Look who turned four today! We had a big, full day. David took off work and we went to The Wonder Place and then Chick-fil-A for lunch, two of her favorite places! That pretty much wore both girls out, so naps were in order as soon as we got home. After nap, we went to The Ride to get a bike helmet for Anna, then we came home and presented her with a new (to her, anyway; it was a hand-down from a friend!) bicycle. David helped her try it out, and before long, she had really gotten the hang of it! When Sarah gets older, we’ll have to get the whole family outfitted and start biking as a family. After a spin on the bike, Nana and Granddad (who had just arrived from Colorado for the birthday weekend) took her out to dinner.

Here are some pics from the day:

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I recently read Getting Things Done by David Allen, after first seeing it on MoneySavingMom’s site. The title had me. After all, who doesn’t want to get things done? This book is definitely geared toward the business world, and I knew that going into it, but I wanted to see if I could glean a few useful tips from it anyway. Honestly, I got a little bogged down in all the corporate lingo he threw around, and I thought parts of his “system” were a little too complex for my needs. But there were several good points. Without giving a run-down of his entire system, I’ll just share a few things I came away with.

I need to be better about collecting all my “stuff.” Stuff is everything, and I mean everything, in your life that on some level you think isn’t like it should be or requires something of you. At any given time, these things pop into your head, cause stress, and prevent you from focusing on what you need to. I think I have a dentist appointment coming up soon; when is it again? I need to remember to ask David to hang the new curtains. Oh yeah, that toy needs batteries. What’s for dinner tonight? I’d really like to play the piano more. The washer stopped, time to switch the load over. We really should have people over for dinner more often. Did I remember to charge my cell phone? It would be great if I could learn Spanish. You get the idea. The important and the unimportant, the exciting and the mundane, the “must-dos” and the “would-be-nice-if-I-coulds” all float equally in and out of your head. I’m not ready to totally overhaul my system and start from scratch with the “collection system” he outlines in the book, but I do want to re-think my planner to make sure I have a place to capture everything. When something comes up, I need to know it’s covered so I don’t keep worrying about it.

Another helpful tip is the “two-minute rule.” If something requires action, and that action would take two minutes or less, just do it now. Now I can see how this could be taken too far; I could easily whittle away my entire day doing little things that take two minutes or less. But I see his point. If you receive an e-mail that only requires a quick reply, just go ahead and send the thing and get it out of your mind (and your inbox).

For “projects,” which he defines as anything that requires more than one action step, it is important to visualize the outcome and specifically identify what a “done” project would look like. Only then should you start brainstorming ideas, and then organize those ideas in a way that will get you to your goal. Often, people start throwing around ideas before they’ve really put into concrete terms what they are trying to do.

It is crucial to identify a tangible, very specific next action step on everything you need to do. He gives the example of a guy who needs a tune-up on his car. But what he actually needs to do is get the car to the garage. But first he needs to call the garage and make an appointment. But he doesn’t have the info; he wanted to use a garage his friend recommended. So he needs to call his friend. “Get tune-up” isn’t a next action; “call Fred for number to garage” is. Often all it takes is 10 seconds of thinking to identify a specific next action to get one of your to-do items “unstuck.”

Overall it is a pretty good book. I ended up skimming some of it quickly because it seemed repetitive at times. But it gave me some things to think about and implement, and I’d call it a worthwhile read.

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I got Anna a “Big Sister” shirt a while back, which she has been wearing proudly. Recently, while shopping at Rhea Lana’s consignment sale, I happened upon the exact same shirt with “Little Sister” on it in Sarah’s size. I couldn’t pass that up now, could I?

And one more, not in “sister” attire, but kind of funny:

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It will be hard to top last year’s Snowpocalypse, as it came to be known, but we got an inch or so a couple of days ago—enough for Anna to don the now-too-short snowsuit and get out in it. And the parenting medal goes to David for getting out there with her while I stayed inside and took pictures from the window. :)

I woke up in “snow day mentality,” in which I basically throw off all attempts at productivity and goof off. I even stayed in my pajamas. That lasted until about 10 A.M., when I just had to get dressed and put on some makeup. The girls managed to stay in theirs all day though.

