Grandparents

I realize I posted already once today but after having a discussion with Elle I felt compelled to post again. Elle and Miss Pants will be driving down to Elle's hometown for her grandma's birthday party tomorrow. Miss Pant's Nana - or Pana as she will now be called gets a little excited about all things Miss Pants related.
As it now stands, Pana has left work for the day to mow the lawn and get things ready for her "girl". No not her daughter- her granddaughter. Not sure that a 2 year old will notice whether the lawn is mowed or not but it strikes home the point that once we have children our parents will pass us over for their grandchildren without a backward glance.
As Elle drives the 2 hours to the house she grew up in she will likely receive multiple phone calls from Pana wondering how far away they are and how is Miss Pants doing. No questions will be asked about how Elle is doing, so long as she is doing her job as chauffeur of the precious cargo all is well.
Not that I am complaining really. It's just shocking to see how our parents interact with our kids. If I scold the Boy I am "being to harsh on him". When we became vegetarians my parents started sneaking the Boy out for dinner to feed him meat. They built their dream home after all the kids were married and out of the house. The dream home contains a special playroom for the kids with hidden doors and everything. We never had a playroom growing up, but now the grandkids have one. Actions like that could almost hurt a person's feelings if it wasn't so obvious that they loved their grandkids.
So I will be thinking of Elle tomorrow as Pana spoils Miss Pants rotten and looks up with an "oh, are you still here" look to her only daughter.

End of July

Given that today is the end of July it is a day of accountability. Every month we set goals for ourselves as to what we want to accomplish. As we move toward a more environmentally conscious lifestyle a lot of our goals seem to have a green slant to them. The desire to reduce our eco footprint has had the added bonus of reducing our monthly expenses as well.

Our July goals were as follows:
No eating out in restaurants
No purchasing new items (except for groceries)
Find a place for the family to volunteer

The results:
We ate out 4 times in July. Once when we had company and 3 times on our own. We plan to carry this challenge over to August, with the exception that we will likely eat out during my birthday weekend.
We purchased 2 new cookbooks and 2 new dvd's at the very beginning of the month. To "punish" ourselves we purged out 6 old cookbooks and a dozen old movies and donated them to the thrift store.
Finding a place to volunteer was more difficult than I had imagined. I placed numerous calls to a local elderly care center and didn't receive any responses, same with an AIDS charity in the desert. I will have to carry this challenge over to August as well.

Awesome August-- that's the new theme for August. I would encourage you all to view August as a fresh start to and make it awesome in your own way.

Welcome to our blog

I have been trying to come up with something witty and insightful to write as our initial introduction post. Unfortunately, I have found I am neither witty nor insightful. As the title of our blog states- we are a family in progress. In 2006 we moved from Minnesota to Southern California and that set off a chain of events like we have never before experienced. Over the past 2 years we have had the opportunity to really examine our lives and that which is truly important to us.

The cast of players includes:
The Mom - that would be me. I am a 32 year old interior designer
The Dad - my husband who is 35 and a quality control manager
The Boy- our 10 year old son who will be entering the 5th grade in a few short weeks
Elle - my dear friend from Minnesota who's name starts with the letter L.
Miss Pants - Elle's adorable 2 year old daughter
The CS Ladies- I belong to a wonderful on line group dedicated to solving all the worlds problems and supporting each other in our endeavors. It really isn't as strange as it sounds.

I believe that each and everyone of us is in a constant state of progress. Every day life throws us curve balls that we have to react to. The reaction is a form of progress.

Welcome to our family's blog, please enjoy.