Sharon Thacker, July, Keeping Sane While Moving

We did it!! The move is over and my kids are still alive and I'm still married to the man I love;) The move itself actually turned out to be not that bad. We had some layover with both places so we were able to move lots of stuff over in our mini van during that time. I also forced myself to unpack the stuff as soon as I brought it into the house so it made things easier down the road. All of the trips back and forth were made easier because we really only moved 1/10th of a mile away. The floor plan is almost exactly the same so that helped. The most difficult part was getting our old place cleaned out. Apparently I don't do much "deep" cleaning and should work on that. We did end up getting the place looking almost exactly like it did when we moved in so that should help with the return of our full deposit.

Old home on Indian Hills Terrace

New Home on Indian Hills Drive

The most infuriating thing about the whole process was finding out that the owners of our old town home decided not to move back into it and to re-rent it!! Yep, we moved for nothing. They are not even raising the rent. Why anybody gets rid of decent tenets who pay their rent on time is beyond me.

To keep my sanity through this process I started creating a mental list of all the benefits of moving. Here they are!

1. Only a half wall between the kitchen and dining room. This is HUGE!! The owners in our new town home took down half the wall in the kitchen so now it is open and I can see what is happening in the dining room and living room while I am in thee kitchen. I used to feel banished to the kitchen when I had to cook anything and now I'm part of the happenings.

Before View From My Sink

After View From My Sink

2. Color on the walls. Our old place had a lame grey/white color on all the walls and the new place has lots of different colors- mainly earth tones. Other than the strange mauve color in the kitchen, I like it.

3. Getting rid of stuff and organizing the stuff we have. We got rid of A LOT of stuff. It felt great!! We also found a few things like Woody the stuffed animal who has been on my sewing table for 18 months. I was going to sew his arm back on but my little two year old has claimed him as his own and carried him around during the whole move.

4. More cabinet space. This one is kind of positive and kid of a negative. The owners remodeled the kitchen a few years ago and made a few changes. They took down the wall (like I mentioned), added cabinets and buffet to a bare wall, and then decided to forego having a major appliance. WHAT?

Points if you noticed which one it was. Sadly we didn't notice there was NO OVEN until a few minutes after we signed our lease and handed over the money. I love to make rolls, cookies, breads, casseroles and here I was with no oven in my future. Thankfully they do make counter-top convection ovens that imitate a real ovens. I've used it a few times and it does an ok job.

5. Living the IKEA dream....this is funny because this house is really ALL IKEA. They left us shelves on the walls that are all Ikea. The kitchen cabinets are Ikea (they don't wash up well) along with the master closet, microwave, and many mirrors in the different bedrooms.

6. The basement. It's better than in our old home. There is carpet in the basement so it feels cozier along with a fireplace and a FINISHED laundry room. My old laundry room was a long unfinished spider hallway. The extra bedroom downstairs is also bigger and yes, it has Ikea shelving too!

7. Speaking of laundry.....I have a front loader. I think it cleans my clothes the same as my old top loader but it tells me how many minutes I have left on a load. We also went camping in the rain last weekend and came home with FIVE very soggy sleeping bags. My front loader had no issue washing them up!

8. Real Piano. We have a nice Clavinova that we have had the last couple of years but the owners left their real Yamaha behind so we are enjoying the benefits of having the real piano sound in our house. Our Clavinova is in the basement and will take the spot of the Yamaha when the owners sell it.

We should only be here a year so it will work for us. They left many of their old picture hangers on the walls so I've just tried to hang our pictures in the same spots.

9.The owners forgot their tomato plant!! I have enjoyed a tomato as part of my lunch almost every day since we moved in!

10. Pretty back yard....I do wish it was grass but all the pretty plants and flowers are nice. I have been trying to snag some patio chairs off of craigslist but so far....nothing.