It’s much better from in here, right Sarah? :)

(I know that would be a better picture if the window weren’t so filthy. With 2 kids and 3 dogs, it stays clean for about 5 minutes after I Windex it.)

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Falling into the “Oh my word, I can’t believe I waited so long to try this!” category is a braided bread recipe from a woman named Karen that I went to church with years ago. I’ve eaten the bread, I’ve been told it was easy, I’ve heard the testimony of other people who thought they couldn’t make bread make this bread and it turned out great, but for some reason I never tried it until this past weekend. It’s a keeper!

Braided Bread
2 1/2 c. flour
2 pkg. yeast (or 5 tsp.)
1/2 c. sugar
1 tsp. salt

Mix these four ingredients together in a large bowl.

2 c. milk
1/4 c. butter
2 eggs
3 3/4 c. flour, divided

Heat milk and butter until the butter just melts, then add to dry mixture. [Note: this seemed a bit ambiguous to this literal girl, so I used a thermometer, as I always do, to make sure the liquid was between 110 and 120 degrees F.] Beat well, then add eggs, one at a time. Add 3 cups flour, one cup at a time. (You can also add other ingredients like raisins, cream cheese, whatever you like.)

Knead until no longer sticky, adding 1/2–3/4 cup more flour. Place in a greased bowl, turning it over when you first put it in, and let rise for 1 hour.

Punch down the dough and divide into two halves. From one half, divide dough into three parts and make these into long tubes of dough. Braid these into your loaf shape on a cookie sheet or stone. Repeat with other half. Cover with a cloth and let rise for 30 more minutes.

Before baking, brush the top of the loaves with egg yolk (best if egg yolk is at room temperature). Bake at 375° for approximately 20 minutes. The tops should be a light brown/deep golden color, and when you tap the loaves, they should sound hollow.

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We’ve got a little work to do, but she’s coming along, don’t you think?

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We love dogs around here, as my long-time readers already know. Well, Sarah says two things quite frequently—”mama” (which can mean me, or just that she’s unhappy about something and the status quo needs to change), and “woof woof” when she sees a puppy dog! (Actually, she seems to think ALL animals say “woof woof,” but we’ll get that straightened out later.)

This isn’t the best, but you can kind of hear her saying it if you turn up the volume:

And in other dog news… do you remember “Pound Puppies”? Well, I didn’t have those. :) I had the “Kennel Kuddles” from Wal-Mart, and they were great. I kept them, and I just put together a little puppy playset for the girls. There are some baby washcloths for blankets, some silver condiment cups for food bowls, a baby hair brush, and a doctor kit to play “vet.”

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And it’s only halfway through January! I’m already about a third of the way to the number of books I read last YEAR…

… but I’ve resolved to do better this year. You know, resolved as in “New Year’s Resolution,” as in “I never read, but I should, so by golly I’m going to read 50 books this year.” Ok, maybe not. But I’m aiming for two a month, and if I read at least one a month I’ll be pretty pleased.

(Side note: For those of you who thought this post was about Anna’s reading, so as not to disappoint you, let me just say she’s doing great. We’ve just started going through Starfall‘s little “books” for beginning readers and she loves it. She can tell you all about Zac the Rat, Peg the Hen, and Gus the Duck.)

Back to my book…  it was a short book (but it still counts, I tell you!) about how to stop procrastinating and get things done. Things like reading all those books I want to read. It’s called Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy. To explain the title, I’ll just offer a quote from the introduction:

Mark Twain once said that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.

Your “frog” is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it. It is also the one task that can have the greatest positive impact on your life and results at the moment.

