What's in a Name?

So it is time to renew my tax ID number with the state of UT, and since I currently don't have any websites or blogs active for my business it seems like as good a time as any to change the name. I haven't really like "All Occasion Floral" for a while now, especially since I really focus on weddings and how generic and blah can a name get? I am thinking about changing the name to "Monique's Boutique Wedding Floral". It is a long name, but basically the business would go by the name Monique's Boutique for any web purposes. After I figure out what I am doing with the name, I plan to start a blog and a facebook page for my business and hopefully generate a little more buzz. Not worth it to pay for a website. I did that and it wasn't very good anyway, so it might as well have been a blog. I don't think I have enough of my friends on facebook that even know I have a floral business, so a facebook page would be great. Anywhoo, any thoughts? I really don't know how many people read my blog, but if anyone has any thoughts on the name, let me know. Don't you think Monique's Boutique is a a little more catchy?

Goals

Feel free not to read this, it may be VERY boring. At work we were asked to make goals for 2011 as part of our skill classes. Whatever you want to call them. We actually have a “skill day” every year on goal setting, and I am never the biggest fan. Of course I did set a professional goal as asked, but I don’t like setting goals. In my personal life, I rarely (never) sit down and reflect and write up goals. For some reason I feel like putting a goal down on paper is setting myself up for failure. Sure, I have ambition and things I want to accomplish, but I would rather have a firm resolve in my mind than have a written goal for me to look back on and say, oh yeah, I wanted to do that. I especially hate “New Year’s Resolutions.” Making a goal just because it is the thing to do at the beginning of the year is just a waste of time and energy.

Today I started thinking about my goals. Right now in my personal life, I have one: get this baby here, take care of me and baby until she gets here, pick a name for baby, and get everything she needs, and some things I want her to have J. All other goals I had have been put on the back burner while I go through this amazing and miraculous journey of bearing a child. The baby is what I think about most, and all extra energy I have is put into figuring out what I need to do in the next three months to get ready. Frankly, it is overwhelming and I would rather not think about it all, but the end is drawing near.

I think about all the other goals I have set for myself that I have yet to accomplish:

·         Getting my floral business going so I can be a stay at home mom – still in progress…I need more business. I got in debt for an advertisement in a magazine thinking it would pay for itself and it did not…I want to get in a wedding show, but I learned my lesson, I will pay cash, so it will take some time to save up.

·         Get my bachelor’s degree – I don’t know when/if this one will be completed… it will really depend on finances, once again, don’t want to get in debt for it, and we will soon have something much more important to spend money on.

·         Get out of debt. I got a second job to help with this one, but quit when I got pregnant and was too sick to work it. I am on the road to getting out of debt, but it is slow going. This one will be accomplished no matter what. I will be completely debt free in 5 years or less other than mortgage. This is extremely important to me.

Here is what I wonder…Do I not succeed because I am not ambitious enough? Do I settle for mediocre when I should be trying to exceed even my own expectations? Do I let other things or laziness get in the way of what I want? Am I not focused enough and willing to take risks to achieve greatness? I don’t know. My goals are not unattainable. I guess I need to figure out what keeps me from going for it and reaching them…

Christmas 2010

 A little late on this post...I am amazed how few pictures I can take. We spent 5 days straight with family and don't have even on picture to show for it. Sorry for the boringness of my posts. They could be so much better with pictures...I even had my camera with me, and didn't take any. Bummer. Our neices and nephews are so cute. Anyway...
This year, as we do every year, we spent Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with my family and Christmas afternoon with Scott's. This year my sister was able to be here for Christmas itself. Usually she comes before or after. Christmas Eve we went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner, and it was not as busy as a normal Friday night, but still surprisingly busy. We played games at the house and enjoyed spending time with family the rest of the evening. Scott and I then went home and opened our gifts. Scott is an amazing gift giver and always gets me something I didn't know I was getting, and I am always thrilled to receive. This year he got me this:

Perfect timing right? I have never really had anything I wanted to record before, but now that we have a baby on the way, this is something I was really thinking about getting. My husband is so awesome. My main gift pailed in comparison. I got him a new SkyCaddie SG5. He had a SG2, but he had been wanting a new one. I was really excited about giving it to him, but he had actually found it a couple of months ago and knew he was getting it. I was pretty sad. The best part of Christmas is seeing other people's reactions.
I bought gifts for my sister's kids though, and I was able to see them open them on Christmas morning and they were all pretty excited. That was a lot of fun. Malachi really liked his scooter we got him too. He wanted to go ride it the second he opened it. We got our neice Ashley a little dora purse that she barely put down the rest of the day. That is just so fun to see.
The afternoon was spent with the adults on Scott's side and that was fun as well. Scott's mom made us an great little afghan for the baby. Super soft and cuddly. Our teenage neice was there and we played some games with her that evening. It was a lot of fun. I always get a little loopy when it gets past my bed time, and that always equals a good time. Scott's brother and his fam came down the day after Christmas and Scott spent Monday down there with them and I went down Monday night and we played more games. It was a really good Christmas. Exhausting, but it was a lot of quality time spent with family.

Christmas Prep

Even though my dear sweet husband is a bit of a scrooge, he helped me to put up the tree the last weekend in November. *please note I waited until AFTER Thanksgiving. Anyway, this year Scott found golf ball ornaments, which I thought were fantastic because I love decorating anything "our way." I like to be a little unique. Just after we got the tree set up Scott found golf tee ornaments as well. I'm pretty sure they would be easy to make, but they were cheap, so Scott got a bunch of them. We officially have a golf tree. We have looked at a tree skirt as well...it is a little spendy, but I would love to have it. I am also going to make a golf Christmas wreath, hopefully I will have the time this week to get everything I need so I can get it up for at least a couple of weeks. I love having a "thing" that is unique to us. I love being the golfing couple and finding fun and different ways to show that off. Here are some pictures of our lovely tree. I took the close up so you can actually tell what is on it, but I don't you can much better. I am not a fan of the big silver balls anymore, so I think next year they will be replaced with red. The silver and the white don't look the best together.

23 Weeks

This is a pic of me at 23 weeks. Not a big fan of the pictures, I really don't think I look that big when I look in the mirror. Oh well. I am actually 25 weeks now and I am feeling much more normal these days. I am not nearly as tired or sick. I do have some pain in my back, but I think it is from sitting at a desk all day long, and not because of the belly weight. Our little girl moves all the time and specific kicks are starting to become more recognizable. I am actually able to put my hand on my stomach when she is kicking and feel it from the outside, which, of course, I thouroughly enjoy. It almost makes me want to cry. Scott and I can't agree on anything for a name, and I am exhausted by the thought of picking a name. We pretty much only have one that we are both okay with, but I don't want to name our little girl something we just okay with. I know we will come up with something eventually, it is just frustrating right now to not know what to call her. I guess I need to learn some patience.

