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Oh Mishmash Tree, Oh Mishmash Tree

My Facebook friends have already seen this video. But if you haven't yet, you simply must. It melts my heart every time I watch it (or see it in person).

Keira is redecorating the International Christmas Tree that sits on our kitchen table. I love to pick up an ornament from every country (and sometimes state) that I visit, and they're all displayed on a mini tree every December. I have ornaments from: Mexico, England, France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Austria, Canada, Hawaii, Ohio, Colorado, Massachussets, Pennsylvania, and Utah.

She started out pronouncing it "Mistress Tree," then moved on to "Mishmash Tree" or "Misses Tree." She has recently learned to say, "Christmas Tree," to our great disappointment. And I don't know if you noticed, but she's putting all the ornaments on the same branch.

The heavy breathing you hear in the background? That's just Jovie, our resident Olde English Bulldogge.

Merry Mishmash to all! And to all a good night.

Determination in December

One thing I've found during this move and the adjustment to all this newness is that it's helpful to reconnect to some oldness at the same time. It's been surprising that even just a 10-mile move has thrown all of my routines into disarray, and I still feel like I'm trying to find my way around. I had no idea I was that dependent on those old familiar routines. The very word "routine" makes me cringe, so this was a BIG surprise!

So, in spite of the new house and the looming holidays, I decided on December 1st to make two goals to help me feel rooted and familiar in the midst of change.

1. My Health

I made the goal to run a mile a day every day (except Sundays) in December. I was inspired by Elise Blaha Cripe's new workshop at Big Picture Classes, I Choose: Inspiration and Motivation to Make Goal-Setting Fun. As the title suggests, it truly is both inspirational and motivational. The one teeny tiny thing that stuck with me the most is that, for the last couple of years, Elise has run one mile a day from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day, taking a picture of her shoes every day she runs. It's truly a brilliant idea, for several reasons.

• One mile is a friendly enough distance that it's impossible for me to say (and believe) that I don't have time. Even during the holidays, I can always make the time for a 10-12 minute run.
• The reward of being able to take a picture of my shoes when I'm done, for a cute photo collage (see below), is extra motivation.
• Even on the coldest of cold days, I can convince myself that I can endure the weather for just 10 minutes. (Unless I'm bringing the jogging stroller, as I did on the frigid 21st of December, when Keira quickly convinced me to turn back after just .3 miles. That day, I took a picture of my slippers.)
• December is definitely my worst month of the year for consistency when it comes to exercise. So no matter what happens, I'll have exercised more days this December than I have any previous December ever.
• Since it's only one mile, if I miss a scheduled run, as I have twice, it's no big deal to double the distance the next day.

In the interest of fair and balanced reporting, there are three downsides to this venture:

• The runner who inspired this goal lives in Southern California, which is a very different environment in December than frigid, mountainous Utah. (And my gym is now 15 minutes away!)
• The daily run absolutely necessitates a daily shower. Usually, when life gets busy, I can skip a day and just mask the lack of shower with a hat or some dry shampoo. But not so if I've run that morning!
• The fact that I'm running every day, even for only one mile, somehow makes me feel entitled to more than a few extra handfuls of Angie's White Peppermint Chocolatier Holidrizzle Kettle Corn. And thus by late afternoon I ruin any caloric advantage I might have had after my morning run.

One more little thing I learned from Elise's workshop is not to feel like a failure if I don't 100% vanquish my goal. I'm absolutely on track so far, but the week of Christmas will be the real test. If I skip Sundays and Christmas day, I'll have run 25 days in December, which is definitely a record for me. Maybe I'll even run an extra 1.2 miles on December 31st, so I can say I ran a complete marathon (26.2 miles) this month!

2. Faith

I've been meaning to do this for years, but I've finally decided to embark on a "40 days through the Book of Mormon" journey, which means reading about 5 chapters a day. I've read this book several times, but usually no more than one chapter a day, which makes it more difficult to grasp the ongoing narrative. I'd pick up snippets of inspiration here and there, but I've never read it straight through, like a novel. I've loved the experience, and I haven't missed a day yet. That same "photo a day" trick that has worked like a charm with my running has been an extra motivator for my reading, too. (Note: That little spiral notebook is a study guide that outlines each day's chapters, plus a scripture and a motivational quote. For the life of me, I can't remember where I got it!)

You can do the same thing with any book that means something to you. Just google "40 days through the Bible," for example, and you'll see lots of resources pop up. (I think that's going to be my next journey, although maybe not in 40 days!) Or why not "40 days through Les Miserables" (about 25 pages a day) or through War and Peace (about 32 pages a day).

Who knew? A couple of achievable goals are actually helping me get through the holidays. Maybe it's because I'm prioritizing two of the most important things, so those less important things are seeming, well, less important.

What goals are you working on? Whatever they are, try the I Choose self-paced workshop to help you get there—and have fun along the way. 