Right before the move I finished my weight loss challenge. It was an 8 week challenge with a $32 buy in with $30 going in the pot. The top Five losers who lost the most percentage of weight loss won along with the top FIVE winner with perfect points. 10 people actually finished with perfect points so the top five of those with the most percentage of weight loss won. The best part.....I WON TENTH PLACE and $150 bucks!! I barely squeaked in and beat out the 10th spot girl by 2 pounds. I lost a total of 18 pounds in eight weeks which is the fastest I have ever lost weight before. Having to keep track of EVERYTHING I ate, exercising FIVE days a week, and having "treats" only one day a week were the major helps. I really liked the group moderator and she had lots of documents and spread sheets to help keep track of it all. She is starting up another group on August 22 and if your interested, I can send you an invite to it on Facebook.

Before and After

I also decided to give up Diet Coke for the whole eight weeks. I technically could have drank it on my free day but decided to take the opportunity to ween my body off of caffeine. It turns out I was crazy addicted to it so the first few weeks were brutal but then after that I rarely thought about it.

This was my first Diet Coke after eight weeks and to celebrate the win we made "Dirty Diet Cokes" (better with a splash of half n half:)

For August I want to completely organize my storage room and guest bedroom for the upcoming visitors we will be having in October. I also want to sew Woody's arm back on after it's 18 month detachment;)

Sharon Thacker- June- Music Appreciation

This goal of introducing my kids to different kinds of music did NOT happen. I did nothing. My kids do listen to the CDs they got from Bible Camp a hundred times a day.....do you love Christian rock? It's growing on me.  "Do do do to others as you you you would have them do-o-o-o to you!"

My official goal was not accomplished but so much was accomplished in the last month so I'll share that with you instead. I was in such a different place a month ago. My older boys were in school all day and I wasn't looking forward to summer vacation at all. We usually go to Utah for a month and this year we didn't feel good about it so decided to delay our trip until Christmas. What was I going to do this summer with these kids in hot humid Maryland for 11 weeks?

Oh how things can change so quickly. We found out the second week in June that our lease on our current place would not be renewed (the home owners wanted to move back into it.) We needed to find a new place and move out by July 31st. Thankfully we decided not to got to Utah or I would be in a world of trouble right not. Thankfully we found a new place up the street (same community, same schools, same church) that has the exact same floor plan as our current home. After we signed our lease we discovered it had one minor issue....NO OVEN!!! What kind of crazy person remodels a kitchen with granite counter tops and new cupboards and decides not to put an oven in? I will be experimenting this or this nifty appliance and will let you know how it all goes...

Anybody want to host us for Thanksgiving?

So...we are moving! Moving is a hassle but we are probably going to be moving again in a year or two as well when my husband finishes his fellowship. Turning it into a positive, I have gone through almost every closet in the house and have compiled a great amount of stuff for the salvation army! Anybody in need of a donut maker?

Impressed?

I have also organized our files (thanks for the inspiration Meg) and sold some stuff on craig's list.

The boys got out of school the middle of June and so far our summer has been glorious. I was worried about what to do with these long hot days but then I solved my problem by spending our life savings on a pool pass (only a little exaggeration). We go almost EVERY DAY!! They can't get enough and they come home dead tired. Between the pool, park, play dates, library, and bible camp my kids have had a great summer so far...yes it's only been three weeks but I'm still calling it a success.

 My kids are the white ones....thanks to Nora's generosity I am styling at the pool in her Hapari swimsuits:)

My weight loss challenge that I wrote about last month is still going. I've lost 12 pounds! Yes, it's been insanely hard but I've stuck to it and I would love to win some money at the end too. I have two weeks left so I'll let you know how I finish out.

I turned 31 the end of June and enjoyed craziness from kids and then peace and quiet in the temple. 

Next month my goal is to move without insanity or whining. I will not swear or complain to anyone. We are so blessed to be moving so close and staying in the neighborhood. We have an overlap of both places for 11 days so I will have to time to get it all done without losing my mind (we've had some bad moves in the past.) I'm hoping that by August 6th we will be moved in and I will have 5 items hung on the walls.

