Date Night Sticks

I saw it over and over on Pinterest so I thought I'd create my own.

I came up with ideas for date nights for Jim and I. Most are free or cheap, but some are more fancy and pricey. I took a Mason Jar we had laying around, wrote the date ideas on colored index cards and folded them up (after cutting them apart) and put a key in the front so we'd know what color to draw depending on the available funds.

Some ideas: board game nights, dinner and a movie, movie or TV show marathons at home, a progressive dinner, being tourists in your own town, trying out new restaurants, plays or symphony dates, picnic in the park or playing sports together, local amusement (like batting cages or mini golf), arcade date, hotel stay (even if it's in your own town!), or dinner and a movie at home with a theme (for instance, Italian Job with Italian food!).

A Friday List : Life Update

1. My child's sleeping schedule has been ruined since strep throat. He wasn't sleeping through the night before, but he was only getting up once MAYBE twice to nurse. Now, it's like every 3 hours. We tried crying it out for 4 days and it was miserable (2 hour scream fests are NOT awesome). We go to the doctor in a week and a half so I guess he'll tell me what to do. I'm just lost!

2. Is fests not a word? My iPhone is telling me it's not. Those little red dots underlining it bother me.

3. Speaking of iPhones, my screen has a crack in it. I have no idea how- I guess it was something in my bag. I had taken it out if the case to put on the iHome we use at dance and when I got it out a little later to recase it, cracked! It's not huge or a huge hindrance to my screen, so I won't be forking over the cash to fix it.

4. MY BABY TURNS ONE NEXT WEEK!! What the heck?

5. Happy Birthday to my very awesome youth minister extraordinaire cousin, Justin! Another birthday shout out to a great friend of ours as well as the College Pastor we serve under, Brady! Hope you guys have a fantastic day!

Temporarily Deactivated

Only like 4 people have said anything, but I deactivated my Facebook account. I wanted to see if I would miss it and on a week where my to do list was overwhelming, it seemed like a good time to remove the distraction. Even going to deactivate I found myself creeping around.

I don't think it's forever. I just wanted a little break. I'm still tweeting and Instagramming. Sometimes I confuse myself with what I should tweet or Facebook. It seems a bit redundant sometimes. And do people really care? How do you figure it all out?

I also took a break from Pinterest, but that's been since before Christmas. It was feeding my unrealistic expectations of myself and what I should be doing. The new year has brought on a want to clear the plate. I've felt like I was drowning in my responsibilities and commitments and failing at all of them.
The Lord has been faithful to remove things in a way that was clearly his doing already this year.

Selling Our House : Day 1

Our house went on the MLS listing service yesterday morning. We still had a lot of things to do to get it ready to show but we're hopeful that we could get it done by Thursday. That project list includes:

• We've got a few more things to haul off- dog house to my Mom, chairs to my in-laws, and old fence to the dump.
• We've got to the garage cleaned out.
• We've got to touch up paint in Jacob's room, our room, the living room, the bathroom and kitchen.
• We need to get a kick plate for the bottom of Jacob's door.
• The Hall closet needs cleaned out
• The bathroom needs recaulked (and I stink at it!), the sink stopper needs fixing, and the toilet runs. Oh, and the lightbulbs need to be the kind that match when they're exposed.
• The sunroom needs to be packed up. Lots of unnecessary things in there.
• The hot water needs fixing in the kitchen and some holes patched up.

We signed the papers Monday and our realtor said he'd be by on Tuesday to put up the lock box and put the sign in the yard. Imagine my surprise when I got a call that an agent wanted to show our house at 3. It was 1:30. I was leaving in 10 minutes to go get Jim from work so he could watch Jacob so I could teach my dance class.

I called Jim to see if he was up for the list of things that had to be done before the house could be shown. Not only did we have all of the above projects, but the house was "lived in" a mess. Dishes needed to be done, I was washing bed linens, I think Jacob had played with EVERY toy in his room, and I needed to sweep. 

I did everything I could and headed to get Jim. My thinking was that I'd come in for as long as I could to help get things ready. We drove up in our driveway, and Jim said, "so you want to get Jacob out for like 5 minutes and then put him back in his car seat?" Yeah, that didn't make much sense. We drove to church (about 5 minutes away) to drop me off for dance class and I realized that I had planned on going in and so I hadn't brought ANY of my dance stuff. Back to the house, I ran in and got my stuff, and went back to church. That was 2:10. Poor Jim had been having a rough day at work and I totally unloaded a list of things to get done in less than an hour and he had to do it all while watching Jacob.

