Around Here Week 1: 12/29/19-1/4/20

A glimpse into what it was like to live in our home over the turn of a new decade.

Intentional Outdoor Hours:  0.5 hours + (of 1000)
Snagging a walk with the dogs on Saturday when the weather wasn't too cold. It has been so rainy and mucky that we opted for a walk down the road which isn't nearly as fun for sniffing but is a lot cleaner on the pup feet. It started drizzling a little bit on our walk, but the fresh air still felt good after being cooped up in the house with all this sickness for so many days.

Reading just a little bit of The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan; too sick to read, so B and I started watching Season 2 of You on Netflix instead (hah, love it).

Christmasing at Mimi's house on Sunday. We celebrated one more time with our Studer cousins eating good food, catching up, and laughing. It is always cute (and hilarious) to see our Studer brat pack together (Lainey, Ben, Violet, Rusty, and Brookie) together and always has me envisioning how much trouble we are going to be in when they are all teenagers!

Bumbling around in a haze of sickness. This is the virus that will not die, I swear. Our house is blanketed in coughs and snotty tissues and headaches; most of us are fairly miserable with the exception of Greyson who I think is just sweating out the germs playing all this basketball. Grey, Rust, and I muscled our way through the two days back to school this week while B and Gemma stayed home both days (!) and Violet stayed home on Friday. I took the three littlest in to the Peds on Saturday just to double check and what they have is just like us - no secondary infections (ear, lung, or otherwise), no Influenza, no antibiotics that will fix this...basically we need to wait it out and keep drinking liquids.

Ringing in 2020 in the most lowkey boring way ever; at home and everyone in bed before midnight! The kids wore NYE hats for about 10 minutes (tried to get them on the dogs too, hah) and we watched a little of the NYE specials on tv, but mostly we were all too tired and sick and cranky. B and I hung in there on the couch until 12:05a out of tradition sake and then went up and kissed each of the kids for new years and called it a night. Not a drop of champagne or fanfare - we are all just hoping to feel healthy again as soon as possible!

Considering a mantra for the new year that was inspired by the kids. For the past few years it feels like we (Brandon and I) are always thinking about the next big thing we 'need' to do. We want a farmette with goats, and we want to remodel the house to have a great room, and we want to take the kids on a big vacation to the beach or DisneyWorld, and we want to write a book (me), or go on a big hunting trip cross country (B), or this or that or whatever is 'missing' from our life. But in having conversations with our kids this summer about remodeling the house, Grey and Gem were straight up confused and asked, "but what's wrong with it now?" because for them - this right now is exactly their life and it seems awesome. They love our messy, boxed up room house because it's ours. They love camping at the Que and sleeping in a tent and eating breakfast from the cast iron skillet over the fire. They love hunting from the blind in our backyard and listening to me tell them made up stories at bedtime. So I don't know what exactly the wording of my 2020 mantra is - but the feeling of it is that....it's looking at our life through our kids eyes and truly asking, "but what's wrong with it now?" and the honest answer to that is...absolutely nothing! It is beautiful and full and hilarious and messy and interesting every single day. There are times in your life that you need to push yourself, but I think maybe 2020 is a year that B and I can say, "this is enough and exactly right for right now."

Brainstorming my 100 small things list for 2020 and excited to try something a little different this year. I still love setting goals for myself but I also know this year is going to be totally wacky (a decade of motherhood and a 10 year old in the same month as having our new baby and turning in a 15page research paper for my college class! LOLOLOLOLOL April is going to be a hot mess!) I'll share soon (hopefully!)

Scheduling appointments with the chiropractor and dentist because new year attitude kicking in high gear.

Winter sporting with 2 practices for Grey and 2 basketball games. All four teams he plays on are starting to pick up now, so as I was filling out my new planner, there is a whole lot of basketball activities happening. It keeps Grey motivated though (academically, chore-finishing) so I guess we are just going with it. hah.

Teaching only two days this week as we made our way back to school after our 10 day holiday break! We eased back into school with new vocab lists in Spanish 1 and Spanish 2, introducing Spanish 2 Honors to Guatemala to prepare for our next novel; Esperanza. Spanish 3/4 Honors practiced some interpretations/translating on the fly while listening to the sweetest holiday voicemail from my Costa Rican 'mom' and after watching this very cool youtube video about political interpreters.  I did get most grading done over break (yay!) and started to think about plans for maternity leave which has me anxious already - but one foot in front of the other and one day at a time for me!

Making pork & sauerkraut as is traditional in western PA for NYE food. We had left over hot dogs with mac & cheese, and on the first day back to school - we did take out Bogo Pizzas from our favorite local spot.