Thanks for all the great posts! I've loved reading about all of your accomplishments and failures. This group makes me feel normal....thanks!

Sharon Thacker, May, Run a Half Marathon and commit to better health!

My goal for May was to run a half marathon and commit to better health!!

This was a hard one but I have fully accomplished this goal and am still going with it!

I run with friends every Thursday night at the high school track. We do speed workouts and then talk about our problems in between. It's a win win and cheaper than therapy. I have ran a couple of half marathons in the past and was looking for another. My friend Erin recommended the St Michaels Half Marathon. St Michaels is located on the eastern shore of Maryland and is a quaint retirement community. The race was small (1800 People) which I like, and the timing was perfect. There ended up being a group of four of us who ran it together and we made a little girls trip out of it. We left Friday around Noon and set out to beat the traffic over the bridge. We got to our hotel and then walked around town but mainly tried to sit because we were all nervous about the race the following morning.We had a delicious dinner at a local place and went to bed early.

First Miracle- I slept like a rock the night before. I was nervous because there were four women sharing two beds in a tiny hotel room. I did take half of a sleeping pill but I got close to eight hours of sleep!!

Second Miracle- Weather! The weather was perfect...sunny and in the high 50s!!

Third Miracle- The course was completely flat flat flat. I had had hopes of doing some more intense training to get a faster time but I just did basic training again. I just want to beat my previous time and I did by FOUR minutes with my finish being 2:03!! I ran a very consistent 9:30 split which felt awesome until the last couple miles. I wanted to stop and walk but knew I would never start running again if I stopped so I didn't.

Here's the strange thing about my training. I gained about three pounds:( I over compensate with food.(and according to this article I am not the only one:) After the race I wanted to focus on losing weight. I am hopeful that this will also help me run a little faster.  I was my heaviest when I got pregnant with my oldest (now 9) and have been chipping off the weight after each baby. It's a little backwards but it's worked. After I had my third child (now 4) I was finally closing in on my goal size/weight. I felt normal. I wasn't crazy skinny but healthy. I then had my fourth baby and went a little crazy with that pregnancy and gained a crazy amount of weight. I have lost some and gained some since he was born (he is now 2). I really just want to get back to where I was which is about 20 pounds.

During the month of May I got a message from a friend asking me to join an online weight loss group with her. You pay $33 and it lasts eight weeks. Every day you have the possibility of earning 9 points for drinking lots of water, exercising, tracking your food and more. There are also bonus points for weekly challenges (the weekly challenges are in green and change every week). Here is the spread sheet I fill out every day/week.

You report your points and current weight every week to the group moderator. At the end of the challenge the top five weight loss losers and the top five point totals win the money (there are over 100 people in the group). I have been doing this the last two weeks and it's been awesome. I set a goal to have PERFECT points for the full eight weeks and so far so good. I have lost 4 pounds and am happy to be back in the groove:)

The hardest thing has been breaking my addiction to this:(

I went cold turkey and while I could still technically drink it once a week on my "free" day I decided to see if I could cut it out completely. Who knew I was so addicted to caffeine? It was rough the first few days but now I'm getting used to it. I only eat sugar treats once a week which is also difficult but getting easier. Sometimes all or nothing works better for me than just a little bit every day.

I'll let you know how it all works out!

For June I'm going to work on doing some "Music Appreciation" with my kids. We don't listen to much music (I prefer podcasts) and I feel like I'm robbing them of something. We'll see how it goes.

Sharon Thacker, April, Organize Recipe Book

My April project was to organize my recipe cupboard.

This is so embarrassing!! Why did I decide to store my pasta and recipes together? Random? 

