November 27, 2018

An unintended break, Thanksgiving, and an *intended* break

Those two weeks went by fast. I had posts loosely planned for two weeks ago and last week. Then Wells had some vaccinations on the 13th and was really fussy, and maybe slightly feverish, for two days. So I couldn't get his 4-month update post together. Then, I admit, I felt a little bit of rebellious glee at the idea of not blogging. I also knew I would be in Colorado for Thanksgiving and there's no internet at that house so it seemed pointless.

So I don't know that I meant to take two weeks off, but I did. And if anything puts life into perspective about what you do and don't need, it's living out of a suitcase with a 4 month old for 5 days with limited LTE service. I checked Twitter a few times, Instagram once or twice, and then my email maybe once a day. It was nothing but sales emails for Black Friday and most from mailing lists I don't even remember signing up for.

I felt like I took more pictures than this over the last few days, but I must not have and here's what's worth sharing.

This sums it up. Scout, looking out the window, completely disinterested. Jett, as close to the baby as possible at all times. 

Also Jett.

Don't mind the dishes in the sink or the baby who wouldn't look at the camera. 

(Also, this is after getting up at 5am, driving 4 hours, unpacking allthethings, and cooking dinner, so I don't think I even noticed until justthissecond that my makeup completely melted off or something.)




He loves that table. I hauled it all the way to Colorado. 

It doubles as a high-chair at times. And Jett, waiting for his drippings/licks of rice cereal. 

I don't know if I mentioned it before, but my brother is also stationed in Colorado so he's gotten to see Wells more than once. He came over for Thanksgiving. 

Always chewing on a sleeve...

Part of the reason I went back for 5 days is because I had friends I wanted to see in case I don't get to see them over Christmas break. 

I was so glad Kylee finally got to meet Wells. She's the first person I told about him, face-to-face, way back in December of last year when I was 9 weeks pregnant.

Kylee and I taught five feet away from each other for 3 years. Literally, our desks were five feet apart, through an adjoining door. She was a first-year teacher when we met and we bonded over a love of Pepsi, Rose Gardner books, audiobooks in general, and The Bachelor. I would like to think that I gave her the support a new teacher needed but truthfully, after that first year, she did more for me than I ever did for her. She's done emergency sub plans for me, she closed out my classroom for me (including the dreaded end of the year checklist) when I had surgery the last week of school in 2017, and she's also been the only person I've trusted to watch my dogs overnight. I'd like to think I paid back the favors by having Scott fix her car a few times ha ha. 

Wells also got to meet my friend Kim and her kids, and hopefully I'll get a picture of them together over Christmas. Kim was the first person I met in Colorado at new teacher training waaaaay back in 2014. I wouldn't have made it through the last few years without her. 

All in all, when I add up the pluses in Colorado for me, those two are at the top of the list and it's not a terribly long list. Oh well. 

Onto the *intended* break part of the post...I'm going to be taking off from blogging, more or less, for the rest of 2018. I'm not too busy, it's not the baby, time isn't flying by too fast for me to write posts...I just figured it was time to take a break when I found myself wanting to write a diatribe about why I despise holiday gift guides on blogs. Instead of yelling about it, I'll just back off for a few weeks. I refuse to let my blog just fade away with the excuse of "life" or "busy", so I need to think about what I really want to share and what I don't. Other social media just doesn't float my boat the way blogging does, if that makes sense, so you'll never see me go to all-Instagram.

2016 was a hard year (a deployment year), 2017 was the year that I'm convinced broke me (almost everything that could've gone wrong that year, definitely went wrong), and 2018 has been harder mentally than any year I can remember. I just really need 2018 to be over so we can move on to what's next but in order to do that, I need to not rehash things on the internet because it forces me to think too much. I just want to go about life for awhile, and not worry about documentation.

I still have monthly baby updates to do and some book posts, as I've read a shocking amount of books in the last two weeks. But other than that, I'm not pressuring myself to post because I need a space between how things are and how I want to remember them, when we do leave this part of the country.

Or, who knows. Maybe I'll wake up next week and decide it's time to blog.

8 comments:

  1. Taking a break sometimes brings so much clarity. I personally hate holiday gift guides and I could write an entire book about people posting about anything "on a budget" while listing and posting things that are NOwhere close to budget.

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  2. Your last few paragraphs are exactly how I've been feeling about things, too.

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  3. I can definitely relate to the last few paragraphs!

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  4. Sometimes a break is needed. Whenever I feel a rant coming on I just dont blog. Your readers will be here when you come back.

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  5. "a space" because how things are and how we want to remember them. I totally get that at times. I write to process things for sure, but not everything do I want to write about. Glad he loves the table! It's awesome to find something they really love!

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  6. The holidays are always a good time to take a break - see you in 2019 :)
    PS - I love Jett is always wanting to be near the baby. That always warms my heart

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  7. Apparently I haven't posted for 2 weeks and in my case it wasn't even intentional. Just no time for my blog on top of everything else. I feel like a lot of people have that issue at this time of year.

    Your dog is adorable! Those eyes!

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