Wonder Women

Wonder Women: Meet Andi

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Have you ever met someone who can fly.  I have. Her name is Andi.

Andi 3

As a young girl, Andi loved the movie Peter Pan. In many ways, Andi grew up to be like several of the characters in that movie.  Andi is like Wendy Darling. She is kind. She looks after children and teens who feel lost and afraid. Andi has the gift of cooking and has used her skills in her job as a school cafeteria manager. She not only serves the children food but gives them a daily dose of love and kindness as well.  Andi is like Captain Hook. She is adventurous. She fights for the rights of all people. Andi is like Peter Pan. She loves to laugh, tell jokes and spend the day enjoying the good things found in life. Andi is like TinkerBell. She is both sassy and sweet. She is a loyal friend. Andi is creative. She designs wallets and purses out of duct tape. In short, Andi can fly. She is a Wonder Women.

Andi 34

 

 

 

 

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Get Moving on my Newest Challenge

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Sitting is bad for your health. At least, that is what is I read in a magazine one day while I was sitting in the doctor’s office waiting room. In order to negate this risk,we need to move. I’ve decided to make movement my next 13 day challenge. My plan is move 13 times each day. Movement can be simple as standing up for a minute after sitting at work for an hour. It can be walk around the block after dinner. It can be taking a bike ride or doing ten situps during a commercial break while watching TV.  The goal is to move, move and move for the next 13 days.

Challenge: Create

I can do anything at eleven o’clock at night

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About a month ago, I got a brilliant idea. It sounded so easy. I’d make an app and every one would pay me a dollar to put it on their phones. I only had to get a million people to buy it and then I would be financially set for life. I identified two challenges to my bright future.  Challenge #1: I don’t know how to write in code or make an app. Challenge #2: I don’t own a fancy phone that can have apps so I couldn’t even buy my own app once I made it. At eleven o’clock at night, I can do anything so neither challenge sounded too hard to overcome. The next day I went to the library for  how-to-books, watched a bunch of YouTube videos and started working.

Three frustrating weeks later, I finally got the app to the point where I could submit it to the store for people to buy it. Guess What? I got an e-mail back letting me know that my app does not meet the minimum specifications to be fully functional. Translation: It’s so bad that it doesn’t work and we don’t want it here. I felt sorry for myself for a bit, but then I realized what a truly awesome story I am creating by adding another challenge to my list. Challenge #3: The computer people think my app is horrible.

I’m back at the beginning trying to rebuild my app. It may take a few more weeks before I’m able to resubmit it again. Last night I thought of a lovely ending to my app adventure. After overcoming challenges 1, 2 and 3, my app goes crazy and every one wants it. It is amazing how I can do anything at eleven o’clock at night.

In case you have never seen a phone that can’t get apps, here is a picture of mine.

Phone

Wonder Women

Wonder Women: Meet Doeshann

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Doeshann 4

Have you ever met a cheerleader? I have. Her name is Doeshann.

Doeshann loves life. She likes making people laugh. Doeshann finds and creates opportunities to have fun. She recently completed a 5K mud zombie race with her friends. For the last 14 years, Doeshann has enthusiastically volunteered one week each summer as an adult mentor for a youth camp. She loves to inspire teens to set and reach their goals.  Doeshann does operational support at a college. Her coworkers describe her as an effective worker who knows her stuff and is always there with a kind word and infectious laugh for everyone.

Doeshan B race

When asked about her greatest challenge, Doeshann described the process of accepting  and loving herself. She feels that once she learned that God loved her she was able to let go of what other people said and thought about her.

Doeshann is a Wonder Women.

Remember every women’s success can be my success if I let it.

Goal Tree

My Dad has more friends than me

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parents

I like to talk to my Dad. We have very interesting conversations as he has read more books than any one else I know. Today we discussed progress on our respected New Year’s Resolutions. In addition to the typical goals of getting healthier and growing his accounting firm, Dad set a goal to have 1,000 Facebook friends. He is currently at 918. I thought I had a lot of  friends at 168. I didn’t need Facebook to tell me my Dad knows many people. About once a week, I meet someone who knows him.

Just for fun, I checked my mother’s Facebook friends. She has 381. I guess Mom has more friends than me too.

 

Wonder Women

Wonder Women: Meet Theda

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Grandma Adams

Have you ever met a trailblazer? I have. Her name is Theda, but I call her Grandma.

Theda Plumb was born in southern Arizona. At sixteen, she left her small town and moved to Tucson to study civil engineering. Grandma was often the only women in her classes. Back then, University of Arizona had a rule that female students had to wear a skirt or a dress when they walked around campus. As an engineering student, Grandma had labs and surveying classes that were outside in the hot sun with lots of bending and lifting.  Pants were more practical than a skirt. Grandma had to get a special permission letter from the Dean of Women to wear pants. In fact, she was stopped a few times by the campus police and asked to show proof that she was allowed to wear pants.

While at college, Theda met and fell in love with George Shelley. They got married. World War II started, and George went into the Navy. Grandma Theda worked as an engineer. After the war, Grandma lost her engineering job. The country was no longer interested in hiring female engineers. Her young family needed money though, so Grandma got a job as a seamstress to help put her husband through school. Tragically, Grandpa George was killed in a car accident shortly after finishing medical school.

