Adventures in Happiness!

Top Ten Things that Make Me Happy:

10. My dogs... Rocky, Carter, Ace, Crosby, Emma, Gary, and lil Jesse James! Along with all of my family dogs and fosters, which would take WAY too many lines to type!

9. Great movies... movies that make me want to learn to dance, be a warrior, save the world, or solve a mystery!

8. Great books... books that make me grow, make me cry, make me stronger, make me laugh, make me uncomfortable, and make me dream again.

7. Helping Others... helping others allows me to be fully alive, to channel all of the things I've learned and dreamed into becoming a better person and helping other people do the same.

6. Apples and Almond Butter... it's my favorite healthy snack! An apple a day keeps the doctor away, and keeps me away from the chips and queso!

5. Horses... as much as I love dogs, my first true love has always been horses. Don't tell my husband, but that would be the only thing that would pull me away from doing so much in dog rescue. I miss my horses. Riding a horse is like floating on air. It's where I belong. I miss it terribly but it makes me so so happy!

4. Seeing a great band... I like so many kinds of music that it makes me crazy! I love to watch the musicians, I love to sing along. I wish I could carry a tune, but I am very tune challenged! But that doesn't keep me from singing! My favorite music makes me want to dance and sing and act like a fool!

3. Spending time with my friends... I have the BEST friends on the planet! When I am with my friends, I feel like I'm closer to who I want to be in real life! My friend Raychel Shaw has taught me to step out of my comfort zone and try so many new things! More about that to come!

2. Learning new things... learning to shoot a bow, learning to shoot a pistol, learning about fitness and how to help others get fit, learning how to manage and inspire teams, and learning how to learn!

1. My incredible, awesome, loving, funny, inspiring and talented family! My children are musical, creative and completely hilarious! They both have a thousand songs in their hearts and world class novels in their heads! They are the reason I try so hard to be the best version of myself. My husband is an authentic cowboy. He is hard and tender, stubborn, funny, a visionary, a dreamer, and someone who has put together the life he always wanted to live on a day hand's income. He doesn't settle for less than what he really wants.

Adventures in Dog Rescue

One of the craziest and most rewarding things I've ever gotten involved in has been dog rescue. It all started when my sister in law sent me a message asking if I knew of anyone who had purebred Australian Cattle Dog puppies for sale. My sister in law and I share a love of heelers, so I quickly started searching online! The first listing was for Texas Cattle Dog Rescue on Facebook. I clicked Like and started lurking on the page for about a week. I looked over their website and imagined what it would be like to be a foster home for rescued cattle dogs.

I know that I probably procrastinated for a week before I sent in my application as a foster, because that's just what I do! Then I didn't hear a word and figured that they ran a background check on me and said NO WAY JOSE!! I don't know why, but I always have a guilty conscience about such things!

Finally one evening after work, I got a phone call from the Foster Coordinator; a very nice guy who basically chatted with me for about thirty minutes about his own dogs and what I would need to know about fostering. I did not hear from him for another week, so in my newfound searches of all things cattle dogs/heelers, I found that there was a barely red male in a Texas shelter who had a freaked out expression on his face. I knew this guy would be put to sleep any day--he just did not look like he was going to be okay for long in that shelter. So I texted my new rescue friend and said, "Hey, I want to pull this dog. I want to adopt him but I don't know what to do. Can you help me?" And the rest is history!

The first year I fostered for TCDR, I probably fostered about 8 dogs. I found that I enjoyed meeting with potential adopters and sharing with them what I had discovered about my foster dog. I did a lot of driving because I felt weird having people drive all the way to my house which is in the middle of nowhere.

Each year that I have worked with TCDR has been a true blessing in my life! I have awesome rescue friends that I never would have met anywhere else! I have cried some tears over my foster dogs, both when letting them go and also when tragically, I had to take one to be put to sleep. I am now involved with TCDR as the Foster Coordinator. I am also on the Board of Directors and I am active in working on the newsletter and Field Day events.

