Mornings Are For Me

Here at Jorgensen Manor the kiddies don't wake up until 7am or later. I have one child who would probably get up before that, but I have a Goodnight Light in his room to let him know when it's 7 and he can quietly get up and go find a good book and nestle on the couch until the rest of the house comes to life.

Because of this, I try to take advantage of the hours between 4:45 and 7. Why? Well, I'm a crazy person of course! If you've read my blog you know this, and if you know me personally... well, I'm sure I've apologized at least more than once that you've been that unlucky :-). Anyway! Why I really do it (well, besides the given that is), is because that's a little over two hours that are mine before anyone else has even thought to begin stirring. While I was a BIG fan of mornings before... as in waking up between 3 & 4 to get a run in before starting a day filled with 18 credits of college classes, being an Air Force ROTC cadet and working full time... being married to a non-morning person, having morning sickness, etc. has made it hard to get on a good schedule that starts bright and early.

I know it's odd, but a video that I saw on Mother's Day featuring The Osmond Second Generation made me think. The mom of the 8 boys (Suzanne) talked about how she got up at 5 every morning and that's how she got everything done.

Also one of my husband's friends growing up had a mom who was always up first thing in the morning and was able to keep up with was she needed.

Anyway! The moral of the story is, whenever I start my day with a good running start (often literally) my day goes so much smoother! While I enjoy the extra time cuddling with my honey or even the little cat naps I can get in until everyone is actually moving, I'm so much happier when I get up and going. My body automatically wakes up somewhere between 4:45-5:15, so I normally don't set an alarm, I just get up whenever it happens instead of trying to go back to sleep and life is good! Seems like without the time to train first thing in the morning (I have a triathlon that I'm training for and hitting the pool first thing lets me see the sunrise through the glass, BEAUTIFUL!), I'm playing catch up all day long... which means never actually catching up and feeling a little stressed in the meantime. In those extra hours I read scriptures, train for an upcoming race, and get ready for the day before anyone gets up. More than half the time I even have breakfast ready too.

So, mornings are for me. I'd happily share them with my husband if he were up at that time, but I hit the day more energized and refreshed then if I were to "sleep in." There are certainly cycles and stages in life... I'm definitely less willing to keep my crazy schedule with a newborn that just went to sleep at 4:30 etc., so evaluate where you are in life and don't run faster than you're able... but I highly recommend looking at your life and seeing where you can find time for your health and spiritual wellbeing. Your relationship with God and how you care for your body is HUGE, make sure it gets the precedent in your life whether it's first thing in the morning or sporadic throughout the day!

A little randomly... I had a a few miles to put in on my treadmill this morning and since I can't read while running or focus quite well enough for audiobooks, I watch documentaries and things to that effect. This mornings happy find was The Lazy Environmentalist.

I really enjoyed the little tips of how to live a little more "green." While I know not everyone buys the whole "going green" thing, I do think it's important to stick to the basics and that harsh chemicals and waste sitting in landfills and leeching into our earth and ending up in our water supply is everyones concern. We need water people! And contaminated water isn't going to do us any good. Anyway, I'll be finishing out this season and gleaning what I can. Even the episode that I didn't think I'd care about (the guy who makes fashion choices for *stars*), left me with some good ideas and thing to consider. I think especially those of us with big families are pretty good at repurposing items, so that certainly helps, but I hadn't thought of how much we could compost or do differently.

I even left one episode thinking about recycling even though that means driving to another state. Okay, it's not that extreme, we live 1 1/2 hours from the next state and that's where all the "big stores" are. We don't have a program to recycle here... apparently the one place you can go to take things actually just dumps the stuff in the landfill here because it's too expensive to take it somewhere that can do something with it. So, I figured when we run to TX for our monthly Costco trip that we'll make it a time that we can drop off our recycling.

In Korea we had to sort EVERYTHING. Other countries just don't have the space to throw out a bunch of trash the way we do, and apparently even we're running out of space. So, why not find ways to keep our amazingly beautiful land for our amazingly beautiful children and someday grandchildren? Although, I think if you are going to watch this you have to commit to doing some sort of exercise while you are.... and no, hand from bowl/plate to mouth doesn't count! :-)