Last Month was January

I had great plans to write this post on Thursday but a virus hit me out of no where Thursday morning and derailed my plans.  Recapping a month is something that I did a few times in 2016, maybe once in 2017 and would like to get back to in 2018.  I find that I often think that nothing is getting done or that I'm just sitting around all of the time.  This has been a great way to remind myself that even though my day to day life feels choppy and non-productive that lots of easy to forget things also happen.  I thought sharing the lists here might be a good way to keep track for the coming year.

So...last month was January. 

New Year's weekend was celebrated with movies, naps and trying to get everyone healthy again.  (We had spent the entire week of Christmas with someone not feeling well.)



Two of the girls cousins were here for a sleepover.

We took a 'slumber party field trip' to the ER after Smiley Girl split her lip open.

My family celebrated Christmas with a White Elephant Gift Exchange.  This is the party that Miss E's goldfish came from last year.  This year Tim re-gifted his lone windshield wiper to the recipient of the other wiper, Reagan got a scalp massager, Elizabeth a hand warmer that expired in 1998 and I came home with (yummy, non-expired) Magnum ice cream bars.  It is always a fun night together - even though past history warns me that live animals may be involved.

We spent a few days together at Great Wolf Lodge.  (More on that here.)

The girls went to Friday morning breakfast with Papa (my dad) a couple of times and both of them spent one full day with Papa so that I had one on one time with the other one. 

Uncle Pedro (my brother) popped in for a quick overnight visit between work trips. 

The girls ice skated at a local rink two different times and had a blast.  They were really good from the start, which I am attributing to the time they spent on roller blades and roller skates this past summer.

Tim and I both had trips to the dentist, as well as Reagan who had some teeth that were sick.  But the bright side of that for her is that the Tooth Fairy came in a big way.

I ran away to a bigger town for an all by myself day - I returned and exchanged a couple of Christmas gifts, shopped for myself using a Gift Card that TDM's dad gave me for Christmas and cashed in my gift from TDM, which was a massage. 

Work was super quiet for me, which is always a good/bad thing.  Good that I can get other stuff done, bad for the obvious income reasons. 

I spent time going through both of our filing cabinets but honestly, that is still a work in progress.  I'm hoping to finish that project during February.

In a huge spark of inspiration I moved our bath towels out of the 'smelly' closet into the closet at the end of the hall and moved the mish-mash of kid-craft-sewing-wrapping supplies into the 'smelly' closet.  Those things won't get smelly because they aren't towels.  Problem solved, though after it was done I wondered why it had taken me eight years to arrive at this simple solution for storing our towels!

The smelly closet is still a mess, as most new homes are for a few weeks after a move, but the towels no longer smell.

My creative skills were put to use knitting a couple of dishcloths and sewing a new duvet cover for our bed. 

I donated three garbage bags and a box or two of items that we no longer need or use. 

Our Small Group got back on track, meeting on Thursday nights.

The girls bathroom was cleaned from top to bottom as well as cleaning and rearranging cabinets.

We had friends over for dinner and games last weekend.

I (finally) got all of our Christmas decorations taken down and put away.  On January 26th.  😂

Our Dave Ramsey style budget that we started working on in August finally started to feel both comfortable and do-able.  This has been a major win, because money and I have a huge love/hate relationship. 

And now it's onto February!