Moving and Minimalism

One of the great minimalist resources is a duo called The Minimalists, and one of their more extreme ideas for jump starting your minimalist life style is to have a packing party.  Basically they want you to pack all of your belongings into boxes like you're going to move and then only unpack what you need over a certain period of time, then get rid of everything that gets left in the boxes.  You can read all the details here. If I were staying in the same house this idea would seem completely ludicrous to me and beyond inconvenient.  But I actually am moving so it may be a great time to try it.

One of the most interesting things I have found about minimalism is how easy and almost exciting it is to get rid of things the more you do it.  Even though I have "purged" my home several times, as I prepare for our move I am astounded by the number of things I still want/need to get rid of.  Some of this is by necessity, because we don't need to hold onto expired meds and the movers won't pack them anyway.  And other things are in perfectly good condition but forgotten and now completely useless.  I am actually excited to downsize from our 3 bedroom + office house to a two bedroom condo, because it will force us to be really honest about what we value and what we need in our lives.

The hard part I am having right now is that I am feeling extremely wasteful.  So many things are unfortunately ending up in the trash. Vitamins, and cotton balls and old bath toys for example.  When our junk is no ones treasure, when it has been offered and no one wants it, to the trash it goes. And my guilt increases.  I suppose that this will teach me a valuable lesson about only buying things that I truly need and using all of something before buying its replacement.

So maybe the baby step is just pretending to have a packing party. Instead of packing everything and then only keeping what you need as you unpack, what if you went through your belongings room by room and thought about what you would pack.  Would you keep all four bottles of hand soap?  What about the extra set of curtains you've had in your linen closet for 6 years.  And if you're keeping these items for "just in case" think about when that time is going to come.  Are you actually moving to a house where those curtains might fit and you'll magically love them? Or where there are twice as many bathrooms, thus needing all the soap?  Its probably not going to happen, and if you're not using it now, you're not going to use it in two months once its travelled across the country and you've forgotten its very existence.

Let go.  It actually feels really good.  And if you have to throw something away, remember how it makes you feel so you think twice before buying its replacement.

Dear Husband

I'm not sure if you will ever see this because you have readily admitted that you don't read my blog. But I will write it none-the-less because our life, and our love, deserves to be documented.  I want to remember this time, how I felt and how we were.

We are going through another big transition, after getting married and having a baby this one is the biggest, and I think maybe the scariest for you.  The fears you are facing and sacrifices you are making do not go unnoticed.  This is what marriage vows are written for, this is the better and worse, the fine line between richer and poorer, we've even had the sickness and health.  This is taking a leap of faith and holding onto each other desperately so if we fall at least we will still be together at the bottom.

I want you to know that I am so thankful for everything you have done and everything you are doing. I am so proud of the work you have done, the way you have handled yourself and I am so excited to see where you go next.  I have nothing but faith in you.  Faith in your determination and work ethic, faith in your love for me and our son, and faith in your drive to do what is best for all of us. Thank you for all the support you continue to give, I hope you feel just as supported and cared for by me.

Theres a whole bunch of not so good stuff too, nagging and stress, irritation and anxiety, incessant questions and disagreements.  And I love you through all of them. I love you even though the days and our to-do lists seem so long, and our patience is sometimes a little too short.  I love you through the tears, mostly Jacksons and a few of mine.  I love you through the hours of paperwork and projects and cleaning.  At the end of the day I take such comfort in our unconditional commitment to each other and the fact that we still want to go to bed next to each other.

Cheers to us, my darling, and this wild, beautiful adventure we are on together.  I couldn't do it with anyone but you.

All my love,
Your wife

The Real Mom's Resume

I am going back to work. Yikes. This means I have had to update my resume, which hasn't been done in about 5 years, double yikes.  After begging friends and relatives to send me theirs so I could get some idea of what a professional person was supposed to say about themselves, I came up with one that isn't half bad.  But as I was googling "resume adjectives" so that I wasn't just using words like "smart and nice" I started to think about what my resume would look like if I was being my brutally honest, semi-snarky self.  Just for fun I thought I'd share.

Mommy Kate Blinn

Objective: Stay-at-home mom desperately seeking an opportunity to have adult conversations and renew my self-worth while adding as little additional stress to my life as possible.

