Hello!

The past couple of months have been full. Filled with writing a blog, my husband's illness, a full-time teaching job and keeping up with my resolutions. All of these bits of my life have helped me grow. 

Blogging about my New Year's resolution has been an eye-opening experience. Never before have I paid so much attention to a resolution or been so thoughtful about my successes and backslides.  

As our resolutions blog draws to a close soon, we wanted to give our three bloggers some expert advice for continuing to achieve their goals.

A Daily Guideposts devotional by Jeff Japinga on Saturday, February 26th was an unexpected surprise that spoke to my reasons for the New Year's resolutions I made. 

We'll see how my "family dinners" resolution will work once all my teenagers have something after school every day.

Jacob has started high school varsity soccer practices every day and Eileen has started working at the YMCA as a lifeguard and Kenley's soccer practices start on March 21st. (Two afternoons Kenley has jazz band practice after school and piano lessons another day.) 

"Marlajayne" posted a thought-provoking response to my blog last week. She noted that although listening is the means of communication we are most often called upon to use, it's the one for which we receive the least training. 

"But the simple act of really listening to the people I encountered had a striking effect: God had filled my day with warm and caring people."—Keith Miller, Daily Guideposts, February 17, 2010

Keith's words echo my experience with "really listening." Although I have far to go on my quest to be and stay attentive in conversation and interaction, the blessings of doing so have been consistently apparent.

Hi Guideposts! We had such a fun family dinner last night.

Two of my teenagers stayed after school for soccer and my daughter Eileen was home having fun with her best friend. Eileen just finished high school swim team season so she got home early and of course, the second I get home from work she asks, "What's for dinner?" I made two teenage-friendly casseroles—Chicken-Cheesy Rice and mashed potatoes, chicken with biscuits. I put together a quick salad and brought out the applesauce—my two favorite side dishes.

This week I had a very nice surprise in my goal of keeping up with healthy lifestyle.

In 2001 when I started gaining weight I put away all of my "skinny" clothes one size at a time. And I added to the larger sizes, sometimes skipping two sizes, as the scale climbed higher and higher. As I have lost weight over the past two years I have started bringing back all of the "skinny" clothes I had saved.