Well, December is whisking right along! Things feel very hectic with all the holiday activities on top of regular life activities, but I’m doing my best to just hang on and enjoy. On Sunday, Santa visited our neighborhood park! We missed this event (organized by a neighborhood mom’s club) last year so I’m happy we were able to participate this year. He even brought each of the girls an early gift! Emma was super excited; Charlotte warily took her present and then cried. (Pretty much par for the course for a 2-year-old.)
I really enjoy these neighborhood events — they’re such a fun reminder that we live in a great area with lovely neighbors!
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Last week I officially finished paying our yearly property taxes, school taxes, water authority taxes, and HOA dues. Whew! Normally I wait until the last week of December but since we already had the money set aside, I decided to just go ahead and cross that item off my list. I’m nearly 40 and yet I still feel very “adult” when I make all those payments.
Jose and I have also talked about a couple home improvement items to tackle in the new year. One of the biggest is paint — we’d like to get nearly the whole house painted, including the living room with its two-story ceiling and the kitchen with its dated brown trim. We tentatively decided to do that in March or April, so I’ll be calling around for quotes on that in January or February. (And local friends, if you have a painting crew you’d recommend, let me know!)
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We do a lot of coloring and other assorted arts and crafts projects around the house, and Emma loves to ask me to “find a coloring page on the computer” i.e. google coloring page and see what pops up. We usually look for something specific like Trolls or Christmas or what have you, but I did a rather generic search the other day and a bunch of mandala-ish designs came up. We colored this one together. Not bad!
Related: I bought her a Crayola advent calendar this year and it has been so neat! Every day she gets a marker or crayon or paints or modeling clay, and each day has an activity that goes along with it — like a card, or a picture, or stickers to color.
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A week ago we stopped by Space Center Houston to see the Apollo 11 command module! It’s currently on display through March as part of a 2-year road trip — the first time its left the Smithsonian in years. Space Center Houston also has the Apollo 17 command module that’s there permanently so they’re currently housing 2 of only 9 command modules that have carried astronauts around the moon. (And 2 of only 6 that flew the missions that actually landed on the surface.) Pretty cool!
The girls were totally unimpressed — of course — but at least I have a photo to show them someday when they can understand the significance!
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This week marks 1 full year of working out at Orange Theory. Cool! I’ve got a 4x/month membership and have been 43 times, so overall I’m sticking well at that level of participation. I always try for the full 4 times per month, but with everything else going on, there have been a few months that I only made it 3 times. Either way, I still enjoy the classes, and even at the low rate of 4 times per month I’ve noticed differences in my strength and muscle tone in general. (Like, whoa, I have biceps!)
So the plan for 2018 is to just keep at it, at the same rate, while I work on getting a bit more consistent with my running. On a good week, I get in 2-3 runs of anywhere from 3.5-5 miles. On a bad week, all I’ve got is Orange Theory. I’d like to be more diligent about getting in at least 2 runs per week.
p.s. I’m doing a 31 day blog writing challenge!
Deb says
Such a fun post! I found you through the 31 day challenge linkup. Looks like you are balancing the business of life really well. Don’t you just love checking things off the to do list? Love the artwork – my kids love searching the coloring pages as well. So glad we have that resource. I’ll have to check and see if that command module is headed to Florida – if so I’ll have to take my kids over to see it. Thanks!
Sarah says
Hey Deb! I’m not sure if it’s headed to Florida — I know it goes to Seattle at some point — but if you’re close to KSC and haven’t gone to see the shuttle Atlantis exhibit, you should! I’ve heard it’s really incredible.