I love traveling. If I could make a career out of it I would. Unfortunately, I have yet to come up with a way to enjoy a career of travel while still enjoying a career of motherhood. Most of us I think tend to get away for a week here or there. Sometimes though it can be hard to get away for that long. Maybe it’s money, time at work- whatever. The fact is though, there is a good reason to get away. We all need it for our sanity. So, what about just a weekend getaway? I am big on weekend traveling. Love it. I am fortunate to live in Colorado, because just an hour or two driving west from where I live dumps me in the heart of the Rocky Mountains where I can camp, boat/water ski, hike, rock climb, snowboard, etc. This weekend I’m traveling to Salida, CO. It’s an “old west” town with a penchant for music, art and outdoor sports. It’s so nice there. My excitement this morning got me thinking, everyone should do this! It’s just a weekend, so it’s doable for nearly everyone. Here are my top ten reasons to get away for the weekend:

1. Change of Scenery. Ruts are bad. They stomp on our spirit and cause mindless droning for weeks at a time. A quick and cheap weekend trip can be awakening and refreshing. Break out of your rut!
2. Exploration. I myself can tell you that of all the cool places to visit in Colorado, I have probably not scratched the surface. So many of us think of a vacation as leaving the place we live… so naturally, we go far. As far as we think is necessary to feel as though we are free from our life. In doing so, we skip right over all kinds of great places. Do some searching on the internet about your state or region. I bet you’ll find some great places to explore. I always figure for a weekend trip, a 4 hour drive is no big deal, and if it’s something supercool, then a 6-hour drive is ok, too.
3. Budget-friendly. Yep. There’s nothing better than a vacation that is kind to your pocketbook. This weekend for instance, I will pay only for gas and food (my sister lives in Salida). Next weekend I’m taking my kids to a hot springs town where we will soak and eat ice cream and drink coffee and repeat. That trip will cost me less than $250, and that’s including the hotel. You can’t beat weekend getaways when it comes to cost.
4. No Time off Work. Taking a weekend trip saves you time off from work. In turn this can allow you save up your time for a bigger trip later.
5. Fewer Mental Health Days. Anytime I’m feeling overloaded, tired, or frustrated about my job, I take a “mental health day”. I consider it to be a valuable tool towards keeping me on-track and motivated at my job. Taking weekend trips seriously reduces the number of “mental health days” I need to function. This in turn also helps with number 4: saving time off for the BIG trip.
6. Education. Any trip away from home is a chance to learn. Whether it’s about yourself, history, geography, or something else, you learn. The more stagnant and routine our life, the less our body takes in and absorbs. I mean lets face it, if your weekend is currently a regimented two-day shopping and eating spree, what have you left to learn from it? Do something different!
7. Variety. The cool thing about quick trips is the variety of things you can do. A full length vacation requires planning so that you can do this and that, and go here and there. With a weekend trip, you pick one thing, and then each time you a take the weekend to travel you pick something else. It great. Here’s an example of the various things I could do here, all within a four-hour drive (some of them I have yet to do). Camping, stay at one of the Hot Springs, tour the Anasazi Indian ruins, go four-wheeling in the sand dunes, stay in a fancy hotel at a ski resort and ski/snowboard, rent a cabin the middle of nowhere and be a hermit, find a Ghost Town, or visit the vineyards on the west side of the state for a weekend wine tasting adventure. I’m sure there are even more things I could do.
8. Kids. OK, so maybe you don’t have any. For those of us that do, weekend trips are by far the best way to go. It’s long enough for them to learn and play and build great memories, but not so long that they get cranky and over-stimulated. A weekend trip geared towards kids can be fun even for parents. Our annual fall hot springs trip is something I look forward to all year long.
9. Purpose. Sometimes I get caught up in the “why” of life. Why am I doing this day-in and day-out? What’s the point? It’s easy to feel like your putting into life more than you’re getting out if you only really getaway once a year. Weekend trips are great reminders of what you can do in your life… they can answer the “why”.
10. Your health. I do believe whole-heartedly that weekend getaways can improve your health. Health is so much a part of your attitude. And sometimes the best fix for your attitude to run away from your life. Even if it’s only two days.

SO there you have it; as if you needed 10 reasons to take a weekend trip! Do some searching and find something that’s not to far from where you live (but still far enough away for it to feel “foreign”), pick an activity and then jump in your car on Friday afternoon. I truly value my little getaways, and I think everyone should incorporate them into their life. Happy Friday….

**Photo of Pagosa Springs, CO.

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All animals in nature do it; they prepare for the long winter by getting their home or den ready and then settle in until spring comes. We typically talk about spring cleaning- the time to cleanup our lives after the long winter. But, what if we were to prepare a little bit before the change of season? Maybe spring cleaning wouldn’t be such a chore, and winter would be a little nicer. Winter is often when we spend the most time at home and I find that getting organized beforehand often makes winter more enjoyable. Here are some things that I do to get myself ready.

