Returning

Hello, my friends.

I'm so sorry that it's been so long.  So very many things have transpired since we last talked.

December brought our first dance and orchestra performances of the year, much business travel for M, "purge week" and final unpacking for the girls and Mom, a trip back to Massachusetts for a few days, and the usual flurry of preparation, shopping and wrapping for the holidays.

We now have the majority of our unpacking done, we have purged quite a bit of the stuff that we don't need in the new house, and over the holiday break from girls' activities we managed to get all the girls bedrooms painted with their preferred color (we were not fans of some of the paint choices made by previous owners of our new house).

{I haven't taken any "after" pictures yet, but the two-tone aqua/pink with gold stripe is now a very pleasing soft lavender.}

We now have bedroom furniture for all of the girls, so they can fully unpack their clothing and stuff!!!  We are still working on having enough seating for the living areas, getting functional clothing storage for Mom and Dad, and painting some final rooms.  It's a work in progress, but much improvement has been made.

Over our homeschool break and break from activities I also participated in a lot of resting.

M had almost a full two weeks of time off from work, and so we made a manageable to-do list each day, then spent the rest of our time laying around, chatting, watching Star Trek, and... well... a whole lot of nothing.  I think it was the first time in probably a year that I felt fully rested, and it was AMAZING and very needed.

I feel as if I'm bringing that prioritization of rest with me into the New Year.  I was just telling M and N that I feel as if I'm in full hibernation mode-- all I want to do is curl up under the covers with a good book.  Motivation is proving hard to come by for me lately.

Could it be that we got 8 inches of snow last Monday, and it hasn't really warmed up enough to melt that snow since then, so it's still on the ground (and in some of the roads, too!) nearly two weeks later?

All of our neighbors here in Delaware, as well as my parents, tell us that this amount of snow is pretty much unheard of in these parts.  And because of that, they don't have the manpower or equipment to clear the snow, and we were pretty much trapped in our neighborhood for almost four days, as only one plow came through one time, and the road around our neighborhood was basically an untreated sheet of ice, since we've only had one day above 32 degrees since the storm.  Very different from New England!

And it has stayed very, very cold.

But I'm sort of leaning into it-- getting into my pjs early when it gets dark at 5 PM, watching videos of polar night, reading my book, and enjoying LOTS of hot beverages (read: more coffee than I should be drinking).

I think I'm still just tired, too.  It's been a very very very very busy three/four years!  Also, the symptoms of peri-menopause that I alluded to in this post seem to be ramping up lately.  I'm almost never sleeping well, very brain-foggy, and lots of unbidden anxiety.  I'm trying to give myself some grace on those days (more often than not, I'm afraid) that I'm not at my best.

There's lots more I could share and say, but my time here is growing short as N's dance class will be done soon.  I'm hoping to pick up my dance-time blogging again, so hopefully more updates soon.

Here's to hibernation and rest for all of us.  May you find peace in this New Year, my friends!