A Good Day.

Buon Giorno.

I hope you enjoy the slide show of my family and I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  It’s such a wonderful holiday, no hustle and bustle, no materialism, just cooking, eating and family.  Cooking is one of my favorite things to do.  This year I made homemade gnocchi to add that little bit of Italy to our table.  Tried some new pie recipes also, in addition to the normal pumpkin and Apple I made a white chocolate cranberry and pumpkin chiffon.  Even my son Anthony got into the spirit and made his own Pumpkin pies to take to a friends house, I hope he had as wonderful a day as we did and I hope he knows how much I miss him.

Now that the holiday season has begun there just never seems to be enough hours in the day.  Yesterday, I put up the tree and decorated the inside of the house.  Bert is outside. as I write this. putting up the lights on the house.  We keep it a little understated but I’m sure as we get grandchildren we will go all out.  Today I fit in an hour of exercise, really I just got tired of watching like that 20^th football game on TV, keep in mind when you don’t have time to exercise short circuits of cardio between some really good exercise can make a short workout very productive so I am making a promise to myself not to skip exercise because of time but to utilize my time better.  I still have a few pounds and inches to get rid of and skipping exercise, because of the holiday is not good.  I may not make much progress toward my goal, as foods get richer this time of year and cocktails flow more freely. but I won’t loose any ground either. 

I finished another travel course YEAH and became an “AMResort Master Agent”.  It’s the first time I am a Master anything and I have learned that AMRresorts are wonderful they are affordable luxury option that I can now book and, I also learned about destination weddings, “not that we are planning anything like that in my house” but if you are I can help.  I am looking forward to start actually booking my first trip for someone.

I also spent some additional family time with my husband and sons Dennis, Nick, and their girlfriends,  we went and saw “The Muppet Movie”  (my husband’s favorite) watching Bert in the theater made me realize one of the many reasons I love him, his childlike smile.  It brought back a lot of memories when we would sit with the boys and watch the show weekly and yes I did cry during the singing of “Rainbow Connection” 

Well I hope you had as wonderful a holiday and I did and don’t forget to make time for yourself and your family, during this busy season.   Have a beautiful week talk to you next Friday.  Don’t forget I love reading your comments and would love to have you follow me. 

Ciao  

To my Friends and Family a La Festa del Ringraziamento (Festival of Thanks).

Thankfully this has been a very busy week for me, I have learned to put myself out there and open some doors that I would have left closed. I know it sounds funny but  this outgoing lady, doesn’t not like to be the center of attention, now don’t get me wrong, I love to have parties and meet people and plan events, but put me on center stage, not for me, that’s for my brother. I would rather do things behind the scenes, and make them perfect, but I have learned recently that you have to put yourself out there to grow a business you have to be able to accept rejection, and learn to laugh at yourself. I started a major marketing campaign to let everyone know about my new endeavor and sell myself (not literally) and my abilities. I have contacted people I haven’t talked to in years and surprisingly the response has been great. I also created a website http://www.froschtravadaarvada.com/, (amazing how you can teach an old dog new tricks), and I don’t think it’s half bad.  I will begin to improve it with time but I’m pretty proud of myself so far. 

I also was happy to find out that my small little Thanksgiving dinner for 6 was now going to be 19.  Yeah more like a holiday. I know they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in Italy, but they do have feast days and in the fall they celebrate their harvest with holidays that brings family, friends and food together. Italians are known for their love of family and food and I am no different.  There have been many traditions passed through many generations of my family. Most of them are still kept, they may look a little different than it used to, and we may not eat the same way as we used to but the love and passion is still there. We don’t all have to be in the same house, the same city or the same state to know how much we love each other, and this my friends no matter who is sitting at the table or what food is on the table will never die.

So as you celebrate you traditions whether it be a big dinner with family or an intimate dinner for 2 here is something to think about.

Throughout the year we start to take for granted or sometimes don’t even realize the number of people in our lives that actually affect our very being, our day to day existence.  It might be a family member, a close friend, someone you reconnected with on Facebook or one of the many other social networks, or a casual acquaintance that you may not have ever given a second thought about, but somehow for some reason they where to come into our lives even for a brief moment. As the holiday’s approach and especially now with all the changes I am going through, I started thinking about who has played a special part in my life, or given me a smile or a hug when no one knew I needed it, or even gave me words of encouragement to keep me going. The list is immense.  There are very few things in life that you can get through alone and I have learned that everyday something or someone will affect your life. I have been blessed with many people in my life that I am so thankful for, I have been blessed with the support of  wonderful husband and 3 wonderful sons, each of them have brought special people in my life, some good, some not so good, but none that I would ever trade because I learned something from each one of them; My loving family that shakes their head at me every time I do something crazy (like start a new career at 51), they never discourage my uniqueness;  My friends some that I have known for years, some that I’ve just met and some that came into my life for a brief time and are now gone, each one of them have a profound attachment to my heart.   I would not be who I am today if not for each and every one of you and I thank you for reading my blog, encouraging my drive and supporting my endeavors, I love you all.