• Take time to Give. This doesn’t just help create space and organization, but it helps other’s too. This is the time of year that I go through the closets and find everything that I know I’m either not going to wear this winter, or won’t want to keep around for next summer. I go through my closet, and then I go through all the kids clothes too, since they’re always outgrowing things. I also look for toys and gadgets and anything that I haven’t used in a while. Another great place to look for things is in your storage areas (i.e. your basement or storage shed). My general rule of thumb is if I haven’t taken the box out in the last year, I don’t need it. Once everything is piled up in boxes I load up my car and take them to my nearest charity. Did I mention that the timing of this gives you an added bonus? I collect receipts for the things I give and then deduct it from my taxes.
• File Away! This is a good time to get your bills and filing in order. I am what’s known as a stacker. I have stacks everywhere. I generally stack all summer, and while I know where everything is, the stacks will get out of control if I don’t do something with them. Every fall (ans spring), I sit down with my files and bill stubs and I put them all away. I get rid of the older stuff (say, more than a year or two old) and put all the new stuff in it’s place. Suddenly, my desk is clear, the bill box is empty (a particularly good feeling, even if it’s only psychological!), and I’ve got my finances nice and organized.
• Dump Your Pack Rat Tendency. When it comes to animals in nature, it makes sense to stash food everywhere so that they can make it through the winter. It doesn’t make much sense for us, though. Take a look in your cabinets. I bet there are a bunch of food items that have been in there so long there’s dust on them. Now’s the time to find the old, smooshed bags of Ramen noodles, the 2-year old pasta boxes, and rock-hard raisins and get rid of them! Canned veggies and soups are always good to keep, but even they have a “best by” date. Check and make sure they aren’t from 2003.
• Somebody’s Gotta Do It. The refrigerator is my least favorite thing to clean. I have kids, so they spill juice from time to time, or leave a yogurt half eaten in the way back of the fridge, and so I must admit, my fridge is probably grosser than most. I take everything out, throw away the obvious (i.e. long lost cheese from last spring… YUCK and those year-old condiments) and then I wipe everything down. I am usually pretty surprised at what I find in there, and truth be told, I should be doing this far more often. Once all the stuff I want to keep goes back in, I realize I don’t have nearly as much food as I thought.
• Pick Your Favorites. All of us girls have impressive collections in the bathroom of different potions and tonics and makeup that we bought once upon a time. It’s hard to get rid of them because what if someday that lotion we used once and then shoved underneath the sink comes in handy again? Here’s why we should get rid of them. It will be in our nature to continue to acquire the newest scents and the newest makeup. If we don’t get rid of the old, we can’t make room for the new! Go through your medicine cabinets and sink drawers and ask yourself if you’re really going to use that sparkly lotion you bought from Victoria’s Secret 8 years ago. Keep all your favorites, but be honest about the stuff you don’t use. This is also a good time to get rid of old medicine that has passed it’s expiration date.
• Wash, Wash, Wash. I always get ready for winter by dragging out all the blankets and washing them so they’re fresh, fuzzy and super-cuddly. I must admit, I have some sort of blanket-fetish problem which I can’t explain, so there are dozens of blankets floating around our house in the winter. But blankets aren’t the only things that need to be refreshed. Winter jackets, hats, scarfs, etc. will all be significantly nicer to wear if they’re freshly washed.
• The Big Stuff. Everyone has they’re own preferred time for doing this stuff. But, the carpets, walls and windows are the final thing that I try to tackle before winter. I do the carpets myself, and the walls I have found can be tackled easily with some of those cleaning wipes that come in a canister and a “magic eraser”. It’s amazing how much dirt is on your walls. You don’t notice in daily life, but once you start washing, thousands of little finger marks and peanut butter smears suddenly become visible. I don’t wash my outside windows in the fall, but the inside windows get pretty bad from all the summer air breezing through the screens.

This seems like a lot, but you’ll find winter to be far more enjoyable, and in many ways spring will be better too, because you won’t have quite as much to be done. What are your favorite ways to get ready for winter? Got any good tips to share?

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Yep. As is typical of the beginning of the school year, my son is sick. It happens every year within the first month of school and it seems to be entirely unavoidable. It will inevitable snowball and as soon as one boy is better the other is sick, until finally I’ll get it but have not time left to take off for myself. B-E-A-utiful! Since I’ve already been through this a few times, I now start the school year off armed and ready. Here’s some tips to get you through the Sickies.