Skills
Multitasking: reading a children's book while cooking dinner and checking Facebook.
Positivity: keeping a child happy and distracted when they have just projectile vomited all over the couch and their father.
Good under pressure: not losing my shit when i've been asked the same question for the 47th time in 12 minutes (don't ask what happens at number 48)
Articulate: able to explain the difference between bras and boobies to a 2 1/2 year old boy with a straight face.
Other skills include; seeming empathetic or interested in ridiculous situations, calming irrational tiny humans under extreme duress, cooking meals that never get finished, and cuddling.

Experience
I used to have real jobs with real responsibilities and I was really good at them.  Yet I can't remember exactly what those duties were because I created another life and he took all my brain cells.


So if anyone has a job that could use someone like me i'd really appreciate the opportunity! Also, be prepared for me to talk about my kid a bunch, i'm going to miss the heck out of him.

Starting the "Lasts"

We are roughly 3 months out from our desert departure (yikes!), and the great goodbye tour has started.  First we are starting with some of our favorite places, and then unfortunately, as is the way of the Marine Corps we will have to say our farewells to friends.  But today we started with the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway and Mt. San Jacinto.  Its a place we have loved to come to escape the heat of the desert and have visited at least 6 or 7 times with various family members and by ourselves.  It's gorgeous, reminds us of Colorado and never fails to renew our love of the outdoors and bring us closer as a family.  Today we did about 4.2 miles with about a 500 ft elevation gain, followed by beers and an ice cream.  It was cloudy up top, and even sprinkled some rain on us for a few minutes (!) and the visibility into the basin was terrible from heat/smog/smoke.  But it was a beautiful day and it will always be a place we hold dear and think of fondly.  Bye tram!

 Heading up

 Top look out

 Round Valley meadow

 Heading down

 Mountain side looking up

Desert below

mommy-ing aint easy

Have you ever had one of those days, as a mom or at work, at school or home, where you just wanted to run screaming from the building and go hide somewhere by yourself for a while? Where your kid, or your boss, teacher or parent won't leave you alone, and you feel like you can't do anything right?  At home I would hide in my room or go for a drive, in college I would skip a class, at work I would take a walk or a personal day.  But as a mom?  You don't have those options.

I've always know I wanted to be a mom and as I got older I hoped I would get the chance to be a stay at home mom for a while.  I wanted to be there for all the little things, I wanted to drive kids to school and sports and be there at the end of the day to do pick up and snack and homework. My mom had a job that allowed her to be home with me during the week when I was little and I couldn't imagine doing anything else with my own children.  But man, some days I honestly think I am not cut out for this. Which probably isn't what i'm supposed to say, but its the truth.

Don't get me wrong, I of course adore my child, and I wouldn't trade these last two and a half years with him.  I have gotten to witness all of his major milestones, I know everything he likes and doesn't like, I know his capabilities, things he needs to work on, his routines, and every single detail of every single day.  And some days, even just writing that sentence is exhausting.  I would be sad if I didn't know any one of those things, but with those things also comes the tantrums, and the testing of limits, the tears and the 743 requests for tv shows or snacks.  There are the days when we don't get to shower or eat a full meal because you have a small child literally attached to you all day having a meltdown every five minutes and needing more attention than you can give.

I'm saying, its ok! Moms are SO hard on themselves sometimes, an unfortunately hard on other moms too.  Stop that.  We're all doing the best we can and we need support not more judgment, I promise we are already second guessing everything we do.

So here's to you momma.  The mom who hasn't showered or put on a bra.  The mom who fed her kid packaged food all day because they refused anything else.  Heres to the mom who left the tv on all day, or who hid in the bathroom a little too long.  To the mom who called her friends and dragged the kids to the park so she could half ignore them while she had an adult conversation.  Heres to the moms that have it all together, wearing make up and clean clothes and eating organic everything.  And heres to the moms who haven't brushed their teeth.  Here's to the fun moms and the neurotic moms, the anxious moms, and the moms who feel like they're failing.  You are all beautiful, powerful, incredible women.  You're doing the best you can for your kid and I promise, they love you for it.