Good Weekend

This last weekend was fantastic. On Friday night we had my work Christmas Party, something I look forward to every year. Scott is always a good sport and lets me drag him along. This year for the entertainment we played "Let's Make a Deal". If you haven't seen the show, they give you three options to choose from, in this case wrapped gifts, and then they also offer to buy the gift from you before you know what it is. We played by table, and it was a ton of fun. I think the best parties are the ones that everyone gets to participate and the entertainment is interactive. They also went around to random tables and gave out money for random things. I went home with $100 for my prize, $100 for being pregnant (they gave $100 to every pregnant woman in the room), and $20 for having 27 cents exactly in my purse. Not a bad night. I am constantly amazed at the generosity of the company I work for. One of the prizes was $2000 for a cruise, and 5 people won it. The rest of the prizes were less, but still good value. It is amazing to me to work for a company that does those sorts of things for their employees. Not to mention the really nice Christmas bonus we always get in time to help with the Christmas shopping. It is really fantastic to work for a company that values their employees so much, and is willing to show it.
Saturday we went to see Rodney Carrington in Wendover. He was super funny, and I was glad we were able to go. His tickets sell out pretty quick, and we had been trying to go for a couple of years. He can be a little dirty, but most of his stuff is just really funny and true. Before the concert I spent some of my Christmas party cash and played roulette for the first time. I did pretty well for a while, but ended up losing it all. It was for entertainment and I played for a good half hour or 45 minutes on $20. After the concert we headed back to our hotel to see how we did on slot machines. I lost another $100, which is fine, because that was what I planned to spend on gambling, and I was done. None of the machines that usually paid out for me were working this time. Scott hadn't played at all, but decided to take some money out of our savings and play some as well. He lost $100 and we were pretty much just wandering around trying to find something to play and we walked up to a random bank of machines and he put the entire $100 into a penny machine. I was a little surprised by that. He got up to around $175, which is where I would have cashed out, but he kept playing. It was hard to to tell how much money you had because it was just showing credits and not dollars. He changed it to nickel play rather than penny play and 5 or 6 rolls later, he won something. We weren't sure what. It showed two treasure chests on the left side of the screen and then a picture saying he won on the right, then the whole screen covered in gold coins, and some pictures saying he won extra spins and just a bunch of stuff while we sat there trying to figure out what was going on. Once it finished, Scott has over 32000 credits and we couldn't do the math really quick so he cashed out. He had hit a $1590 jack pot! We were both a little shocked. The max bet was 300 nickels, which means he bet $15 and won $1590 on one roll! It was awesome. The attendant had to come pay him and that was the only time we drew attention to ourselves. We were both just kind of in awe. It was really exciting.
Scott payed cash for our hotel room, and then put the $200 back into savings that he had taken out, and then we bought a PlayStation 3, a couple of games, and the Move bundle. He still has some extra cash, and I know he wants to buy a golf club with, but I really don't know what he will do with the rest of it. It was all just very exciting and we are glad to have a little bit of play money! What a great weekend!

Thanksgiving

I get so frustrated around Thanksgiving every year because it seems to be a lost holiday. We are all excited to get off work and do some shopping, but the Christmas decorations go up earlier and earlier each year and we forget that Thanksgiving is an important holiday as well. I, as an American, am very blessed with so many wonderful things, and I think we forget all too often to be grateful for what we have and not worry about keeping up with the "Jones'". I was very impressed this year to see so many people posting what they are grateful for on Facebook. It was refreshing to see that we do remember to be thankful once in a while. I am not going to list my blessings, because it really would be an endless blog, but just wanted to express my sentiments that Thanksgiving should not be forgotten or overshadowed by getting ready for Christmas.
Anyway, for Thanksgiving this year, as we have every year, we went to Scott's parents house. We pretty much have the deal that we go there everything Thanksgiving since my parents go to my sister's in Idaho. I slept in Thanksgiving morning (I love sleep), and we made it down there around noon. We had been spending a lot of time with my family, so it was good to spend time with Scott's as well. We at lunch, I napped, and some of us watched the football games. That evening we went to Harry Potter again. I didn't enjoy it as much this time because I couldn't get comfortable, but the movie was still good. After the movie we went back to my in-law's and played Apples to Apples with Scott's parents and brother. It is always enjoyable to play games; especially after my bed-time when I get a little loopy.
Friday, we did the Black Friday shopping, but we didn't start super early, and we actually didn't get much shopping done. I didn't have a huge budget, and it didn't seem like any of us had the patience, so the actually purchasing of gifts was minimal. Nevertheless, it was fun to be out (well for me, I'm not sure Scott and his brother enjoyed it as much as my mother-in-law and I did). We had our traditional lunch at Brick Oven, hit a couple more stores and headed home for much needed nap. That night, I went to work with Scott. He had to load the trucks. It didn't take too long, and once my back got tired of sitting, I got up and struggled to help. It was laughable. As for Saturday, I don't really remember doing much. We had lunch at the new Texas Roadhouse, and visited my sister there. That was fun. We used a gift card we have had for a really long time. We also got some groceries and Scott helped me put up our Christmas tree. Mostly a relaxing weekend, and I really enjoyed it.