For You:

• If your job allows you to accumulate comp time, do it… and fast! Any amount of extra hours you can accumulate now can save you some of your paid time off.
• If your job allows for you to work at home some days, start preparing for what you could take home to work on if you had to.
• Start takin’ vitamins… arm yourself with Zicam, Airborne, or whatever works for you!

For your kids:

• Vitamins and sleep. Make sure they’re as healthy as you can get them. Even if it doesn’t prevent the sickies completely, it could very well minimize the intensity of what they do pick up.
• Get a humidifier. I live in a super-dry climate, but even in humid areas, a humidifier and assist their bodies by keeping everything moist and mobile while they sleep.
• Get ‘em something sparkly. To drink, that is. Something good and fizzy will help loosen and break up all that gunk. Around here we have something called “Juice-pop” (Super technical, huh?). I mix orange juice or cranberry juice with either sprite or ginger ale. It works wonders!
• Aromatherapy. If you already have an aromatherapy burner than you’re ahead of the game. Pick up a bottle of peppermint, eucalyptus and tea tree oils. Put in 3-4 drops of the tea tree, 2 drops of eucalyptus and one drop of peppermint. It will open up their passage ways, and the tea tree has the added bonus of helping to kill bacteria that’s floating around your house.
• Buy them some cool (and yummy smelling) foam soap that will encourage them to wash their hands. I don’t dare to even discuss the multitude of places that kids put their hands… but they share all those nasty places with each other, so be a stickler for washing!
• A hot bath or sitting in the bathroom while the shower runs hot (for the steam) will loosen up a lot of the crud that they can then get out of their system.
• Last, but certainly not least, make sure you’re there to give them lots of love. Remember too, while most the time this first round of sick is usually viral, if things don’t improve right away get you little rug rat in to see the doctor.

Got any other good tips to share? I’m hoping that tomorrow I’ll be back at work and have a few days to recover before my little one gets anything!

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I never really gave much thought to my relationship with my own parents until I became one. Prior to motherhood, my relationship with them was just there. I didn’t think about it or entertain ways to improve it. Now, as a mother, I reflect back so much more on the things my parents did and ways that they chose to raise my sister and I. I consider the things they say and contemplate what their experiences in life had been that led them to believe the way they do. I see similarities in myself as well as differences and I try to appreciate all the things about them, no matter how difficult.

My mom is very different from me. She is very old-school. She believes I should be married to a rich man, and that “settling” for whatever you get in a relationship is just the way things are done. She has in her own life settled for a man that she doesn’t love, but who provides for her (she’s told me this herself, so it’s not just speculation). As much as I disagree with her choice, I respect her simply because she is my Mother, and so I accept her personal choices in life. I have told her how I felt, and we are at a place where we respect each other enough to agree to disagree. That said, she’s my Mom, so she still offers up her advice at every turn. Even though her advice makes no sense to me sometimes and is often radically old-fashioned compared to how I live my life, I still listen to her. I still respect what she has to say. Many people wold say I tolerate things I shouldn’t have to, and maybe in some cases I could see their point. But, I do it because I won’t always have my Mother around. I do it because I love her regardless of her difference of opinion and it’s worth it to me to listen to her reasoning just to be able to spend time with her.

When my Mom’s Dad was still alive, I used to go visit him once a week or so. He was in his 90’s, but still lived alone in his house. He was blind and so I would often go over to read the paper to him, or at least keep him company for a little while. My grandpa was born in 1904, and his favorite thing in the world was to tell stories about the past. I always listened to him tell me the same stories over and over again. I thought if I had to hear his Stanley Steamer story one more time I was gonna go crazy! Even though his stories got boring to me, now that he’s gone I would give anything to hear him tell that story one more time. I think about my parent’s getting older and it occurs to me that someday I’ll be listening to her tell me stories, and I want to be sure that from start to finish my relationship with her (and my Father) is one that I will have no regrets about later in life.

Someday my boys may look at my relationship with them and judge the choices that I made. For better or worse I do the best I can to love them, support them, and teach them how to be an adult. I am sure I will make mistakes along the way, I am human. Sure there are aspects about my childhood that I think my Mom should have done differently, but living in regret, resentment or anger towards her does nothing for me. It’s in the past. As a parent, I believe she probably is well aware of some of the poor decisions she made regarding my sister and I; but I also believe in my heart that she would change them if she could.

There’s no real point to this post. I don’t have any tips or advice to give. I just was simply thinking today that our relationships with our parents are temporary and priceless. While I realize that there are some cases where this does not apply (I realize there are some relationships which are broken in ways that cannot be mended), having a good relationship with your parents can make such an amazing difference in your life. I may not agree with everything she did when I was growing up, but I love my Mother and I plan to listen to every one of her stories about life, whether I think she’s being old-school or not.