2:20 comes and no one is at dance class. I ran up to the office to see if there were any notes or anything for me. I stayed until 2:30 and texted the girls' moms. Turns out that due to a fever and car trouble, no one was coming. So, I sat and talked to a friend while Jim slaved away at home. He showed up at 3 with the dogs, Jacob, a laundry basket of dirty dishes and another laundry basket of clutter that we don't really have a place for. 

We stayed gone for an hour. I came back and dropped the dogs off, went to get the kids from school. While I was at my evening dance class, Jim texted me and said that the people wanted to COME BACK AND SEE THE HOUSE AGAIN THAT NIGHT.

They ended up not coming back, but will be back, hopefully! They needed to get some things lined up before coming back. 

National Hat Day

Today is Hat Day, so you should leave the hair a dirty mess and wad it up in a hat!

She Said Yes and Selling Houses

Yesterday, I posted a general life update. Some of the mundane things that were going on that aren't life changing, but hey- it's what we do here. We live ordinary lives trying to be a little bit unordinary doing it.

There are 3 other major updates though. In order of occurrence:

Number One: My little sister (who is 21) Emily got engaged just before Christmas! She has asked me to be her Matron of Honor and I'm very excited for her. Her fiancé's name is Albert.

The caption of this picture was "these are our excited faces!" So fun!

Number Two: That weekend, my little brother (who is 25) James popped the question to his girlfriend, Alexis, on the ranch where he worked.

It was so cold there (so I'm told and one can see that in the way that they're dressed).

And finally, Number Three: We've decided to try and sell our house. We don't have to, but for some personal-ish reasons that I won't be going into on the blog (privacy, ya know?) we're just going to see what happens. If it sells and we don't owe anyone money after it, wooho! If we can't get what we need we'll stay right where we are for the time being (or forever- whichever we're supposed to do!) We met with our realtor on Tuesday and we have a pile of paperwork to sort through and go over as well as some projects that need to be done. Of course, I'll keep you up to date.

Life Update :: Strep Throat & Golf Lessons

It's been quite a week here in the Johnson house. I feel like it should almost be February, but alas, it's January 9th! Jacob got sick last week and it turns out he had Strep Throat! Poor guy! We're finishing up antibiotics this week. In the meantime, I also got sick (again!) with the same stuff I had before Christmas, so I'm doing what I can to feel good (my medicine options are limited thanks to breastfeeding).

On Monday, I took my Mom on her birthday trip. We went to Top Golf for some golf lessons (she's always wanted to learn how to play) and it was a super fun trip. I listened in on the lesson as best as I could with Jacob and then we played a couple of games. I think I probably enjoyed the two hours in the car there and back talking to my Mom, but I hope she had fun!

Yesterday, dance resumed for me as did a new schedule for my siblings (and Mom). I have a new student in my older class which is exciting for financial reasons and so my sister isn't soloing it anymore.

Today, we're finally back to a more "normal" schedule. Jacob and I went grocery shopping this morning and I've already got crock pot pasta fagioli cooking in the crock pot. He's taking a nap, so I'm enjoying some down time.

My Very Own Planner

So this year, I decided to forego the planners sold in stores. They just never met my needs perfectly and I would end up using other things with the planner and it was just too much. This year, I made my own for $3 plus the printing.

I subscribe to ListPlanIt and also a couple of blogs that giveaway printables as well as have stores that sell them (Clean Mama, iHeart Organizing, Life Your Way). One of the blogs gave away a cover sheet, and I printed out everything I thought I'd need and want for the first three months. Then, I took it to Office Depot and they spiral bound it for $3.

The first page is a "Goals" page. I have 11 "areas" of life that I want to better and I wrote down 3 action steps that I want to take or need to do to. For instance, "Crafting" has catch up on Project Life, make holiday banners and treats, and try a Pinterest project.

Next comes the Monthly calendar, followed by a page from ListPlanIt called Routines. It has a spot for my daily routine (nap times and meals), my weekly schedule that doesn't change (dance every Tuesday and Thursday), and a monthly spot for re-occuring monthly things (like giving the dogs their meds, holidays, birthday, anniversaries, etc.). After that, I have another page from ListPlanIt called a Month of Blog Topics.