This book is definitely geared toward those who have careers outside of the home, but much of it was applicable to little ol’ stay-at-home-mom me. At this season in my life, I’m pretty quick to blame external factors beyond my control as my primary hindrances to getting things done. However, I admit I have some internal holdups as well, and this book helped me identify them. I’ll just highlight a few things I learned:

• I need to be better about setting goals. If I’m going to spend my time on something, it needs to be getting me to where I want to be. Tracy says, “One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not be done at all.” How true!

• Advance planning is very important. Just taking a few minutes to plan out your day can save you up to two hours of time! You should have master, monthly, weekly, and daily lists to work from. Aha! I knew it! Making lists if one of my favorite things to do. Now, about getting things crossed off of it…

• Focus on high-value activities—those that will bring the greatest positive results to your family, career, life in general. The 80/20 rule applies to our activities too—20% of our activities account for 80% of our results. Yet we tend to busy ourselves with the 80% that don’t get us anywhere. Always busy, but never accomplishing anything… yeah, that sounds familiar.

• We have to choose to procrastinate on some things, because we simply can’t do everything. I’ve actually been thinking about this since before I even started the book and I’ve observed something about myself. When I have a chunk of time, I think one of my biggest holdups to using it wisely is that in choosing to do something, I’m choosing to NOT do fifteen other things I want to do. So I do nothing, or I hop from thing to thing trying to do it all, thereby accomplishing diddly squat. Pretty stupid, huh?

• Technology is meant to improve the quality of our lives by enhancing our communications with people and making us more effective and efficient. If you’re a slave to technology, it is no longer serving that purpose. Don’t become addicted.

• You can reach a mental state of high performance and productivity. Tracy writes, “You feel elated and clear. Everything you do seems effortless and accurate. You feel happy and energized. You experience a tremendous sense of calm and increased personal effectiveness.” Ok, I have felt this on occasion. But most of the time I feel sluggish, sloppy, unmotivated, and foggy-headed. I’ve long thought that people who get a lot done must think faster than I do, that my brain just isn’t wired to operate that efficiently. But you can work to achieve this state of clarity by developing a sense of urgency in getting your tasks done, by training yourself to act rather than procrastinate. And once this starts, you develop the momentum to keep it up.

There were several things about this book that really were more applicable to those pursuing a career, but I gathered a several gems from it that made it worth the read. And I learned that I can get more done. And by getting things done, I DON’T just mean housework and such. I’m also talking about personal goals, things I want to do with my family, relationships I want to nurture outside the home—things that matter. I don’t want anyone to think I’m trying to brush people aside so I can do tasks. But sometimes those things that matter take some advance planning to make them actually happen.

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This morning, as usual, Anna wanted to know where we were going. And as usual, when the answer was “nowhere,” she was ready to help me out with a suggestion. This morning she came up with this:

“Let me think where we could go… maybe we could go buy a present for a little girl.”

“What little girl?” I asked.

“Maybe in Africa…”

“Oh, you mean a little girl who doesn’t have any toys?”

“Yeah.”

Oh, what a sweet spirit she has! She was remembering back to some charitable giving we did before Christmas, when I told her these presents were for “a little girl who doesn’t have any toys” and I threw out Africa as a possible destination. And when her grandparents took her to buy a doll “for a little girl” and they dropped it off at a local toy drive. Apparently she thought that was pretty cool. May she continue that desire to give to others all through the year!

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There’s this toy that I… I mean the kids… have been playing with a lot lately. It’s Magneatos! It’s very simple—just a bunch of magnetic rods and joints—but the possibilities are endless and it’s almost therapeutic for a geometry geek like me. Squares, triangles, hexagons! Pyramids, tetrahedrons, cubes! And of course, the cool stuff on the box that I like to… I mean that Anna likes to… build by looking at the picture. Over the past few weeks she’s gotten better at looking at the picture and figuring out what comes next. That’s some kind of good spacial-relations skill, right?

Anna now knows lots of shapes, including the difference between a square pyramid and a triangular pyramid. Sarah likes to play with them too, even though she isn’t trying to build things yet. She’s pretty good at tearing them down, though, and putting the blocks back in the box when we’re done. :)

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