Keeping on keeping on...

I haven't been doing a very good job of keeping up with my 101 in 1001 goals or blogging about them. Sometimes life just gets in the way. Sometimes I'm lazy. Sometimes I forget. I always have some excuse for not doing what I should be doing. It's a sickness.

I have managed to complete a few tasks in the past month or so, though, so YAY me! Next week I'll be completing another task and then I'll be ready to start the new year gung ho. I think my one and only New Year's resolution will be to stop procrastinating on everything. That's what keeps me from doing anything that needs to get done, so if I can eliminate procrastinating from my daily habits, then think of how productive I'll become! I'll keep you posted on how that all works out.

So without further ado, here are the goals I've recently accomplished:

*Take Ella to the Ballet. My mom and I took Ella and Lauren to see The Nutcracker a couple weeks ago. We wondered if they might be too young, but they both did really well. Lauren is such a huge tomboy, my sister and I thought for sure she'd be bored and uninterested, but she was mesmerized. Ella was so taken by the ballet, she stood in the aisles and emulated everything the ballerinas were doing on stage. I think my child is destined to dance.

Ella and Lauren before the ballet

*Learn how to make my Mom's beef & noodles. This is one of those traditional meals that has been served in my mom's family for years. If I had to choose one meal that made me think of my family, this would be it. It's one of those things I can see teaching Ella to make some day and she'll pass it down to her children. It's very simple and so comforting (and a total carb overload!). My mom had us over to her house last week and taught me to make it. She did most of the work, but I really don't think it's anything I can screw up when doing on my own. So while I count this goal as accomplished, it's really only half done until I make this meal on my own at home without her help.

*Go an entire weekend without using the internet. I really accomplished this without much choice. Our home PC has been infected with spyware, worms, trojans and god only knows what else, so we had to unplug it until we can figure out a solution. I left work at noon on Tuesday, so that was my last contact with the interwebs. I did get online briefly at my mom's house on Friday, but didn't have access again until I arrived at work this morning. So I'd say I was successful. I have to say this was much more difficult than I expected and I did go through some withdrawals. It's amazing how much we rely on the internet these days! I wanted to look up several basic things, but was unable. I felt like my arm had been cut off! Okay, maybe not that extreme, but it was a weird disconnected feeling. Hopefully we get things resolved soon and I don't have to go through this again!

*Take an Us picture. I take a million and one pictures of Ella, but not enough pictures of Donald and me together. So I was snapping some shots of the girl and Donald happened to be there and I wrangled him onto the couch to take a shot together. After a handful of takes, I finally got one I can live with.

Donald and Karen, December 2008