Personal
This is where you will find posts about all things personal to me. This section includes posts about interesting things I do or make, reflections on everyday life, and everything in between.
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Celebrating the Winter Solstice – Sunday Snapshots
It is a busy time of year with a lot to celebrate! Our major event this past weekend was a Winter Solstice Celebration with our friends. It was a great opportunity to get together with our community and celebrate the change of season.
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Back to Writing
I spent the month of November writing pretty much constantly, and yet I completely dropped the ball on updating this blog. November was National Novel Writing Month, a challenge to complete 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. I made my goal and wrote 51,000 words of my novel in November, but it was tough. I do not typically have time to just sit down and write, so almost all of that writing happened in 10 minute spurts when I had the chance to pick up my phone. That meant that it felt like I was writing all day, every day, in between all my other daily responsibilities and…
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Ten Things of Thankful – Week 2
This week has had a lot of ups and downs, but I have been really looking forward to doing another Ten Things of Thankful post this week. I love gratitude logging as a mindfulness exercise, and writing for a public audience really forces me to put more thought into what I am writing. 1. I am thankful for great friends and community. We have a potluck coming up Sunday with a lot of friends in the area and I am really looking forward to it. In the past I have had plenty of social anxiety, but not with this group of people. They are a really great, welcoming and supportive…
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Resilience
Resilience. That is the word that has been bouncing in my head this week. As a therapist, it was a word that came up frequently when writing therapy goals and progress notes with clients. It is also one of the behavioral standards that kids are rated on at Ryan’s school. What does it really mean though? Imagine walking across hot coals. If you cry and scream the whole way across, but then keep on walking and are willing to try it again, are you resilient because you bounced back? Or not resilient because you cried and screamed? Do you need to cross the coals without flinching in order to be…
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Ten Things of Thankful
I have been exploring different blog hops and link-ups lately, and one of the new ones I stumbled across is the Ten Things of Thankful blog hop. I already keep a Gratitude Log in my bullet journal, so the big change with participating in this blog hop is just finding a community and connecting with others. At first I was hesitant to make a post about things I am grateful for. Although I do often post about how happy I am with our house and new hometown, a tiny part of me worries that posting a list of things that I am thankful for could come across as braggy. The…
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Back to School
Ryan started fourth grade on Monday. It really seems like they grow up overnight, check out the difference between the first day of third grade and first day of fourth grade. I can’t believe I have a fourth grader already! When he was just a little preschooler, school seemed so big and scary. Each year he has grown more and more and become increasingly independent. Usually Ryan likes a little bit of extra support and hand holding. Not this year. This is the first year that he didn’t ask me to walk him to class. In fact, I asked him (several times actually) and he was insistent that he wanted…
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Kid-free for a few days – and a new roof!
Both of my kids are visiting family in Maine right now. They are staying for a few days and I don’t even know what to do with myself. This is the first time I have really been away from Saoirse since she was born 2.5 years ago. When I asked her if she wanted to have a sleepover with Ryan and grandma, she was really excited. I know that she will be totally fine, especially with her big brother there to help her. I was still a little nervous about dropping her off though. I am really looking forward to having a few days where I can do what I…
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Refocusing – Projects, Places and Personal
My blogging has taken a lot of different forms over the years (most of which I believe I have deleted now). I have blogged about being a college student, being a young mom, raising a child on the spectrum etc. My most recent iteration of my blog was intended to focus on learning to deal with anxiety and looking at motherhood through the lens of anxiety. At the time when I chose to focus my blog on that, anxiety was consuming my life and I hoped that blogging would be a good coping mechanism. Now I seem to have my anxiety under control and writing about anxiety isn’t particularly helpful…
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Rusty, our rescue pup
Meet our newest family member – Rusty! I have missed living with dogs since I first moved away for college at 18. When Ryan came along, and as he got older, I desperately wanted him to get to experience growing up with pets. I also didn’t want to get a dog if we wouldn’t be home most of the day, and I didn’t want to risk dog ownership while renting. I worried with a dog that changing pet agreements could potentially put me in a position where I would have to choose behind Ryan’s well-being and stability of living environment and keeping a dog. So I held off. I waited…
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Finding Stability and Home – Part Three, My Dream House
In early March, after losing out on a property that Cal really liked, he pointed out another new property that had come on the market. I had already shown him the listing for the property before our last trip up north to look at houses, but he had immediately told me it was old and overpriced, so he wasn’t interested in seeing it. Apparently he hadn’t paid much attention the first time I showed it to him beyond the age of the home and the price. Now he was excited about the house. It was a beautiful, well-maintained home in an absolutely perfect location. There is not another property anywhere…