Minimal-ish: Getting Started

I got started on my road to minimalism for lots of different reasons, the biggest were my overall feeling of clutter, chaos, and dissatisfaction with my house.  It's been a slow process over the last year or so, and I honestly didn't know what minimalism was when I started.  I started trying to create more organized areas in my house, and doing more organized things in my life; creating a "command center" meal planning and keeping track of activities on a big wall calendar.  But none of it made a huge difference, probably because I was just moving stuff around instead of doing what I really needed to, which was getting rid of stuff!  Around the same time my friend mentioned minimalism to me, and a light bulb went off.  I started researching, and following lots of different blogs and Facebook pages, I pinterested the crap out of various organization guides, and finally I dug in.

I went room by room and started purging.  I found a 6 week calendar that gave me an accessible way to tackle the challenge of decluttering my house.  This first sweep through each room was so motivating and invigorating! Who would have thought getting rid of stuff could be so awesome!  The kitchen/panty was where I saw the biggest difference right away.  My shelves and drawers were so much cleaner. I could see everything I needed and used on a regular basis and so much of the clutter was gone.  I have done a second and third purge of almost every area in my house since that first time, and now i'm realizing how easy it is for me to see something, recognize that I haven't used it in months and let it go.

After I went through the initial purge, that friend, Camille (The Burley Tribe) told me about a documentary by The Minimalists that took my views on minimalism one step further.  It made me think about all the things we buy, and all the things we throw away, and how little we think about those actions.  It made me realize that very few of my physical possessions bring me any real or lasting happiness, and that I should take that knowledge and live my life accordingly.  Its an incredible documentary and I highly recommend it!

So now where am I? I hit a wall recently where a lot of my motivation seemed to have left me.  I was feeling slightly defeated because I still thought the house was so full, and we still seemed to be spending money on things I wasn't sure were bringing us happiness.  And so I didn't think about it for a while.  Then magically, my husband cleared out a huge bag of his clothes, and somehow that restored my inspiration.  Also for the first time, I didn't go back through his clothes and try to convince him to keep things (a huge downfall for us).  And then I went through some of my clothes, and tried things on and was honest with myself about what I actually liked, and what I was keeping "just in case" or because I thought it held monetary value.  But the thing I like so much about minimalism is finding that value of things that aren't actually things.  Finding the time and the space and the energy that I have because i'm not cleaning or organizing or fighting with the clutter of things that aren't actually making me happy.

Sometimes minimalism can seem confining almost, that I cannot be a minimalist because I don't fit into a certain mold with bare rooms and a certain small number of possessions.  One of the things The Minimalists say is that "minimalism looks different for everyone" and I'm finding that to be true. Really i'm more in search of simplicity than minimalism, or authenticity; authentic simplicity. Trying to find real happiness and joy and purpose in my life and I know that I won't find it in any of my things, but in the people and experiences I allow myself to see and have when I clear out the clutter.

Resolutions: 6 months later

I set some big goals for myself and our family at the beginning of the year (which I talked about in my first post back to the blog). I wanted to check in, with myself mostly, about where I was with the goals I had set and how I feel the year is going.  Its crazy that it's June already and in about 4 months we will be heading home! June also marks Jackson's half birthday, which is kind of a big deal when they're so little.  He seems like a totally different person than 6 months ago!  Mostly I feel pretty good about where I am with my goals for the year, but i've still got room for improvement.

Goal: Camper and spending more time outside as a family: Done and Done! Bu this one is definitely something that will be continued.  It will especially take work now that summer has arrived and its looking like 100 degree days are the indefinite future.  We took an amazing trip for mothers day and have one planned for fathers day weekend as well! There will be a blog post about our camping trips soon.  The camper has given us so much as a family, and I seriously treasure the time we get to spend in it together.

Goal: Reducing plastic use:  I did a whole post about this and what we changed.  While we have made some big changes, I see us slipping a bit for the sake of convenience, and I would like to buckle down a little more.  I'd also like to find some other ways we can be nicer to the environment.  Oh! I just ordered wool dryer balls to replace dryer sheets! I'm probably way more excited than I need to be about them, but i'm hoping they work great.  (more suggestions welcome!)

Goal: Health and Fitness: Ehhh.  I set a few goals for myself this year and i've stuck with some of them.  I completed a huge run that was on my bucket list and it felt so great.  However, I hurt my knee a little while crushing that goal and so my running has taken a huge nosedive.  Getting back into yoga was another one of my goals for the year and while I've done it more, it hasn't been enough.  My new June goal is to do yoga at least twice a week, and also run twice a week.  Starting small so I don't set myself up for failure!

