While on Christmas break, it’s been apparent that I miss the therapeutic taping of the keys on my laptop. I walked away from work on Thursday, December 18 and only looked back a couple of times. I may be awful at really being disconnected when I take vacation days, but I’m really good at doing it over the holiday break. Probably because the end of the year is chaos. At home and at work. I get burnt out and am ready for that two-week break. I don’t turn on any laptops and I stay away from my email as long as I can. I even set myself up by telling my boss I wouldn’t be connected unless he needed me. 🙂
Over the past year I’ve fallen in love with Starbucks lattes. I know its cliché, but I’ve always been a name brand gal. I love me some Starbucks, Apple, Nike, and North Face. We decided to buy a Starbucks espresso machine for our Christmas present. Ironically, right after we hit Gold Level. Lucky for us, we found it half off! That’s the thing about liking name brand, if it’s not in the budget then you don’t get it. It makes me appreciate the things I do have. We’ve spent the past week trying to perfect a latte. Because here’s the thing about me…I don’t like coffee. I had to ease my way into Starbucks. Starting with a vanilla mocha. Sugar and sweets in a cup. It took many tries to force myself into liking a latte and I eventually got myself down into a healthy choice. So, Bryan is becoming quite the barista with notes written all over to see if I like the way he made it. With a little help from my sister-in-law, a former real life barista, he’s gotten it pretty good! {All the irony in the world is that I didn’t like the drinks when she was one. Major fail on my part!}
All I’m missing from this break is a few good books to read. Ok, and some quiet to read them. Let’s be honest, I’m not sure my little guys would even let me read if I had any books right now. Loud and a whir of constant disagreements is what my house is about these days. I’m hoping to find myself at a Target one of these days, maybe using the excuse that my sister-in-law gave the boys each gift cards for clothes so we should spend them! 😉 On my wish list are Jen Hatmaker and Jessica Turner books.
I’m currently loving my Erin Condren planner! I got it in December and immediately fell in love! I also got a wellness planner and love being able to keep track of my water, foods, and exercise. That’s where I’ve been doing my meal planning as well. We’re pretty carefree this break and not using the schedule much. I gotta say it’s pretty awesome! With two small children, they don’t have too many activities yet but we definitely feel the crazy that is life. We all needed some time to just be. Bryan is using the time to be in the basement as much as possible {building things and making lots of noise}. I got the boys to help me sort toys before Christmas – pack away, future basement toys, throw away, and give away piles. I sorted through clothes in all of our closets and came up with toss and giveaway piles. {Anyone else feel like they always need to pull out kids clothes? I feel like I should be sorting their clothes weekly. And let’s not get started on my lack of a consistent organizing system of too-small-clothes and ready-to-be-next clothes.} This is the second year I’ve purged in December, but last year I waited until after Christmas. I’ll definitely be doing it again next year and will stick to pre-holiday sorting. It helps me feel better about getting stuff out of the house and also helps me adjust to bringing in more things. I don’t wish away these years {too much}, but the constant toys scattered all over my house does wear on me. Only so many things fit nicely into a basket and I basically hate organized piles.
Let’s talk about children playing together, nicely. It doesn’t happen a lot at my house. I desperately wish for it everyday. Instead, they mostly fight over a toy the other one has. And then it ends in physically hurting each other. We get small glimpses of them playing with each other in make-believe. The thing that is so interesting to me is that most of the time they play a game of brothers. Like brothers who play together and are nice to each other. Brothers who are driving trucks around and doing things. Do they realize that this make-believe game is how they should actually be in real life? Someone tell me that eventually this game they play will be who they are. PLEASE!
