So, I've been thinking a lot about friends lately. Or rather, my lack thereof. I'm not sure what it is that keeps me from making friends. I mean, I know that I'm afraid to put myself out there because I'm afraid of a repeat of past bad experiences, but even when people try to befriend me, I find myself keeping to myself and doing things that will probably lead to those people deciding that being my friend isn't worth the time and effort. I don't know why I act the way I do. I know that I'm anti social, but I also know that I don't want to be. I know I need to put forth more of an effort to get to know people and I know that friendship is a two way street, of which I need to participate. However, I find myself, while willing to put for the effort, not doing so. I feel sorry for myself because I have no friends, yet I push people away. Maybe I'm just overanalyzing myself. I tend to do that. Maybe there is no deep rooted reason that I'm so incredibly anti social. Maybe that's just who I am.

I never used to be that way though. I used to love going out. In fact, I still do. So, I really have no idea why I don't do it. I have people that I can call up and ask to go out with me, yet I don't do it. (Well, I do call one person, but he never calls me back...ahem...you know who you are! ;) ) I really should just bite the bullet and do it. There really is no reason not to.

I've started a "family journal" with my girls. Each night I write a page solely to each of them. They read it the next morning, then write in the journal when they get home from school. I'm hoping this will open the lines of communication between my girls and me. I try to write about the things that I see as their strengths and encourage them to keep doing what they are doing in regards to that, as well as their weaknesses and encourage them to try to better themselves in those areas. Every few days I give them a challenge of sorts. For instance, I saw that Caitlin is really limiting her friendship to a few select people (one of which I'm not fond of at all) so I challenged her to find someone she doesn't normally talk to and to talk to them and compliment them on something. Emma had a new student in her class who speaks very little English. I challenged her to ask him to teach her how to say hello in Korean so she could say hello to him each day and try to make him feel a bit more comfortable in a new environment.

It is my hope that as the girls get older that they will feel comfortable writing to me about their problems if they don't feel comfortable speaking to me about them. I know that when I was younger, I could write and write and write about my issues, but I just couldn't talk about them. When I had a problem with someone, I would write them a letter because it was easier to sort out my feelings on paper than it was to express them verbally...especially when it was something I was uncomfortable talking about. So, I figured I'd get them started writing to me daily while they're young, so when they're older they will be comfortable doing it.

I got a cross country skiing machine and a treadmill this past week! I'm totally stoked about that! I got them both off of freecycle, so they didn't cost me a penny, which was even better! I'm not fond of the treadmill (they tend to hurt my knee) but I'm absolutely thrilled with the cross country skiing machine! I try to do about an hour on it each day. I don't usually get that long in because finding an uninterrupted hour in my day is nearly impossible, but I do get quite a few ten minute sessions in througout the day. It's actually a lot of fun. I listen to Emma's iPod while I do it, which tends to make it go by fairly quickly. The girls have really taken a liking to both machines though and spend about thirty minutes on them before school each morning. Studies have shown that children who exercise before school do better in school and have an easier time concentrating than those who don't, so I'm glad I've been able to find something they enjoy doing. Goodness knows walking to school was no fun for them!

Cole is going to start tae kwan do next month! He's so totally geeked about it! I spoke with Matt (the instructor) about Cole starting and he said that he would take Cole on a trial basis because he's four and he usually doesn't start taking kids until they are five. If he feels that Cole is interested enough, can follow instructions and pay attention, he'll let him continue. Cole has said that he will listen and do everything Matt tells him to do, so we'll see how it goes. If he can't do tae kwon do, he wants to learn to ice skate. He used to want to play hockey, but then decided he didn't want to do that quite yet because he saw some kids playing hockey and one of them fell, so it kinda scared him off of it. I didn't want to tell him that he was going to fall a lot learning how to ice skate. lol I think once he learns how to ice skate, he'll want to play hockey again. He seemed really into it until he got scared about falling. The girls also want to learn how to ice skate, so we may just sign them all up.