Goal: Minimalism:  We're getting there! This is one of those things that takes a lot of thought and effort, and lets be honest its not always the most fun.  I think a little of my enthusiasm for minimizing our things has subsided since my initial push and house purge.  But i'm slowly working my way back to find a groove.  Once you've purged your house of the easy stuff, it gets hard to keep going.  But our impending move is helping me get back on track.  Its also a mental game you have to play with yourself...more on this in a separate post soon.

There are a few other little goals, some I can easily track the progress and some I cannot.  I am constantly working on my marriage, my parenting, my relationships with family and friends, our finances, and planning for the future.  I have off days and weeks, but i'm proud of my overall progress and the changes we've made as a family.  Its also good to see what still needs work and where my energy needs to be focused.  What goals are you working on?

Annie gets a facelift!

When we got our camper "Annie" we were thrilled with the fact that it was in good enough condition to just pick up and go! We had the thought that eventually we would redo the interior to make it our own, that time ended up coming sooner than we planned.  I may have gotten a wild hair across my ass and decided to go look at flooring, and then everything snowballed from there!  We made some pretty simple cosmetic changes, it took about 10 days worth of nap times and post-baby bed time hours of work and it looks brand new! Total we probably spent about $300 and we absolutely love it. Here are a few before and after pictures

During

After!!! 

Flooring: Allure Ultra in Vintage Oak Cinnamon 2 boxes, $30 each on clearance (plus some random planks they gave us for free!)
Cabinet paint: Glidden paint and primer, in Antique White semi-gloss 1 gal. at $25 ish?
Counter top coating: Rustoleum Counter Top Coating in Light Ash, 2 cans at $20 but we only ended up using one
Hardware paint: Rustoleum Forged Hammered spray paint in Burnished Amber, I don't remember how much they were but we used 1 1/2 I think
Cushions: Sheets from Walmart $21
Base Trim: $20

My husband did an incredible job with all his hard work and handy-ness, mostly I watched the child and told him to hurry up, but I did help paint and did the cushions.  It really feels like ours now, and when we took it out this past weekend it felt even more cozy, relaxing and homey than before.  

Meal Planning

I started meal planning for several reasons, the three biggest being money, health and food waste.  Went we went from two incomes to one there were some big changes, as expected, but food was one of the biggest. It helped that we moved to the middle of no where that didn't have any good restaurants to go to.  But we definitely weren't planning appropriately, but I had the time so I needed to start! Then I got pregnant and that added a whole other layer of complications, but over the last three years I have gotten pretty good at planning our meals and budgeting for groceries.  When I go back to work in the fall I know it will be even more important for me to stay on track with planning.  The thing is I really love cooking, and I enjoy grocery shopping, and I have taught myself to like finding the deal and putting together a plan to get the most bang for my buck and making the week worry free.

I typically start planning on Wednesday for a Friday shopping trip.  Thursday is trash day so Wednesday is the perfect opportunity to get rid of anything from the fridge that is past its prime.  Also I like to give myself plenty of time so that i'm not stressed and annoyed, plus it take twice as long to do anything with a toddler around.

I like to start with planning dinners for the week because I feel like that takes the most brain power. Shop at home first! Check your freezer and panty for what you already have and see what meals you can come up with! I decide on proteins first, so what ever you have or whatever your family likes to eat.  We have chicken at least twice a week, so I always stock up on the family packs of breasts and thighs when they are on sale.  We have pasta once a week, and I have 4 or 5 recipes for ground turkey that we rotate regularly.  I buy the 2lb pack of ground turkey so that I can get two dinners with one item eg: turkey burgers and turkey tacos.  Then we buy bags of frozen fish at Costco and will have fish once a week/every two weeks.  Mahi Mahi and Salmon are our favorites and a bag of each will last us about 3-4 months.  Then I fill in with pork/steak/ground beef/specialty meals.
So a week of proteins/main dishes may be: Chicken breasts, turkey burgers, pasta, tacos, chicken, fish, pork

Once I've decided on a protein or main dish I add in sides which typically is a carb/starch and a vegetable for us.  Again, I shop my pantry for potatoes, rice, stuffing, and pasta and see what I can match up.  Then I decide on whatever veggies I want but leave wiggle room to see what looks good or is on sale at the store.  I also always keep a bag of frozen broccoli or green beans on hand because #momlife.