For each week, I have 4 pages. The Weekly Schedule broken down by day and hour, A To Do List with spots for each day, my Menu Plan and a Grocery List. Now, everything is one spot, it's easy to use (that's why I got a spiral binding) and in 3 months, I'll re-evaluate and add or take away as I see necessary!

Getting Older Makes You Grateful

This thought crossed my mind last week while laying in bed trying not to cough and wake Jacob up. I was furiously sucking on cough drops in an attempt to stifle the coughs that wouldn't go away, no matter what I did. We were visiting family for Christmas so Jacob was sleeping in our room, right next to us. I'm so grateful we put him in his own bed from the first night home. Hearing his every whimper and movement is not ideal.

But, I was laying there thinking about all the gifts our family had gotten. Christmas is big in our family. But I think for the first time, Christmas was more about what we were doing and not what we got. I am so thankful for the gifts: after having kept my Christmas budget under control, I'm so thankful for those that spent their hard earned money on things for me. It made me think twice about the things I "wish" for. 

I had gotten word that one of my siblings said that all he got for Christmas was "stupid clothes." It was a good thing I was 4 hours away because I immediately wanted to pound him. How could he be so ungrateful? Kids everywhere would have done a lot for those "stupid clothes." We also had to delay our travel home because of bad weather. I was heartbroken because I wanted so badly to be with my family. 

After really thinking about it all and praying about it all, I came to this conclusion. Christmas will be what you make it. If it's all about the gifts, disappointment can be sure to be found somewhere. We aren't perfect gift givers, after all. I want to make it a priority to raise Jacob to be grateful. I want to make it a priority to make the Christmas season about Christ and the perfect gift He was to the world that so desperately needed him, that still desperately needs Him, today. Sure, I'll still make my Amazon wish list every year; there is nothing wrong with giving and getting gifts. It's one of my favorite things to do, actually! It will not, however, be the focus. The focus will be Christ, gathering my family around me, even if it means multiple trips across town or across the state, and spending time with the ones I love.

5 Year Anniversary

On the 29th, Jim and I celebrated 5 years of being married. We are planning on taking a weekend trip once baseball season starts and Jacob is weaned. We went to eat dinner at a dance restaurant with beautiful views of the Texas countryside.

My gift to Jim was to organize and decorate his new office, including new desk accessories that are wooden (the traditional 5 year gift). His gift to me was super awesome!

After putting Jacob to bed one evening, I came back into our room and found a note and gift on our bed. Jim was giving me a "12 Days Until Or Anniversary" gift. Each night, I got a note and corresponding gift that had something to do with one thing he loved about me. I was super impressed.

You should be too! I'm married to a pretty stellar guy and I'm so thankful, proud and honored to be his wife. He does an exemplary job at cherishing me, serving me and loving me; he speaks truth into my life, laughs at my jokes (which are not always funny), has deep conversations with me and isn't afraid to listen to the sometimes ridiculous ramblings that my brain comes up with. He is a great Dad; Jacob lights up when he drives up or walks into the room. He loves the Lord and makes it a priority to spend time with Him every morning so that he can be the best husband, dad, worker, son, friend and man of God he can be. I love you Jimbo! Can't wait to spend another 5 (and then some more) by your side!

Jacob :: 11 Months

Jacob is 11 months old today. I cannot believe that I'm planning his first birthday party. Jacob is still not crawling in the traditional sense, but he can navigate around on the hardwoods by scooting. We haven't been sleeping well this past month- a combination of teething and traveling has been hard on him, I think. There are no teeth to show for these hard nights, though.

Jacob loves being outside. He loves watching the birds and cars. He actively points to the door and grunts to go out there. He got lots of new toys for Christmas, and especially loves the puzzles and this v-tech learning station he got from Jim's cousin Jenny. He is still taking 2 great naps a day (around 9:30 and 2).

The diaper we ordered to try was too big, so we're using a disposable at night. He is still wearing mostly 24 months and 2T clothes. His newest favorite food is yogurt and fruit. We tried the table food again last night, and he seemed to do better. He also has down drinking water from a certain type of sippy cup (the cheap one that leaks) but its progress and only has it at the table.

He also continues to set himself up at night and starts crying. He never does it during the day, only in his bed. I can only assumes he is using the bed to help get himself up. We'll be dropping the bed any week because I don't want to wait until he falls out of the bed to discover that he has learned how to pull up.