Grandma was left with six children to raise under the age of 8. She was able to find work as an engineer and began to build and design in the Phoenix area. Eventually, Grandma met and married a dairy rancher named Louis Adams. He had three kids from his first marriage.  My Dad has all kinds of crazy stories about the joys and the difficulties of combining two families. Grandma enjoyed projects. I don’t ever remember visiting her without a project going on somewhere in her house. She always had a project to work on whether it was a quilt, canning, learning Spanish, helping someone from church or a business endeavor.

I have wonderful childhood memories of Grandma. I am also blessed to have some adult memories. During my first semester of college,  I made a point to stop by Grandma’s house several times each week on my way home from school.  She would tell me stories and then I’d ask her questions that my parents would have called “very rude” had they been there. They weren’t there though so I went ahead and asked things like this.  “Which husband did you like more?” and “Did you ever do anything that really messed up your kids?”  I think about it now and shake my head at some of my youthful questions. Some of them were probably rude. Grandma was a good sport and would answer my questions.

Over the years, I’ve thought about Grandma’s answer to the husband question.  She said, “Love is wonderful. It’s also complicated and messy. Marriage is good. It’s also complicated and messy. I enjoyed both of my marriages. I loved George very much. He was my heart and soul. I loved Louis too. He brought  joy and good things into my life and into the lives of my children. You’re young, Amee.  When you have more experience as a women, you’ll understand that I don’t have to answer that question. I just need to love and be loved”.

It’s been 20 years since that conversation with Grandma in her kitchen. My life is good. It’s also complicated and messy. I’m still discovering the questions in my life that I don’t have to answer. Grandma was right though about love. Sometimes the answer is as simple and as complex as love and be loved.

Theda, my awesome Grandma, was a Wonder Women.

Grandma Theda

(I think we look a little alike.)

Wonder Women

Wonder Women: Meet Laura

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Laura

Have you ever met Martha Stewart? I don’t need to because I have met Laura.

Laura is a talented cook and party planner. She can take old clothes from a thrift store, add her own design to it and transform the old into a trendy new outfit. Her crafting abilities have blessed many people.  Laura’s story is powerful. It is real and shows the beauty that can be found in all of life’s experiences. The best way to honor her as a Wonder Women is to let her own words speak to you.

Laura says, “I guess my greatest accomplishment is my family. I am in the process of raising four amazingly talented, kind, beautiful children. I may have grown and nurtured them but they all came with their own unique personalities and talents. I feel like it has been my job to cultivate who they are. I feel like another of my accomplishments is my marriage. We are going on 12 years of marriage and we have endured the years well. We started out happy and have thus far maintained that happiness. I was married young and had a baby young and there were many who vocally doubted us but it never really bothered me. I’ve never really cared what people thought or said about me. So I guess the hardest struggle for me has been ME. I was a teen mother and therefore was afraid that I was a failure. I thought I was somehow not enough to be a good wife and mother. I have such an amazing family and husband who were and continue to be supportive and uplifting, they help me to know that everything will be alright. And of course I always had the Lord as my own cheerleader”.

Remember every women’s success can be my success if I let it.

Challenge Four: Sleep

Update 2014 Goal Tree

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Tree

My theme for 2014 is Healthy, Happy and Whole. Here is my goal tree. I’m slowly filling it with leaves to represent all the good  activities I’m doing to work on my annual goals.

1. Do some kind of exercise every day,

2. Feed my soul with happy thoughts, prayer, scripture study and time with good friends.

3. Get more sleep.

4. Develop my talents at home and at work.

Number three is so hard! I’ve got 36 years of being a night owl. If you don’t believe me, go ask my Mom. I was a child who would dance around my room at night singing songs about how people could see me run, jump and skip.

 

Wonder Women

Wonder Women: Meet Alie

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Picture

Have you ever met a magician? I have. Her name is Alie.

Today’s Wonder Women took difficult life circumstances and with the magic of grit, faith and hope turned those challenges into an opportunity for growth. Alie’s child Chris was born with several rare cognitive and physical disorders. She wished she could talk to other parents. She didn’t find such a support group in her area so she created a group to meet her needs and serve other parents. As Chris got older, Alie took on an advocate role to find resources and programs to meet her son’s needs. Her advocacy paid off and Chris recently graduated from high school. He works part-time and continues to grow and learn.

When her children were young, Alie found herself not only with difficult health challenges but the need to support her two children after a divorce. She went back to school and earned her degree in school counseling. Alie moved her family to a new state for a better job. She had the courage to date and fall in love again. As her daughter Becca got older, Alie wished she had a coach to help her with the college and scholarship application process. When she didn’t find any couching services that were reasonably priced, Alie created her own college coaching company.

Alie is a magician. She took hard life events and turned them into opportunities for growth.

Remember every woman’s success can be my success if I let it.

Musings

Pills

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I found a little poem I wrote a number of years ago.  I was writing about taking an antidepressant to deal with some hard life events. I had forgotten about the poem. I hadn’t forgotten the feelings, but time had softened the pain. When I reread the poem, I felt the need to share it on my little goal setting blog. It is okay to get medical help. It is called taking care of yourself.

Pills

I take the pink pill designed to make me Happy, Peaceful, Less Anxious

I swallow it down with  juice and hope that it will work.

I’m still afraid, still nervous and still sad.

If I tell the doctor the truth, will he make me take two?

Off the pink. On to the blue.

I take the blue pill designed to make me Happy, Peaceful, Less Anxious

I swallow it down with juice and I’m Grateful.

I’m feeling a bit stronger this time.