Busy?

Wow, I am busy. With a new born and a 2 years old at home. I am running between the 2 of them and sometimes both of them crying for me at the same time. It's absolutely heaven when both of them takes a nap at the same time...which rarely happens because the 2 years old one doesn't really take naps anymore. My quiet time is at night when they both asleep. I catch up with my showers, my reading, cleaning, paperworks, emails etc...or simply just sit down and do nothing.

New addition to my family

I haven't been able to keep up with this blog the past few months. We have a new member in our family this month and she is keeping all of us busy. And oh the older child is very much jealous and missed me a lot while I was in the hospital. Among temper tamtrums of terrible 2s, dealing with constant feeding of a new born and my postpartum swelling and pain - I think we all need sometime to adjust and for me to get back to normal self again.

I will visit this blog more often as things get a little better.

Long Beach Island, NJ over the weekend

One of the few exciting things happened to me over the weekend. My husband and I left our daughter with my mother and we went to a private beach, Long Beach, NJ upon invitation from family as a family reunion location this year.

It’s been a while since we were on vacation. Last time we were on vacation was in September 2009. It’s almost been a year but it seems a lot longer when you are home with a toddler.

There are actually two Long Beach in the east coast, one of them in Long Island, NY and the other one in NJ. The one in NJ is private. I’m not sure about the Long Island one where a recent 12 year old who drown happened in Long Beach, Long Island, NY during a class trip. A heart-felt sympathy goes out to the victim’s family and friends.

Long Beach, NJ is about 2 hours away from NYC - 100 miles from Brooklyn. I don’t know if there are public parking around but there might. Our family reunion was in a private house which one of the distance family members has for the weekend. I’m not sure if it’s rented or it’s from someone related. All those houses have three floors. The floor has nothing because it’s close to the water, it’s intended it might get flooded. The second floor has bedrooms and bathroom(s). And then the third floor has a living room, office space, a bathroom, a kitchen and a patio with BBQ grills. It’s overlooking the ocean. It’s absolutely beautiful when the sun sets.
This house equip with an elevator. My husband was curious and we got on it for a ride. We couldn’t find the switch for the light inside the elevator so we were riding in the dark from the ground floor to the third floor. He got it kick out of this. And when we finally got up there, he looked for the switch and he found the hidden switch.

I overheard one of the family members that he’ll be coming back to this beach because he got invited by someone else (in a different beach house of course) and he said the houses right next to the beach costs about $12,000.00 for a week. When I got home, I told my mother about how much those beach houses next to the water costs for a one weekly rental, she opened her mouth in surprised. When I heard it, I was in shock how much it costs too. I know it costs a lot but $12,000.00 is A LOT.

We had a great time there. I love the part when a driver stopped for us and had his/her hands out to have other cars behind him/her to stopped for us when we cross to street to go to the beach. It’s courtesy that you do not see in NYC. From the many books that I’ve read about the rich, it’s very common for the rich to be courtesy (not all). And I believe that’s one of the many reasons they are where they are.

When I was younger, I used to love going to the beach and get burn. As I get older, I do mind getting burn. I don’t mind getting a little tan but sitting under the sun and getting skin cancer. I don’t like that anymore. Do I still dream of one day owning a house by the beach? I don't think so. I might prefer something/somewhere else.

Balancing Life Update

Back on 2/5/2010, I posted on my blog about balancing life and with 10 different categories which I took note of from the body and soul magazine. I haven’t really practice it until I notice tax date is due and a quarter of the year is gone and my life is not balance.

Everyday I wake up and seems to run around doing everyday chore feeding baby, entertain baby, cooking, cleaning, food shopping, pediatrician, paying bills, more feeding, cooking, food shopping etc…

So I decided to check off the month (rather weekly) of April for the 10 categories that is listed on balancing life. So far, I have done 8 out of the 10 categories and leaving community, dreams and goals not done anything at all. And this makes it clear that I am not living my life by my values.

There are a few very important items on my to-do list (in spreadsheet as I mentioned on my 8/30/2009) that have been lingering for the longest time. I have been ignoring them because I have been putting a lot of time into my everyday chores. Since checking off the categories on balancing life, I started taking action on those items. I do my everyday chores but I make sure I get started on those important to-do items. I finished one of them yesterday in one day. I started another one today but I got stuck. I am intent to finish this within the next 2 weeks.

This seems to work for me. Do my everyday chores; get started on a very important to-do item each day. And if I can’t finish it, I make sure I finish it within a time frame before going to the next one. I make sure I don’t start too many projects/to-do items. Otherwise, time and energy is wasted and nothing gets done.