A glimpse into the last little bit of this dizzying, painful, strange, snuggled in tight, longest, shortest whirlwind of a year ever.
Intentional Outdoor Hours FINAL TOTAL: 533 hours and 33 minutes (of 1000)
I got a final two hours added to my year total this week while spending time doing outdoor chores, watching Rust & Violet on their new dirtbikes (thank you Pap & Gigi!), and taking the dogs for a walk with Grey. It certainly wasn't my year of most outdoor hours racked up, but it was still a good year and important to remember to stay focused on the goal. I am definitely the person in the house that gets the least outdoor time, so tracking mine is beneficial because I know everyone else is doing better than me. I cannot stress enough how invaluable this dedication to outdoor time is for my kids (and my own sanity). Childhood should be filled with wide open spaces and mud and fresh air and flowers and bugs and discovery and wild freedom. That is what being outside gives to our kids; a real wildhood childhood.
Reading and finishing The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson (simply lovely). I also started and finished Stamped Remix by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X Kendi which is also our Project Lit book choice for this month! Such a beautifully written and important read. Highly recommend!
FINAL BOOK COUNT: 19! My goal was to read 24, so I came up short - but still many great reads this year and looking forward to more reading in the new year, especially with our Project Lit group!
Being cozy and lazy and whatevery all day everyday. This little bubble phase between Christmas and New Years is such a sacred time of settling from the year and sitting in reflections and daydreaming about what the new year will bring for me. We got lots of random things done, but mostly it was cozy clothes, and blankies, and snuggles, and hot drinks.
Flipping the kids' rooms around. We scored another set of bunk beds earlier this year from my coworker (thank you Allison!) and we needed to do a little re-sorting for the kids' rooms. Did you know we are a three bedroom house (of almost 8 people! We are firm believers in the "the smaller the house, the more close the family" theorists...haha, we have the same feelings toward the "the less screens in the house, the more close the family" theory too). We moved the original bunk beds into the boys' room and had to a do a lot of tetris style attempts to get all the furniture to fit. The boys' room has Grey's twin bed, the bunk beds, the crib, and two dressers until August (when the new baby gets the crib and Red moves to the bottom bunk). The new-to-us bunks got moved up to the girls' room and B built a topper for the long dresser so the guinea pig cage could fit comfortably on top. We also purchased a dog/baby gate for the girls' room door because Bullet is too curious about the piggies and I don't trust that lunatic for a second.
Eagerly making my 100 small things list for 2021 because I still believe in plans and big dreams and intentional living even after the chaos of 2020. Call me a romantic or an optimist or a dummy if you must. But the new year always brings with it a surge of ambition, inspiration, and hope for a better me (a better all of us).
Getting a look at our sweet baby on Wednesday. Brandon had to stay home with the kids, so I headed to my ultrasound and appointment sola. Our Studerbabe #6 is growing along just beautifully and moving and wiggling around like a little silly goose. I had the technician write down the gender on a piece of paper and then seal it so that we could all open it as a family when we got home.
Discovering that we are getting a baby SISTER! there were lots of cheers and screams of joy when Daddy opened up the envelope. We can hardly wait to see her beautiful face.
Sending out a request for Christmas trees for our goats! We had lots of responses and already having some dropped off. The goaties are thrilled - they love evergreen trees and it is a nice treat since winter means lots of hay (also good for them since it keeps them warm) but they are usually free-ranging foraging goats - so the recycled Christmas trees are such a welcome source of snacks! Thank you to everyone who has already dropped off a tree or plans to as you undecorate for the season! (Christmas trees need to be real, free of any decorations and/or tinsel, and not have any preservation chemicals).
Staying up late (barely) to see the ball drop. We stayed in and wore jammies for most of the day until we all fought to stay awake to see the ball drop. Red lasted until about 10p (after a very long nap at 5p) and then slowly one by one humans started to fall asleep all over the living room. Including me who fell asleep for about 45 minutes on the couch. I woke up at about 11:50p and it was just B and I awake to see the actual ball drop. We gave kisses to all the kids while whispering 'Happy New Year' to them and then shuffling them off to their beds before blissfully falling asleep in our own - grateful to say goodbye to 2020.
Making use of leftovers in all the ways. I used the leftover cake (from my failed attempt to bake a birthday cake for baby Jesus) to make cake crumb blueberry muffins (yum!) and Gemma and I used the leftover cherry pie filling to bake cherry crumb breakfast cake. We had ham pot pie delivered by my Dad (thank you Chum!!) which is always a huge hit around here. The kids enjoyed pancakes, mac&cheese, about 80 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and about 300 bowls a cereal. It's whatever.
Also, B and I went on a low carb/modified Keto diet this last week because ughhhh. So much Christmas carbing and feeling like total lethargic, bloated bags of busted biscuits. hah! Cutting (or being super intentional about carbs in my pregnant case) helps so much on heartburn and indigestion. Plus, I've been feeling so uncomfortable and huge since I literally went from having a baby to three months later getting pregnant again and my body was like - oh, let's just skip right to 9month pregnant size for efficiency's sake. So this week, we had salads, and Greek yogurt parfaits (with strawberries, pecans, and chia seeds are our favorites!), ground beef with broccoli and alfredo sauce, turkey and avocado sandwiches on carb healthy toast, leftover Christmas ham and brussels sprouts bake, fathead pizza
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