stopped scouting. A few of us did things with another troop. By high school, most of us had moved onto other things. My new calling was Key Club – an international service organization.

Growing up, I always imagined I would one day be a Troop leader. With two little boys, Girl Scouts is not in my future. At this time, NHL is not in Boy Scouts. The troop at our school mainly does things on Saturday. As NHL gets closer to his Bar Mitzvah, he will be busy Saturday mornings getting ready for his big day. We still may look into a Jewish Pack for him in our area, but not completely sold on it yet.

So my two part question for you this week:

Were you a Girl or Boy Scout growing up? If you have children, are they into scouting?

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Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #82