Our Week - The One with Tornadoes and Bike Riding

Reentry into the real world after two whole weeks off at Christmas Break is always tough.  Part of me wasn’t ready to give up the coziness and laziness of the season, but the other part of me was ready for structure and to start tackling some of the things we’d been neglecting.  Fortunately our week wasn’t jam-packed as so many of our weeks are, so we were able to make a pretty seamless transition back into the groove without being too overwhelmed.

Monday, January 6

Monday morning after I dropped the kids at school I headed straight for the gym.  I hadn’t been since early December due to so much sickness and the general busyness/laziness before and after Christmas, so I was ready.  It wasn’t my best workout, but it wasn’t too shabby either considering how much time I’d taken off.

I also had a six-month check-up at the allergist and got good news (that I already mentioned in my goals post earlier this week)… my allergies have improved and my lung function tests looked so good that my doctor said I should be able to discontinue allergy shots after this spring!  I can’t believe it’s almost been three years since I started them… it’ll definitely be nice to not have to go there multiple times each month!

Monday afternoon, the kids were pretty exhausted when they got home from school, so we had a quiet evening at home, complete with early bedtimes for all of us.

Tuesday, January 7

Tuesday morning I had some errands/appointments, and then I spent the rest of the day in my office working on blogging and catching up on emails and blog reading and other stuff that I had let go during Christmas Break.  It was so nice to have that extended break, but it is always so hard getting caught back up afterwards.

Tuesday evening I cooked dinner for the four of us and then I headed out to see Little Women with my Momma and my uncle’s girlfriend while B held down the fort at home.  I’ve never really liked Little Women – the book or the movies – but my aunt and cousin had seen it on a whim and thought it was great, so we decided to give it a whirl.  I ended up enjoying the movie so much, y’all, and it was such a pleasant surprise!  This movie has made me want to try to read the book again… I’ve never completed it because it just wasn’t my kind of thing, but now I think I’m going to give it a try again.

Wednesday, January 8

One of my goals for 2020 is to get out of my routine more while the kids are at school, and quit sitting at my desk nonstop working the entire time.  Wednesday was absolutely gorgeous, so I took full advantage and dropped everything I was doing to take Maui for a walk around our neighborhood.  One of the perks of working for myself is that I can be my own boss and do what I want to do.  However, I just don’t take advantage of that enough!

People constantly ask me, “What do you do all day?  Don’t you get bored while the kids are at school?”  The answer to those questions are a resounding NO.  Since I quit my corporate job and starting pursuing blogging full-time, I have treated blogging like a job.  While the kids are at school I’m working constantly – preparing, writing, and photographing content, pitching to brands, growing a social media presence, reading articles and watching videos to learn how to grow my business, and engaging with other bloggers/brands.  Not to mention I have a household to run and two small kids to take care of.  Sure, I work out some mornings and run errands when I need to, but one thing I can tell you that I’m NOT doing is sitting around, watching Netflix, and eating chocolate.  I can’t even tell you the last time I turned the TV on during the day while the kids were gone.  And I can’t even tell you how many people have asked me if that’s what I do all day now that I work from home.  <eye roll>

Anyway, that all said, I do feel like I’ve let myself become too much of a workaholic while the kids are at school, and even on days when I’m not feeling my best or I have a headache, or whatever, I never let myself take a break.  I always push ahead and work work work.  So this year, I’m going to be taking more breaks, getting more fresh air, and doing more of what lets my soul rest... remember my 2020 goals?  My 25-minute walk with Maui on Wednesday was such a simple thing, but it made a big, positive impact on the rest of my day.  And probably Maui’s, too.  :o)

Thursday, January 9

Thursday morning was another gym day and then it was more blog work for the rest of the day.  I’m still trying to dig myself out of the hole I got myself in when I dropped everything blog-related during Christmas Break, so I am working to get caught up.  After this week I should be where I need to be on the blog, and next week should be a lot lighter so I’m hoping to get ahead and stay there!

Thursday afternoon was Olivia’s first ballet/tap class in nearly a month.  She was off for the two weeks of Christmas Break, and the week prior to that she had a bad stomachache which caused her to miss it.  Needless to say, she was thrilled to be back, and we added a braid to her usual ponytail to make her feel a little fancier.  It’s the little things.  ;o)

Friday, January 10

Friday morning I did my meditation and quiet time as I always do and the reading in my devotional was basically like a smack straight to my head.  Overthinking, obsessing over things I can’t change, planning constantly and trying to control everything?  Helloooo, if that doesn’t describe me to a T then I don’t know what does!  Man oh man I needed that at the start of this year… it was exactly what I needed to keep me on track with my goals for this year. 

Friday afternoon I met two of my old coworkers for lunch.  One of them brought a UGA children’s book to me that’s signed by the author.  Apparently the author is friends with his neighbor, and he thought of me at her book signing.  We are die-hard UGA fans in this house so I don’t think that should surprise anyone.  ;o)  I can’t wait to read it with the kids.  It’s so cute.

Friday evening we decided to venture out for dinner.  We’d spent many a night tucked away at home during Christmas break and we’d also spent every evening at home that week, so I think we were all itching to go out somewhere.  We ended up at our all-time favorite brew-pub downtown for pizza and beers and B and I tried a new appetizer on the menu that was divine – some kind of baked pimento cheese spread with tomato jam and homemade crackers.  Ooooh-weeee it was delicious!

We had a new gourmet donut shop open in town earlier this month so all of you long-time readers can probably imagine how excited we are about that!  To live in such a large city and to not have any kind of gourmet donut shop is a shame, so we were thrilled when we found out we were getting one.  B and I have joked numerous times that we should open one here because there’s such a huge gap in the market for one.

We walked to the shop after dinner since the weather was nice and we picked up some donuts for Saturday morning for breakfast.  We ended up not being super impressed with the shop or the donuts themselves, unfortunately though, so we probably won’t be frequenting the place.  The donuts weren’t bad or anything but they weren’t great either.  And their business model is a little strange as they only sell mini donuts, but you’re required to purchase multiple of each flavor in specific quantities.  They also just pile them on top of each other in a to-go box which I thought was odd, too… y’all know me, I like to take pictures of donuts laid out all pretty side by side in a box.  Haha.

After grabbing our donuts for the next morning the kids asked if we could visit the candy shop and pick out a piece of candy for dessert.  They typically ask for frozen yogurt or ice cream when we’re downtown, but for some reason they were craving candy Friday evening so we obliged.  We ended up spending a good 20-30 minutes in there as we always do because there’s so much to see.  The kids each picked out some Christmas tree gummies for their treats and then we headed home. 

Saturday, January 11

Saturday morning started out slow and lazy.  The kids watched a couple of cartoons while I snuggled on the couch with them and read my book, and then the three of us went upstairs to clean out and organize the play room.  All of the kids’ new Christmas gifts had been piled in the middle of the floor for weeks since they didn’t know where to put them, so it was long overdue. 

Before

After

We spent the next few hours sorting, purging, and organizing, and we got the whole thing done.  I have to say, after my huge clean-out a couple of years ago, this job hasn’t been quite so hard since.  One funny thing to note – I went to pick up Mrs. Potts on Olivia’s Beauty and the Beast serving cart and I heard something shaking around inside.  I expected to open it and see a bunch of Hatchimals or beads or some other small toys, but when I opened it I found a bunch of Cheerios.  I was perplexed until I inspected further and realized that all of the Cheerios were in bunches that were stuck together.  Our kids always get so excited when they search their Cheerio bowls at breakfast and see more than two stuck together… every single time they eat them they always search through the bowl before we pour the milk so they can pull out all of the ones that are stuck together in threes and fours.

Well apparently, they decided they wanted to save all of the bunches of threes and fours stuck together so they’ve been sneaking them upstairs and putting them in Mrs. Potts to save as “keepsakes.”  Y’all.  I laughed so hard when Jacob told me this.  As a matter of fact, one day earlier this week Jacob came upstairs after breakfast holding a bunch of three because he wanted to show it to me.  I thought nothing of it and assumed he’d eat them after he showed me, but nope, he had brought them upstairs to put inside Mrs. Potts.  Hahahaha.  Unfortunately I had to be the bad guy and tell them that we couldn’t have a bowl full of random Cheerios in the play room because we didn’t want to get ants or other bugs, but they were okay with that.  ;o)

We’d had our eye on the weather all day because the local news had been saying for days to expect severe thunderstorms, hurricane force winds, and possible tornadoes Saturday, and sure enough, around 3 our local weather people cut into regular scheduled programming to alert everyone.  We all showered and dressed immediately and then I prepared our storm closet adding our weather radio, external chargers, flashlights, helmets (gotta protect those little heads!), shoes for everyone, our laptops, family binder, hard drives with all of our photos/videos, and my planner and purse… the important, irreplaceable stuff. 

Sure enough, just after 5 PM (when we’d normally be leaving for church) the sky darkened to the point where it looked like nighttime and then all of the crazy weather started.  We had torrential rain and some thunder and lightning, but the scariest part was the wind.  They said we had near 80 mph winds and we also had a tornado come through our area again, right near our neighborhood.  Fortunately this time it stayed in the air and never touched down (at least we don’t think it did) so all was good.  There were some widespread power outages in our city, but we somehow managed to get by without losing power.  It only flickered a few times. 

The storm was also super fast moving, so the worst passed within about an hour and then it was over.  I was so happy to get out of that closet!  At that point it was obviously too late to go to church, but B and the kids and I did decide to go out for a quick dinner.  We didn’t want to go far because we weren’t sure how much damage had been done around the city, so we just went to Zaxby’s right down the street from our house.  It was nice to get out of the house since we’d been cooped up all day and it was nice to shift my focus somewhere else besides all of the bad weather.  Tornadoes are one of my main triggers for anxiety so I had gotten pretty worked up during the storm. 

Sunday, January 12

Sunday morning we were up bright and early for 8 AM mass since we’d missed 5:30 the night before, and then we headed back home to get some things done around the house.  We went out for lunch at Chipotle (and I’m loving their new spinach/kale greens mix by the way!) and then we ran a couple of errands.

We’ve been wanting to get both kids riding bikes without training wheels for quite sometime but we’ve never really taken as much time needed to do that.  Sunday we loaded their bikes and helmets in the car and drove to the high school down the street from our neighborhood to let them practice riding around the track.  The track is much softer than the paved streets in our neighborhood and it’s flat and wide and there’s also no traffic… the perfect place to teach a kid how to ride a bike!

Instead of letting the kids ride around with their training wheels like we always do, we just went ahead and removed them altogether.  B and I worked with each of them, slowly guiding them around the track and teaching them how to lean side to side to keep their balance and they practiced hard for a good hour or so.  Jacob was so comfortable the entire time and he even asked me to let go of him once (I was SHOCKED) but he ended up not getting very far and he put his feet down to stop himself. 

Olivia on the other hand wasn’t ready for us to let her go, and she had a couple of spills while pushing herself with her feet, so she was kind of cranky most of the time that we were there.  Overall both of them did really well, though, and I’m really proud of them for being so brave.  We’re going to keep at it and hopefully they’ll get comfortable and skilled enough to ride without training wheels soon.

Sunday afternoon B and the kids started playing their new Zelda game while I got things prepped for the week ahead.  We went over to my parents’ house for Sunday dinner and after dinner my Daddy surprised us with some old family videos.  My Nana (the one who just passed away) had a stockpile of old family videos on actual reels of film and her brother has had them at his house for the last 40 years.  My Dad got them from her brother when we were at her funeral last month and he had a local shop convert them all to DVD. 

We spent Sunday evening watching all of the old videos from the 60’s and 70’s when my dad was a little boy and a teenager and it was just so neat.  The videos don’t have any sound, but it was really cool to see all of the video footage even without it.  I’ve seen loads of old photos of him when he was little, but never video, so it was the coolest thing!  I’m going to borrow my dad’s copy and rip them to my computer so I can have copies for myself.  Such wonderful family treasures!

Happy Thursday, y’all!