Speaking of workshops at Big Picture Classes, my first workshop, Grammar-Free Journaling, is now open for registration! The fun starts in February, and believe me, it will be FUN as well as educational. I'll be posting sneak peeks and other fun info about the workshop in the weeks to come. And it's available for $7 off for a limited time. Details here.

We Moved 10.3 Miles Away

Don't ever let anyone tell you that moving isn't a lot of work. Perhaps we thought to ourselves, "It's not like we're moving across the country. We're not even leaving the county! It can't be that bad to move 10.3 miles to the southwest of our previous dwelling. Plus, we're hiring movers. This will be a piece of cake!"

It wasn't.

It still isn't.

I absolutely, 100% know that the list I'm about to share is comprised entirely of first-world problems—"problems" that countless people in the world can only dream of having the chance to experience. I do know that. I share this list only in hopes that it accounts for my complete neglect of my blog these 6 weeks.

The old living room on moving day.

Reasons I Haven't Found Time to Blog About My Move (or Anything Else For That Matter)

• Everything in the new house takes twice as much effort. I don't know how to use my washer, dryer, dishwasher, oven, cooktop (it's gas vs. our old electric and I have left the burners on TWICE for hours at a time), microwave, or thermostat. I'll figure it all out eventually, but in the meantime, I'm living in the middle of a life-wide learning curve—and trying not to burn my house down.
• Our 2-year-old has had a bit of trouble adjusting. While we think the new house smells fabulous (don't you love that new-house smell?), to her it probably smells weird. It doesn't smell like her house, the comforting environment where she has spent her entire life so far. She hasn't been sleeping quite as well. She needs more snuggles and hugs. She generally needs more "mommy" time, and that's okay with me.
• Our move was delayed twice due to glitches with our buyer's financing, which meant we had to reschedule our movers, our fence people, and our furniture delivery twice, not to mention everything else that depended upon those dates.
• Five days after we moved in, we hosted 16 people for Thanksgiving, and I was in charge of the turkey for the first time ever (with BIG shoes to fill, since my mother-in-law always makes glorious turkeys). The meal turned out perfectly lovely, and the company was great. But the two delays in our move meant that we had less time to prepare than expected, and I was up until 2:30 the night before sealing grout. I'm now convinced that if sealing grout was an acceptable punishment for certain petty crimes, you'd see a lot less shoplifting.
• I'm trying to keep the moving momentum going as long as possible. You see, I know from past experience that my motivation will only last for so long, and at whatever point I lose the momentum of unpacking, putting away, arranging, and decorating, whatever boxes haven't been opened up until that point will probably not be opened until at least 2015, if ever. And whatever walls are bare at the point of momentum loss will still be bare 3 years from now. Must. Keep. Going.
• Because I work from home, I didn't just move houses, I moved offices too! And I've had to find time to complete my long list of work priorities in the middle of everything else. Luckily, I love my job, so it's not a huge sacrifice.
• I'm working on my first workshop for Big Picture Classes, and it's called (drumroll please) "Grammar-Free Journaling." It's going to be FUN! And it's actually what I was supposed to be working on instead of writing this blog post. I never want to do the main thing on my to-do list. I always prefer to start with item 2 or 3. It's a sickness.
• We hosted Keira's birthmom and her birthdad for dinner (separate dinners) in the same week. I love them both beyond words. These sweet young souls have given us the best gift of our lives. So I wanted them to come over when we were a bit more settled in and I could cook them a proper meal, although the original goal was to have them over in October around Keira's birthday. Curse those moving delays! But all went beautifully, and Keira charmed them both.
• And finally, Christmas is 2 weeks away. Presents? What presents? At least we have a tree. 

The new living room on moving day. (It's slightly more put together now.)

So that's my sob story. Please don't get me wrong, I am grateful. Extremely unbelievably grateful every minute of the day (except for when I'm sealing grout, a job that is still not done...). But I'm also exhausted. For the last 3 weeks, since the first night we slept in our lovely new home, my mood has been swinging from elation to exhaustion to exasperation back to elation again. I just tell myself to enjoy the roller-coaster-like ride, because I seriously WILL NEVER DO THIS AGAIN.

It's a good thing we love our house.

In particular, here is what I LOVE:
my view, my oven (which was manufactured less than 54 years ago), my garage that's attached to the house (instead of being across the driveway), my 700 additional square feet, my open floorplan, my gas-burning fireplace, my quartz countertops, my pantry (oh, how I have longed to have enough pantry/cupboard space to store all of my kitchen accoutrements actually inside of the kitchen instead of in the other half of the water-heater closet downstairs), the gate off of my back fence that leads to a lovely walking/hiking trail and traverses a river and several duck ponds, and pretty much everything else about the house too.

Maybe one of these days I'll get around to taking some decent pictures of the rest of the house.

p.s. Want to see my turkey? A new trick I tried (which was not necessarily mother-in-law authorized) was to cut up a red apple and place it inside the cavity of the turkey, which I was told would "steam it from the inside," make the meat very tender, and give it a slight apple flavor. And it worked!