My passion test result

I finish reading the book “The Passion Test” many weeks ago. Ok, I didn’t read line by line the 2nd part of the book because I was busy and reading other books at the same time but I got the basic idea of it. One awaken moment for me was when the book mentioned about living your passion while you are home with your baby (children) and husband. It said my passion could be my family and then another one could be my interest so while I put my family as my priority/top passion, I can still work part-time on my other interest/passion. It never occurs to me that my family is my passion. I always thought of them as my family and they are important to me.

Well, that’s it. The book served its purpose for me. It woke me up and I found out what my passion is at the moment and I believe this passion will continue to be my first passion. I am aligned with my passion and value. My other part time passion – I am in the process of working on it or still figuring out if it is indeed my passion or is it just a hallucination.

Our Vacation

After 2 ½ years, we finally took a vacation. We decided to go locally for 2 days and 1 night but at the last minute, we decided on 3 days and 2 nights instead. We went upstate NY, the Mohonk Preserve and Mohonk Mountain House for hiking and just relaxing. It’s a 2 hour drive. I’ve checked out the Mohonk Mountain Hotel. It’s $200 per person per night which included hotel and 3 meals. That would be $800 if we stay for 2 nights. That is way over our budget. So I decided we go to a motel about 20 miles away after reading all the reviews online. Our trip turns out to be less than half the cost if we were to stay in the Mohonk Mountain Resort.

The first day we got there, we hiked in the preserves which is not the same as the Mohonk Mountain House (it is privately own). It was a nice, quiet 5 miles hike round trip except at the end. We took the West Trapps Trail and started off with the Overcliff road. The trail was dry and easy but when we got to the Undercliff Road towards the last quarter of the trail, there were a lot of millipedes. I hate anything that crawls on the floor like snakes, worms etc.. The Millipedes were disgusting. I held my husband tight and screamed all the way till the end of the trail. There were a few people on the trail and they were wondering what I was screaming about. Sure, my husband was a little embarrassed by me. I couldn’t help it. I told him that I’ll never go back to this trail ever again.

On the 2nd day of our vacation, we had lunch first, and then drove to the Mohonk Mountain House. Admission was $18 per person. And if you want to park closer to the house, it’s an additional $10. There is a trail which we can hiked up to the house so we figure we would hike since this is the main purpose of our vacation. At the end of the day, I would say it was a mistake to hike the additional 2-3 miles just to get to the Mohonk Mountain house. When we got to the Mohonk Mountain House, I was amazed with the beauty of the resort. We had to hike some more toward the Sky Top Tower. In additional to that, we walked around one section of the garden outside the Mohonk Mountain House. At the end of the day, we still have to hike back to our car. Our shins were sore. We wished we had paid the extra $10 so that we parked closer to the hotel rather than hiking another 1.5 miles back.

On our 3rd day, we planned on doing more (going to the Storm King Art Center, Apple Picking or something else). We ended up driving across the bridge to Poughkeepsie and then drive around Newburgh and came home before rush hour.

I was glad to be back to see my baby. It was a nice get away with no cooking, cleaning or baby sitting for a couple of days. We won’t have another vacation for a while.

De-clutter update 3

I’ve read a few de-clutter books that I took out from the library. Many of them teach you to get rid of a lot of things at home. And when you need them, you buy them.

While I am cleaning/de-cluttering our apartment, I find it hard to get rid of stuff and then buy new ones when I need them. That is just simply wasteful. I come to the conclusion that I am not de-cluttering my apartment. I am simply organizing it in a way that it is very easy for me to locate anything and I make sure I don’t buy any that I already have in my inventory. I keep an inventory list (in every closet, in the refrigerator, in the cabinets, in my bankers’ boxes) of what I have inside. I keep it up to date and whenever I am looking for something, I look through the inventory list before I buy anything.

So far it works most of the time except once when I forget to check if we have more 13 gallon garbage bags in our inventory list (in the closet) at home before buying more in Costco. No, I did not return it. I kept it because we always need garbage bags. I’ll just make sure I’ll check my inventory before buying anything.