Then I organize the meals so they make the most sense for the week.  Making sure i'm using up the proteins at the right time and not having to defrost or freeze too many things.  I also consider left overs for lunches during the week and items I can make extra of and then have again with dinner a day or two later.  For example; I hate making mashed potatoes but they are Mark's favorite so we have them at least 1-2 times a week, so I make a double batch and then schedule the meals accordingly so that I don't have to make them twice.  Also think about what you have going on each day, when you have time to cook bigger meals and when you need an easy night.  All of this planning makes for so much less food waste!

Lastly I do a check of all our regular items, coffee, creamer, eggs, milk, etc. and I fill in for breakfasts or lunches, but that is usually covered by our staples and leftovers.

Once your list and menu are done, make sure you write it down and post it somewhere! I use a template I printed and stuck in a picture frame on my "command center" wall so I can use a dry erase marker to make changes easily.  I can look ahead at the week and plan my days accordingly, its a huge help when I need to make sure to defrost something when I can see it ahead of time so I don't forget to put it in the fridge the day before.  And when I'm having a crazy day its nice to know I don't have to think about dinner because its already planned out!  Having several tried and true recipes for each protein or type of dinner makes it so much easier to plan the week, so that you aren't reinventing the wheel but just rotating out recipes.  Then you can give yourself one or two days a week to try something new if you want!  I will be posting more of our favorite recipes on the blog soon and below are some of my go to links for planning, saving money, etc. And i've included one of my meal plans as an example :)

Free printable grocery list HERE
Ibotta referral link HERE
Printable coupons HERE

You can follow me on Pinterest for some great recipes HERE or check out the recipes I have posted (more to come soon!)
These are a few of my favorites
Vegetarian Recipe
Chicken Thigh Recipe
Pork Recipe
Ground Turkey Recipe

Weekly Menu 1
Friday: Steak, mashed potatoes and roasted asparagus
Saturday: Lemon chicken with rice pilaf and green beans
Sunday: Turkey Burgers and salad
Monday: Pork with apples and onions, mashed potatoes and broccoli
Tuesday: Turkey stuffed pepper casserole
Wednesday: Salmon with sesame noodles and bok choy
Thursday: Grilled chicken with roasted potatoes and asparagus

Weekly Menu 2
Friday: Sausage and pepper sandwiches
Saturday: Sheet pan chicken with sweet potatoes, broccoli, red onion, mushrooms and peppers
Sunday: Baked ziti with ground turkey and sausage
Monday: Spicy panko crusted pork with mashed potatoes and sautéed kale with mushrooms and onions
Tuesday: Turkey tacos
Wednesday: Balsamic grilled chicken with mashed potatoes and brussels sprouts
Thursday: Individual Naan pizzas

I hope you find this helpful! And i'd love to hear any tips that keep you on track!

Adventures with Annie!

This is Annie.  

We bought a pop-up camper! We may be crazy or brilliant and I haven't quite decided yet but so far its been an adventure, which is exactly what we wanted.  I'm not really sure when or why we started looking for a pop-up, but suddenly we had all these reasons it made sense to do it and a crazy desire to make it happen.  One of my resolutions was for us to spend more time outside together as a family,  and on a camping trip there is an abundance of both of those things.  With our transition back to civilian life, this is the perfect way to travel back home! And also, with a young child and parents that are transitioning between school and careers, this is the perfect easy (and cheap) way to go on family vacations for years to come.  Mark's family had a pop-up when he was young and some of his favorite childhood memories are of camping trips.  How cool would it be to be able to give some of those amazing memories to our son?  To instill a love of the outdoors, a sense of adventure, and a solid foundation of a strong family.  So we started to look at some campers, and as soon as we saw this one, it felt right!  She's a 2007 Coleman Santa Fe, and is in pretty great condition, we got her from a super nice guy in Anaheim, hence the name Annie ;)  There will definitely be projects in the future, the floors, counters, painting the cabinets, replacing the cushions, so that we can really make it ours.  But I love that its still ready to go right now and we are squeezing in as many trips as possible! Heres a little tour of the inside when we first got it and on our first trip.

Its the perfect size for us and it was so much easier to camp with a toddler then I ever thought it would be. The quiet, technology-free weekend was just what we needed, (Mark's smart watch told him he slept better that weekend then he had in months).   We've got two more trips planned for May and June and tentative plans for two more this summer! Then Mark and his dad will road trip her back to the east coast and i'm already making lists of places to visit next year.  

If you had asked me 5 years ago what sort of adventures I hoped to be going on at this point in my life, I probably would have told you somewhere in Europe or the Mediterranean or fancy resorts in the Caribbean, and maybe someday those things will happen.  But I honestly could not be happier to get to explore a little closer to home with my boys in our sweet little pop-up. 

Resolutions: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

For the first time, maybe ever, I set some specific resolutions at the beginning of the year, and I was determined to see them through.  One of my first goals for the year was to reduce my plastic use. There are several reasons why I wanted to do this and I think it deserves an explanation.

It started last year around the time of the election.  And without getting too political or declaring sides, I'll say that much of the country was showing its uglier side and I was feeling small and semi-helpless.  I was feeling that there were no good options for me to really make a difference, and while I've never been the person that needed to make grand gestures, I felt like I wanted to do something to make this place a little better.  And so I started thinking, what is something that I could do on a daily basis, that might not change the world tomorrow, but could make a difference and make me feel like I was doing my part?  You see, becoming a mother has given me this need to show my son that the world is mostly good, and to raise him to be a good human, and to leave him with a planet that will still support life, and to make sure he has the chance to see how beautiful people and places can be.  But I am not a scientist or an activist or a politician, and so most days I can not make life altering decisions for this country, but I can use less plastic.  So thats where my resolution started.

The first thing we did, even before the new year, was buy reusable shopping bags.  This has been a huge help because 1. the commissary baggers like to put approximately 3 items in each bag so you can leave with a small landfill and 2. the rest of the stores in California now charge $.10 per bag and this momma does not need to pay to carry the crap home she just bought.  (We have the Grab Bags from Amazon, pretty awesome) Step two was replacing our tupperware and water bottles.  I have been so incredibly happy with this decision.  Plastic tupperware gets gross when you wash it or microwave it, it can leak chemicals into your food and it cracks.  Also our tupperware cabinet was seriously anxiety inducing.  I threw it all away, with the exception of one or two containers that were still in great condition that were in a size I would not be replacing with glass.  We now have about 10 glass storage containers that are perfectly clean and in tact, stack nicely into the cabinet and will outlast any piece of plastic we have ever owned. I have yet to use all of these containers at the same time so the wanna-be minimalist in me is feeling slightly guilty for having so many.  But thats a separate resolution...and blog post. We also bought nice new Hydroflask water bottles, which come in fun colors and keep things cold, and have made a commitment not to buy cases of water.  Then I bought a few reusable sandwich and snack bags! They are awesome and I love them so much! We have Bumkins and Planet Wise brand bags (which have the cutest patterns!) and I use them daily.  They are easy to wash and I feel like I have used so many less disposable bags.  I do still have some ziplocks because things seem to disappear when they go to work with my husband.

Lastly we started actually recycling all of our cans and bottles on a regular basis.  At the beginning of the year the base sent out a recycling guide, which made it super easy and I feel like our bags of trash have decreased so much because of this.  All these small changes make me feel like my little family is making a difference, and there have been very few changes or inconveniences in our everyday life. I hope you'll check out some of the products I mentioned because we could all stand to be a little nicer to the planet.

Two Year Old Jackson

One of the big reasons I love this blog is being able to look back and read what Jackson was doing at different ages.  And there are definitely things I want to remember about this age.