My family doesn't always understand why on earth I would volunteer so much time and effort into rescuing dogs. But just being able to see that dog get a great forever home is worth all of the driving, all of the late night emails, all of the Facebook posts... It is truly one thing I know God created me for! Sometimes I get overwhelmed. I often overcommit myself. But all it takes is to get a message or an email about a dog in need and I'm right back into full speed rescue mode!

I'm a crazy dog lady. And it's an awesome adventure!!!

Is Monday Magic??

I wanted to start my workouts up again, but I had a terrible horrible Monday. I worked all day and then came home and fixed supper and helped the kids do their homework and my husband was grouchy because his boss was sick and my dog threw up on the rug and the cats turned over my water glass! So I'll start my workouts again. Next Monday.

WHY do we do this to ourselves??? There is nothing magic about Monday!! I find myself doing this over and over and OVER again! I want to start working on organizing my house, so I'll start on Monday. I want to really focus on my business, so I'll start on Monday. I want to eat healthier. I'll start on Monday.

Monday is probably the WORST day of the week to begin a new habit BECAUSE everyone thinks it's magic! And there are so many things that we think we have to do on Monday that we end up making it a terrible day! So since I'm working so hard on changing my habits, I'm going to give Monday a break. It's just another day of the week!

What kinds of things do you put off 'til Monday? How much more could you accomplish if you decided to join me on Terrific Tuesday, Wonderful Wednesday, or Thunderous Thursday?? Shoot! Even Fantastic Friday could be the best day of the week to begin a new thing! No matter the day of the week, the time of the day, you can begin where you are, with what you already have, and just by beginning, you'll be closer to your goal than ever before!

Let's get this party started!

Becoming Consistent

How many times have you started on a project or goal, whether it's to get organized, lose weight, train for a 5K or get out of debt? For me, these are some of the most started themes of my regular day-to-day life. My trouble is never getting started (well sometimes!), my trouble is consistently doing what it takes every single day until I've reached the goal I set for myself!

Yesterday I had one of those Come to Jesus meetings with myself. It was easy since yesterday was Sunday and I actually forced myself to get up and go to Church. I realized as my emotions were churning on the way out of my driveway, that I have started a million things and that God knows every single one of them. He loves me even though I've probably only actually completed one or two successfully. See, God doesn't expect us to be perfect. He kinda already knows we're not perfect because HE's the one who made us that way. God wants us to learn to be consistent.

When you learn to take a few daily steps toward your goal every day, you develop a muscle memory that becomes a habit. You have to continue to take those same daily steps every single day in order to reach any worthy goal. Some people think it takes 21-28 days to develop a habit. I disagree. I think it takes "as many days as it takes" until the daily steps become automatic. It may take one week to become a habit, or it may take one hundred. What matters is that the more often one is consistently taking that daily step toward her goal, she will get closer and closer and eventually will obtain that goal. Consistently taking those daily steps is the key.

I started a challenge with myself last week; I even announced it to the Universe . I challenged myself to blog for 30 days. I made it three days into the challenge before I let life get in the way. I have 1,000 excuses for why I didn't follow through. I even had plans and dreams of overcoming the missed days and actually played out in my mind how awesome the posts would be and how people would be magically changed by reading them. The trouble is, those plans were never followed through. So the magic never made it from inside my head to here on this blog.

I am aware of my lack on consistency. I am determined to learn from this problem and to correct it. I am reading books that will help me overcome it. I am blogging about it in an effort to recognize and understand why I do it. And I am praying that God will give me the strength to move past it.

Whatever dreams or goals you may have missed due to your own lack on consistency, I ask you to forgive yourself (I forgive me)! I ask you to dust yourself off and get back on that horse! (Dusting myself off)! Let's move past the stopping points and continue to take daily steps to make our dreams a reality!

"Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet, one one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead." Phillippians 3:13 KJV

Read The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy, The Slight Edge by Jeff Olsen