Just saying Hi!

Hello...I have debated starting a blog for some time now. I really enjoy reading the blogs that my friends have, so I have finally started my own. This is a blog of my life the good and the bad. There are so many aspects of my life that I want to blog about I just don't know where to begin... I guess I will start with me.

Me:
I am a procrastinating, 29 year old, catholic, mother of a beautiful baby boy, wife of brave civil servant, stay
 at home mom, avid reader,good listener, loyal friend, lover of chocolate, good conversation and comfy pajamas, hater of dirty dishes and laundry. I have the most amazing family and friends. I feel so lucky to have both my family and Matt's family near us and we get to be involved in each others everyday lives. I am blessed to say that I do not have one best friends but several. I honestly don't know what I would do without each one of them in my life. 


My Past:
I am what they call a "military brat" I have always wondered where this term came from b/c I'm sure any "military brat" can attest to the fact that we are FAR from being brats or spoiled in any way. hahaha I have lived in a few places...I lived the majority of my early childhood (from 2nd grade through 8th grade) in Southern California and think of this as "where I'm from". I moved to Memphis, TN when I was 14 years old and I refer to Memphis as my home even though I currently live in Olive Branch, MS. I attended Craigmont high school for 9th and 10th grade and then graduated from Bartlett High in 1999. I met my husband at the ripe old age of 15 and have been with him since. We met during our church youth group trip to Florida in 1997 and were married in June 2005 after nearly 8 years of dating (exactly 8 days before our 8 year anniversary).

My work:
As stated above I am a mother, a teacher and a sales rep. Yes I am including my son in the work section of my intro. As any mother will tell you it is HARD WORK raising children. It is a learn as you go process no matter how many children you have, what kind of degree you have earned in the field of child development, or how much Experience you think you have. I have worked with children all my working life. I was a babysitter, an after-school care worker, a day care teacher, a nanny, earned a teaching degree in Early Childhood Education from the University of Memphis and taught 4 years before I had my son. NONE of it prepared me for parenthood. I would like to think that it gave me some insight seeing as I knew the basics such as how to change a diaper and not to shake the baby. But, in reality When we welcomed our son William Hatley into the world in October 2008 my husband and I were just as terrified as any other new parent. It was as if I had forgotten everything I had learned and experienced. It is funny how that works..even after having a child already, when I would ask my friends for advice or tips they had already forgotten most of what happened in their child's first days. I think we are programmed to forget the really hard stuff b/c if not we would never have more than one child hahaha!! Well, William has successfully made it to two years of age with only one minor fractured leg and I am VERY proud. William is my life right now, everything I do I do for him and his well being...some times that includes taking care of MY well being so that I an better able to deal with the stress of raising my fiercely independent son! LOL

I also work part time teaching computer skills to 3 and 4 year old and I am that annoying person at the mall that asks if you would like to try a new fragrance. I love both my part time jobs, they allow me to spend the majority of my time with my son, pay well, have flexible schedules, come with very limited stress involved and get me out of the house for a few hours a week so I don't get cabin fever :) I really do enjoy my jobs. I will always love to teach and through this job I get to teach and do all the fun things with my students without lesson plans, parent conferences and grading papers. I love the people I work with at the mall we are always laughing and joking around. I get access to the newest fragrances and I really do enjoy the ones that my company makes which makes it super easy to sell. I'm sure this blog will include a lot about my hilarious son as well as my work.

My present:
I think the "thing" that is currently taking up the majority of my time, brain power and efforts is retuning to my faith. I am what they call a "fallen away catholic" When I moved to TN I decided, after exploring just about all the other Christian based religions there are, that I wanted to be Catholic. I signed myself up for R.C.I.A at the church my grandmother attended and joined the youth group. The church became my life. I went to church on Sunday followed by youth group Sunday night and we also met on Wednesday at the youth house. All of my free time revolved around church events. My husband and I met at church, We were good old old fashion Catholics we believed that horrible things would happen to us if we missed church.

 Once in college we helped to form the youth group at the Church of the Immaculate Conception and then most of our free time revolved around planning for and conducting that youth group. Shortly after starting I.C's youth group Matt got the job as the Youth Minister at Holy Spirit...So I helped with both youth groups. It was our connection to the church our life line to our faith. I stopped attending mass when we moved to Olive Branch b/c I had not found a church to attend yet. I began attending mass at Queen of Peace catholic church in 2007. During this time we struggled with fertility and although my faith wavered when we lost our first pregnancy after trying for a year to conceive, I never stopped attending mass. I turned to God with my hopes, fears, and dreams, praying that it be his will for us to have a family.  I'm not exactly sure when it happened ...but recently I took a look at my life and realized it was completely void of any real faith. I no longer went to church and no longer had any real connection to any parish. I still prayed and asked others to pray for me, I occasionally went to church and barely paid attention and put nothing in, so in turn got nothing out of it. I had thousands of excuses as to why I didn't attend church and why I didn't have time. But, honestly I just wasn't putting in any effort.

Things have changed now. I started my journey back by joining a "mommy group" at my local parish. We meet once a week and do a book study and talk about our lives. I am SO very thankful to the ladies in this group. I don't think they know how much they have impacted my life over the past few months and I am very glad that I had the chance to meet them and very much look forward to getting to know them better. The next step came when I heard about a weekend retreat called Cursillo. I jumped at the chance to go out of town for the weekend to surround myself with my faith and to really take a close look at where my life was and where a really wanted to to be. Since my Crusillo weekend I feel the fire of the Holy Spirit again (not that it wasn't always there, I just wasn't open to it) I have made some drastic changes in my spiritual life. I am now attending Mass more than once a week, have began praying and really talking to God again, I will continue to spend time with my mommy group and plan on becoming more involved with the Cursillo movement in Memphis.

I know that this post has already become quite lengthy and my future blogs will NOT be this long. I will limit myself to talking about that days or weeks events. It is hard to sum up a whole person with just a few paragraphs and this is not by any meas "all of me" it is just all I care to fit into one post :)