At two years and 4 months, my little guy is a feisty one!  He talks in full sentences and has started trying to use such grown up words.  He listens and repeats everything and is constantly asking "why?" or what's this?" or "what are you doing?" We talk a lot throughout the day, and occasionally I long for those days when his vocabulary wasn't quite so good ;)  But I am so proud of him, he is incredibly smart and intuitive.  He describes things as being beautiful, delicious

or amazing, he thinks every time we go somewhere its an "adbenture" which he always has to shout.  He says things like "no thanks, i'm cool" and tells me i'm his best friend.  He repeats the not so good stuff too, which is like having a giant parenting mirror in my face.  Last week he was playing by himself and started sternly asking his toys "do you hear me?!" When asked a question he likes to think about it, "ummm nope" and sometimes he drops everything and says "oh, I gotta go get something real quick" and then runs into the other room, pumping just one arm with a smug look on his face.  It makes me laugh every time.  And he can say the Pledge of Allegiance! Hearing a two year old try to say indivisible is probably the cutest thing ever.

He's afraid of a lot of things right now, which we are working on.  Loud noises startle him and he usually comes running to me telling me something is scary.  When I tell him that something isn't scary, just loud, he laughs and says "Oh yeah! Not scary! Thats just loud!" He also doesn't really like big slides at the moment.  He loves Harley, but tries to drag him around and take him for 'walks' around the house.  He always wants to play fetch with him but usually just ends up yelling at Harley to go get the ball and then he goes and gets it himself.  He adores his daddy, wants to follow him everywhere and do everything just like he does.  He pretends to mow the lawn and fix the car almost daily.  He says no, a lot. Its one of the biggest things I am working on right now, trying not to say it to him as much, and trying not to get so annoyed when he says it to me.  I have tried really hard to talk to Jackson like he's a whole person for most of his life, which I like to think has helped with his verbal skills and independence.  But man is that independence hard at times, and it can feel like I created my own little monster.

He is definitely not lacking for personality and right now he is doing everything he can to find himself and test his boundaries.  He's completely exhausting and frustrating, but wonderful and hilarious.

(Forcing me to hold onto his foot)

Back and a little better than before

Over the last year I have worked a ton on myself, and I feel like i'm at a place where i'm ready to start sharing about it.  The first year of Jackson's life was all about him, and after a year I finally decided to claim a little of myself back.  I was in new mom survival mode that first year, where I was just trying to get from one day to the next.  I was setting unrealistic parenting expectations for myself because I didn't know any better, and so much of my identity was wrapped up in being his mom.  I would still define myself first as being "Jackson's Mom" but i'm working on adding some other labels back to the mix and it is doing wonderful things for my well-being.

Last year was all about positivity for me.  There is so much negativity in the world, on the grand scale and in small everyday encounters.  One of my first changes was to focus all my energy on being positive and surrounding myself with positivity.  I started with the people I surrounded myself with, the activities I partake in, and just my general out look on life.  I made conscious efforts to think differently about people and situations and really choose which environments I wanted to be in.  This led me to some really great people, and without trying I formed deep meaningful friendships that I haven't had in years.  I also became more involved with a running group on base and really committed to it and improving my physical health.  This was so crucial in giving me a purpose outside of the mommy role, and giving me a sense of belonging.  And then I just chose to be happy.  I chose not to let so many things bother me, to not talk badly about other people or things,  to accept situations and make the best of them.  I am for sure not perfect about any of that, of course I have days where everything is awful, but there are so many less awful days.  

So if last years word was positivity then this years word is goals.  It started slowly last summer, I created a "command center" for our family.  I wanted a calendar for us to stay organized and keep track of activities, I had also started meal planning and budgeting a ton.  So to pinterest I went and now our wall is covered in things that keep our family going, a calendar, a menu, our keys, but also a few quotes and our family goals.  I love having a place to look at everyday to remind me what i'm working towards, what the day to day will actually lead to and why each one is important.  Then a friend of mine started telling me about minimalism and how her family has slowly been working on living with less.  I had been trying to declutter the house but didn't have a whole lot of focus or knowledge about how to actually do it successfully, so hearing about a movement I could research and find support for was great.  Then the new year came and while i'm usually not a resolution person, this year I was all about getting some goals on paper and really working towards something.  Some of my goals included: reducing plastic use, spending more time outside as a family, and doing more yoga.  I also made a bunch of small goals in different areas, I have minimalist goals and relationship goals, moving goals, and financial goals.  All of these things will probably show up in other posts because a lot of them I am still working on! But I have made significant progress in a lot of areas, and it feels amazing.  

So here I am ready to talk about all sorts of things, adventures, food, parenting, marriage, goals and more.  And I appreciate you being along for the ride.