This check-in is coming a bit late due to Thanksgiving last week, and all the Black Friday craziness. BUT, It’s official: we’ve entered the holiday season! I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Part of me is really excited because I absolutely love this time of year. But another part of me is somewhat solemn knowing that my favorite part of the holidays is sharing in the fun activities with my husband.
Most days, I’m honestly doing well. I know that the time is ticking down now, and we’re certainly closer to the end than we were back in April. But there are weeks when I’m just one “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” song away from losing my sh*t.
Home/Military Life
After the furnace fiasco of month 6, we decided it was time to get our home winter-ready. That started with making our first big home purchase: a woodstove. There aren’t many homes around here that don’t have one, and we bought our home last year knowing that we would install one “some day”. Lucky me, it had to be while Kyle was gone. But now the house and much more secure if we lose power, and I can move on to the more fun renovation projects.
A few weeks ago I traveled up north to visit some of Kyle’s family for an early Thanksgiving. We spent the day site seeing and trying to brave the cold temps.
In terms of military life, Kyle and I get to text here and there throughout the week, but we keep very different schedules with the time difference. Since he’s been overseas, his actual work schedule is sporadic in terms of how busy they are. At home, I’m filling in for things he would normally do, as well as my regular responsibilities. So needless to say, things are tight.
Work Life
This month, I launched a Veteran’s Day 5K at my work to raise awareness about Veteran’s homelessness, so that kept me extremely busy through the beginning of November. Our little work-mil-fam has grown significantly, and we have a lot of events planned for next year already! Our end of year event is the huge stocking drive that will put together roughly 100 stockings for troops that are deployed through the New Year.
Personal Life
At the beginning of the summer, I made a vow to not doing anything I didn’t want to do/couldn’t do. That may sound pretty simple and obvious, but I’m the “yes” girl. Need someone to watch your kid? I’ll be there. Need someone to help you move? I’m on it. Attend our 2 hour long FRG meeting about things that don’t pertain to you? See you there. I would jump over so many hurdles and rearrange my own life to accommodate others. And I was stretching myself so thin. Worst of all, I wasn’t doing anything to make myself happy.
Don’t get me wrong, you should always be there for the people that matter to you, and I always am. But when you’re jeopardizing your own health or happiness to do so, you need to start making choices. There’s a carefully balanced give and take, and you can’t just constantly be the one giving. There’s nothing about friendship that says you have to break yourself into pieces to serve someone else. So, I stopped. It took some time to learn how to say “no” to people, and I think it came as a surprise to them too. But it also helped me weed out the people in my life who were only there for superficial or self-serving reasons.
I am continuing these new habits into the holidays, which makes it especially tough. But it has lead me to think a lot about friendship. I thought about the kind of friend that I am, and the kind of friend I want to be. I thought about my own friends, and how we all met. I’ve never been the girl with tons of friends. I have a small-ish group that I surround myself with, and they’re all absolute gold. They have moved mountains for me, and I for them. And with how difficult this year has been, I value them more than I ever have.
Health/Fitness
The fitness goals have honestly been put on the back burner, sadly. I’m still following my clean eating routine and I’m working out when I can, but it’s not as frequent as it used to be. December is going to be packed so I don’t see this changing until things slow down.
Next weekend is my annual girl’s trip, so there’s a lot to get done before we head out of town. Be back soon for more posts/updates!
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