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This post refers specifically to the United States, and I don’t really have any idea how other country’s education systems work but I would love to hear from those of you not in the U.S. about how your country tackle’s these issues.

There are some huge problems in the education system here, and I am not going to touch on all of them because I don’t have time to write a novel! If you look around online, even just in the blogosphere, what are the two main things you see people interested in? Money and Diet. I’ll tell you that those are my two primary topics of interest most of the time. It seems that no one really knows how to manage their money or their health, and here in America those are the two subjects that no one ever teaches you about in school. I suppose the education system expects that families will teach these things to their kids, but that only works if the families are already well educated in finance and health. Based on our debt problems and obesity rates in this country, I’d say we’re not.

Finance

I never took a finance class, nor was there any class about managing money and the expenses of living as an adult offered at my high school (or any others that I know of). Children should be taught how to manage their own money and the responsibility that you have when you become an adult. How did I learn about money? The hard way. I learned the way most people learn- trial and error. Our financial system in this country is a scam and it feeds on the fiscally uneducated. After many mistakes and eventually winding up in the hole, I’ve joined the millions of people who are online reading and learning about how to be financially independent instead of at the mercy of credit card companies. Sadly, I don’t see any hope for primary and secondary education in this country realizing the need for kids to have access to financial knowledge. So, I’m gonna do the best I can to educate my children myself. I’ve certainly made enough mistakes to be able to tell what NOT to do! I’ve also learned along the way some ways to save money that have helped me. Women and especially and young girls should learn to be their own financial advisor because all too often there is this idea that managing money is a man’s job.

Since I realize I live in only one of 50 states, you should look into your education system and find out if your child’s school offers a class in finance. If they do, explain to you child how important it is to know how to avoid the pitfalls of the American financial system. Even if the classes viewpoint differs from yours, there is still much to be gained from learning these things from a teacher instead of just the parent.

Nutrition

I don’t have to explain why I think we need to be teaching nutrition in school. Look at our country. I saw in the news that Mississippi has now surpassed the 30% mark for obesity. More than 1 in 3 people in Mississippi are considered obese. Nation-wide it’s an epidemic and we hear about it all the time. Colorado is the thinnest state, where I live, and we’re still holding steady with a 17% obesity rate. It’s not about fitting some standard or looking like a model. It’s a serious health concern, and what bothers me most is the number of kids I see that are already fighting with weight issues. Parent’s should be diligent about what goes into their child’s mouth, but if the parent’s are struggling to make healthy food choices then they’re certainly not going to be making smart choices for their kids.

America goes on these fads; something will suddenly become “in” or “out”… right now whole grains are the new thing. If the newest trend towards nutrition has convinced people to stop eating refined grains like white bread, that’s great! Still, there’s so much more to nutrition than the latest fad. Everything from the types of meat we’re eating (and how much) to choosing whether or not to buy organic. How about Fast Food? Most people have no idea the levels of chemicals, hormones and pesticides that they’re eating on a daily basis.

As far as obesity is concerned, nutrition doesn’t just have to do with what you’re putting into your body. It also matters greatly what you do with your body, and let’s face it- watching TV for two hours every night is not a good choice when combined with our choices of diet.

We have teenage girls who are starving themselves to be thin and maybe if they had been educated on how to eat healthy, they would be in a place where they were actually healthy and the desire to starve would not be as intense. A simple nutrition class on healthy foods, healthy activities, and the basic idea of the body as an energy machine (i.e. your weight is a result of what you put in vs. what you put out) would go a long way towards teaching children about their health. I have taught my kids a lot about healthy food choices, and while they’re not perfect and still chow down on candy once in a while, they’re leaps and bounds above most kids their age. I was in the produce isle the other day with them and they were fighting over whether we should get asparagus, artichokes or broccoli. They were nearly begging me for asparagus but I had just made it the other day and wanted to get broccoli. You should have seen the other parents nearby looking at my boys like they were mutants! They’re not…. the only difference in them is that I’ve had them eating healthy fruits and vegetables for so long now that they actually like them.

Nutrition is something that is offered more commonly in schools, but usually is an elective. If your child’s school does have such a class, convince your child the class is valuable. Even if they don’t use what they’ve learned initially, it will come back eventually and the acquired skills will be important for getting on a healthy track.

I realize that adding two subjects to school’s here in this country is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to our flawed education system, but it would be the first thing I would change if I had the power to do it on my own. It will take parents to realize the importance of these things to convince schools to add such subjects, and most parents are still struggling from the lack of financial and health information they received. Our kids deserve to have the necessary skills to become successful adults, and if the school system supported these two subjects I think this next generation would be far more prepared than my generation was.

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