 What an unorganized eye sore. Along with the cookbooks there were hundreds of random printed recipes. I have tried different times to organize things but never committed to "getting er' done." It actually ended up being a quick project and I found lots of good recipes I had forgotten about.  I also updated my own organized recipe book of all of my "tried and true" stuff. Having one place to go to find inspiration for dinner helps my 5 o'clock frantic self. I even typed  the recipes in bigger font so I can read everything easily when I'm cooking. I got some tabs for organization because sometimes you need a distinct labels for cookies, brownies, and cakes:)

I also added a pocket folder for recipes that make the cut to get put in the book and need to be typed up. 

I am happy with the results and it felt great to get rid of cookbooks I haven't opened in years!

For May I am committing myself to a healthier lifestyle. I need it to be simple so here are my three rules for myself that I will report back on:
1. Keep track of everything you eat every day
2. Sit while you eat
3. Finish training for and run a half marathon.

Sharon Thacker, March, No Yelling

My goal for March was to stop yelling at my kids. I have four beautiful children ages 9, 7, 4, and 2.

Look at my darling family!! This picture is a year old but gives you a sense of my blessings:)

I remember after we were married, my husband and I would often hang out with some family members who had young children (not family members reading this blog). There was A LOT of yelling and I remember making a lot of promises with myself that this was not the way I would interact with my kids. Oh how things change when you actually have kids:)

I don't yell at my kids all day but there might be once a day when I might "lose it." I have come to learn that there are certain situations where it is a given I will yell. When my children clean their bedroom every Saturday, when my son refuses to do his homework, when my daughter pees her pants for the 5th time in one day and shows NO remorse, and when my kids hurt each other are the situations that lead to yelling. I have found that yelling is easy but rarely helps the situations and usually escalates it.

I came across the following blog call "The Orange Rhino Challenge" about a women who committed to not yell at her children for 365 days. I was inspired!

I wish I had great success to report but I DO NOT. I still yelled and some days I yelled a lot. It's been a long winter with lots of snow days and "inside days." I know these are excuses and I need to do better. The positive in the experience is that I am more aware so it leads to deescalation faster. April will be better!!

This little gem is turning two this week. I don't yell at him, who could?

Oh Matthew....he yells back...

This picture is important because she had just finished a 20 minute tantrum about how much she hates spaghetti then took a bite and loved it.

My oldest is what you call a "good boy."  He happily does his chores every day and is a natural peacemaker. He does hate cleaning his room:)

In April I am attacking my out-of-control recipes!!! Wish me luck!

Sharon Thacker, February, 2007 Blog Book Finished and Printed

Better late than never!

I started keeping a blog towards the end of 2006. Blogs were the new big thing and everybody was starting one. I lived far from my family so it seemed like a great way to keep the family up-to-date along with record keeping for our little family. It was fun at first but like most things, it began to fizzle after a few years. Thankfully I had a conversation with my dear mother-in-law who said, "oh, I really love seeing pictures of the kids on the blog!" I didn't have a clue she was checking it. I'm so glad she made that comment because it gave me the motivation to keep it up and I am happy to say that almost all major events in my families history are recorded on the blog. I wish there were more casual everyday posts but I'll take what I have.

With the blessing of the blog comes the decision of what to do with it. I had over SEVEN YEARS worth of stuff. I have had friends who have printed there blogs using different companies but it seemed that the pictures were always tiny and there was a lot of wasted space. I even dabbled a little but didn't like the results when these companies would automatically convert my blog to book format. I needed more control.

Thanks to Prjoect(s)Connect I knew my days of excuses was over and I needed to figure it out. I decided to go with Blurb because they have there own design program (Book Smart) that you can download to your computer. The program lets you customize everything about your book!  I downloaded all the blog posts into the program covering a little over a years time (60 posts). I would upload them one at a time to the 2007 book and then spend the time tweaking them so the pictures and words looked right. The book ended with 50 pages so there are 1-2 posts per page. It took FOREVER at first. It took time to learn the program and I had to think back to my old yearbook days about page design. Thankfully the time I had to spend on each page started to decrease rapidly. I found that making myself do three blog posts a day kept my sanity and kept the project moving along. I was surprised that it was also difficult emotionally. I felt so much nostalgia for the times that have gone buy. One of the posts was about my sons Matthew's birth and he is now SEVEN.