What a week!!!!

You know how sometimes we have all these great plans and then in a flash everything goes haywire.  I know there’s a saying that says “people make plans and God laughs”.  Well I heard him giggle this week. I had such big plans for this past week.  My husband was going to be out of town. I could get up every morning and exercises spend the evenings on my travel classes.  Start setting up a client base all perfectly great ideas but what I didn’t know was I was going to end up in a hospital bed for 4 days.  Yep that’s right, in a hospital bed full of drugs unable to do any of it.  It did give me time to take a step back and hear my guardian angels say stop, rest, your plans and dreams are not going to happen overnight,  think about your next steps, don’t get stressed over the small stuff, keep focused and look at the big picture.  So I took a deep breath listened to the doctors, rested and now have a refreshed game plan.  I am continuing with my travel training. I am trying to soak up every bit of information available to me.  I am going to continue to eat right and exercise, because I think if I wasn’t is such good shape; I would have been in the hospital longer than 4 days.  I am just going to slow down and not expect everything to happen right away. I am going to take my time, and get it right, build my business baby step by baby step, if you rush to the top of the mountain you might step on the wildflowers below you.   So, am going to watch for every flower and rock, push the rocks out of the way and enjoy the beauty of all the flowers.  I wrote a letter today to all my family and friends announcing my new career and asking for their support.  This was very hard but a step that I possibly would have overlooked, if I didn’t slow down.  I don’t usually ask for help so writing this letter was very hard a big rock that I had to get over before I could see the flowers on the other side.  So if some of you receive this letter from me, please remember as excited as I am to tell everyone about my new endeavor, it’s hard to put yourself out there and ask for support.  Well I’m keeping it short this week.  If your week has not gone particularly the way you wanted it to, say to yourself. This is the way God wanted it to be and refocus.  Push away all the rocks in your way and don’t step on the flowers, as they are the things that keep you enjoying the journey. 

Don’t forget to send me your comments, click to follow me so I know I’m not talking to myself.

See you next week.

God Bless

New revelation

Consistenza,  Consistency

Ciao, come stai. Hi how are you.

Well I’ve learned a very big lesson this week.  Consistency, I never realized how important one word could be in someone’s life.   Everything from your exercise plan to your business, consistency is the key.  I was beginning to see a few pounds creep back up and asked myself what was different and it was consistency, I was not being consistent in my eating habits or my exercising like I was when I was losing my weight.  Got back into the routine and presto my weight came back off.  Consistency, in starting and maintaining a business venture is crucial.  Being consistent with your communications with everyone, emails, newsletters (which you will start seeing), snail mail, social networks, phone calls, even when you feel like you’re being a pest, is the only way to grow and maintain your clients.  Consistency, providing that consistent customer service that is desired and never slacking, is the only way to keep the clients you have.  Learning new things, such as my training to be an a travel consultant or my learning a new language, consistency it’s what keeps the information in the front of your mind, (even and old one like mine), and finally Consistency in saying I love you to everyone that matters, especially your partner, they need to know they’re not taken for granted, that they are precious to you, no matter what else is going on in your life.    So that was my big revelation this week.  I hope you can take something out of it and apply it to something in your life.    Other news had my first travel expo at the agency, I was so excited and nervous, but it went very well.  I need to thank everyone that came to support me and I hope you got some great ideas for vacations and how to pay for them (yeah payment plans).  I also learned HTML, a language I never thought I would know, but I am building a website for the agency and thanks to Dreamweaver software it is coming along.  Too bad I didn’t start all this twenty years earlier; at 52 it’s hard to patience, like I said in my first blog I am in need of instant gratification and learning to be patient a new concept to me, but It’s not an option it’s a requirement.  All I know now is I’ve started the wheels turning in all the new and improved areas of my life and now I have to wait for God to handle the timeline.  With that I will close asking again for your support please email me at glkemper@aol.com, find me on Facebook, follow me on twitter @glkemper , or call me, don’t be afraid to just call me. (Oops half of you won’t even now that song.) Anyway, please remember to comment, and click the link to follow my blog.  Love you all.  God Bless and happy and safe travels.