Pointe Shoes are the hardest thing to throw away

I am determined to make my goal of getting to bed by 10:30 tonight, so this post is going to be brief.... oops uploading pictures took til almost 11. Well, I will summarize.

After my last post, I was really bugged at the the randomness of it , that I decided I want to be more focused in my blog posts. Focused on how I am simplifying my life since that is what my 2011 is about. So, here is a summary of how I simplified this week.

First off, Bonnie and I went to dinner and the Jazz game on Friday with her parents: Bird and Nee. Bonnie's family does nicknames. You will have to ask her how her parents ended up with 'Bird' and 'Nee'.

Okay, simplifying. I took apart my vision board. This has been my vision board since summer of 2009. As you can see it is a long term vision board, my children, home, PhD, etc are on there.

I decided to simplify and make a yearly vision board for 2011, so it includes what I am actively working on right now. I feel it will assist me in being more focused... and simplified.

I am working on my 2011 vision board.
Wednesday night after Bonnie and I received our new callings: FHE committee :), we vegged out with "Despicable Me" and I went through my t-shirt bin. I sorted out t-shirts from jr. high, high school, college, China, girls camp, leadership trainings, marching band, conferences, races, concerts, ballet workshops, etc. I have saved all these shirts to eventually go in a t-shirt quilt. We invited our friend Blake over for the movie that night and apparently t-shirt quilts are a... Utah thing, or maybe just an Ashton thing. Don't know, but the idea of a t-shirt quilt was totally foreign to Bonnie and Blake. In any event, I have been so excited about someday making a t-shirt quilt (or have one of my sewing goddess sisters make one for me :)) So I went through all my t-shirts, threw away a bunch, and cut the logos out of the rest. Simplify. I went from an overflowing bin to this stack. Good job Mere!
This is the bag of scraps from the t-shirts. Shoot. Don't tell Mom that I didn't keep them and use them for rags. Yikes!

I also took an equally sized bag of t-shirts to DI. Simplify, I love it!
Pointe shoes was the next item on my list of things to go through. Wow, this was the most emotional throw away process. Here are the pairs of shoes I kept, it's not all of them!
This was my garbage can with all the throw away shoes piled in it. I kept 6 significant pair, including the pair that has a blood stain on the pinky toe. That was a monumental day when I actually bled through the satin on my pointe shoe. It was the day I arrived at being a hard core ballerina!
I put all my shoes in this purple bag in preparation to go to the dumpster. The bag was by my front door for a couple of days and every time I walked past it, I questioned if I was really ready to let them go. This is me not really sure.
We marched out to the dumpster on a 'garbage run' and I almost felt like I was walking the plank, ready to throw part of my life away.

I tossed them in and they sprawled out of the bag. I stood there for a moment looking at the pink satin shoes at the bottom of the dumpster and just started to cry. It was more than just satin and plaster I was throwing away. I was tossing out the ideal I had identified with myself for so long. I am stripping away everything that is not genuinely me, but this one was tough. All the memories in those shoes, all the sweat, tears, and blood (literally). These were symbols of a big part of my life that is changing.

Other ways I simplified this week:

-decided to pick up coffee AND breakfast pastries for the VIPs at Starbucks instead of running around to 2-3 different places. Thank you Bonnie. I felt so metropolitan picking up coffee before work in my great black skinnies and cream lacy shirt.

-said no to teaching a dance class after work on Wednesday

-didn't run this week so I could put more of my room together. shoot. not so great on this one. Physical Health is on the top of my goal list for 2011....

-took it easy after rehearsal on Saturday to let the bod recover from some crazy floor stuff.

Oh news!

We started rehearsals for Body Logic last week. Body Logic Dance is the performing dance company that me and my friends started. Our first show is April 9th. Go us! I know, we are rehearsing on Saturdays and I am responsible for all the non-profit stuff, you know, registering the business, obtaining 501c3 status, etc. Working on that this coming week.

Anyway, it feels so good to dance, it is just enough right now. I love where dance is in my life right now. It's in balance with where I am at. It's perfect.

Sunday after I cooked chicken broccoli casserole, which turned out great-Mom, I am turning domestic- Bonnie and I went to do dessert and games with the Partridges. Joe Partridge is one of our most favorite coworkers. He is one of the best guys on this planet and we have a blast when we are together. Joe and Bonnie are both on the project management side for the IT dept at 1on1 and it is a good thing that I don't sit by them because I would not get anything done. Anyway, he is a treat and so is his wife Shauntell and girls, Rebecca, Amanda and Camilla.
Shauntell made this fabulous oreo, ice cream, caramel... delight which I may or may not have had more than 2 servings. shoot. I saved up for it.

We played with the girls and did family scripture and prayers with them before bed. Then the adults played up and down (or wizard as Joe called it). And I totally won!! Joe hates gloaters, so I will just blog my gloating, since I ROCKED it! Here is the score card from the game. Winner=Mere!

And I am happy to report that my consistent work on becoming a Jelly Belly expert paid off on Saturday night! I was at the Halls on Saturday night and Spencer was doing a science experiment. with Jelly Bellys, yeah right. His hypothesis was that you cannot taste and identify individual jelly belly flavors with your nose plugged. So, as his subject, I sampled 10 different Jelly Bellys, blindfolded with my nose plugged. My accuracy: 30%. This was actually kind of hard. I hate breathing out of my mouth, gave me a little bit of anxiety. Then I sampled the same 10 Jelly Bellys with my blind fold still on and my nose unplugged. My Accuracy 100%. I ROCKED it! Spencer said I 'proved his hypothesis the very best'. Go Mere! All that sampling, tasting, chatting, and discussing over Jelly Bellys with fellow coworkers has paid off. Yes! My job is useful for something :) Just kidding. But I was pretty proud.

All in all, I am moving forward in simplifying my life and I am so happy where I am at. I am in a great place and my thanks to God for waking every morning excited to BE and LIVE my life.