Then the magical day came and the book came in the mail!! I love how it turned out. The cover color is a little more brown than I thought it would be but the pages look great! All the work paid off and now I know my future efforts will pay off as well because I have SIX more of these to make.

I have a good friend who has a great up-to-date family blog. After she posts her blog update to the Internet she imports it to blurb and makes any necessary changes and then she is done. She had her 2013 blog book on her coffee table the second week in January! I'm not quite there yet but wouldn't that be great?

My goal for March: No Yelling (after February does anybody have any sanity left?)

The back of the book.

Sharon Thacker, January, Birthday Banner

Greetings!!

I'm Sharon, Nora's twin nine years late. It's true, we think very similarly so when I need validation for anything in my life, I call Nora and she supplies it.

I live on the East Coast with my Husband of 10 years and 4 kids (9,7,4,2). I grew up in Utah but haven't lived there since 2005. After graduating from college we lived in Michigan for six wonderful years (for my husband to do more school) and have lived in Maryland for two years. We'll see where we'll land next. I stay at home with my kids and love the three Rs: Running, Reading, and Relaxing......and talking on the phone and Netflix.

For February I made a birthday banner for my family. I actually got the idea to do this many years ago. We love to celebrate birthdays with a fun cake, streamers, and balloons. A reusable banner would be a perfect and practical addition. I knew exactly what kind of fabric I wanted to use and I even found a couple tutorials here and here (I ended up merging the two tutorials together to make by banner). But then.....nothing!

After my first baby was born my dear Mother-in-Law offered to buy me my first sewing machine. I remember going to the Singer Store by my house and picking it out and working on my first projects. I made quilts for my boys beds, baby gifts, bags, etc. I had a good friend who was project motivated and pulled me along. Years have gone by, my friend lives far away, I have been blessed with more kids, and the sewing started to die off . I realized I didn't sew anything fun in 2013 (I did patch some pants for my boys) . What happened? Excuses. I love this talk by President Uchdorf. My favorite part below:

"The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul. No matter our talents, education, backgrounds, or abilities, we each have an inherent wish to create something that did not exist before.

Everyone can create. You don’t need money, position, or influence in order to create something of substance or beauty.

Creation brings deep satisfaction and fulfillment. We develop ourselves and others when we take unorganized matter into our hands and mold it into something of beauty—and I am not talking about the process of cleaning the rooms of your teenage children."

I know that I am the best person, mom, friend, daughter, and neighbor when I dedicate time in my life to create things. It doesn't have to be sewing but creating anything does wonders for my soul.

Thanks to Project(s)Connect (and THREE upcoming family birthdays) I decided to "create" and make the banner. It's embarrassing how easy this was. I went to Joanns and purchased seven fat quarters, bias tape, heat n' bond, and I was ready to go (total cost was under 15 dollars). It took me three days with a few hours each day and it was done. I am very happy with the results and my kids love it too.

Sharon Thacker's Goals & Projects for 2014

I live on the East Coast with my Husband of 10 years and 4 kids (9,7,4,2). I grew up in Utah but haven't lived there since 2005. After graduating from college we lived in Michigan for six wonderful years (for my husband to do more school) and have lived in Maryland for two years. We'll see where we'll land next. I stay at home with my kids and love the three Rs: Running, Reading, and Relaxing......and talking on the phone and Netflix.

January- Birthday Banner

February- 2007 Blog Book finished and printed

March- A month of no yelling

April-Recipe control month

May- Run a half-marathon 

June- Figure out music.

July- Consciously make an effort to serve someone every day

August- Play the piano for 20 minutes every day

September-Compile memorabilia in scrapbook and Christmas scrapbook

October- Read the Book of Mormon in a month

November- Filing cabinet attention and paper organization

December-Keep Christmas shopping/gifts from spinning out of control