Weekly Mileage #144 and Christmas Fun

random ornament on a holly bush next to the trail

Monday I went for a trail run and hike, using my new trail running shoes. So far, I like them!

first mud on my trail shoes, but I'm sure it won't be the last

Tuesday evening Jeremy and I were in he kitchen- him making something, me painting, and we heard "Mary Had a Little Lamb" being played on the piano. I thought it was River, but when I glanced into the library, it was Ocean! He missed a couple notes, but it was recognizable. And he's not quite 4.5 years old yet. We've been debating which instrument he should start in the fall, maybe he'll start the piano.

Wednesday was Christmas. Probably our best Christmas morning photos yet!

they all wanted to be festive, but we can't see Ocean's face :)

The boys both got scooters, which they were super excited about. Ocean was so impatient to ride his that he started putting his together. He didn't get very far, but he made a good start....

Thursday I went for a hike. Then I finished about 98% of the painting in the kitchen before cleaning up my mess.

We've been telling Ocean for the last month that after Christmas his bobby would be going away and he would have to stop sucking his thumb. Thursday we used a thumb guard for a few hours, but he twisted it around somehow and it was cutting off his circulation. Only Ocean could manage that predicament. We took it off and he hasn't used it since, but he's done great. Taking his bobby away was the key- it was so strongly associated with thumb sucking that he doesn't do one without the other. He does miss bobby and has asked for it a couple times, especially at bedtime, but the transition has been so much smoother than with River (who still sucks his thumb at night, but he's always been a very determined thumb sucker, even as a newborn). So our efforts to keep thumb sucking associated with bobby worked for one kiddo at least.

Friday we went for a hike, then had a playdate with friends.

Saturday I went for a trail run and a hike. Then I rode my bike for a lot longer than my bum appreciated. But in running the numbers, knocking out a bunch of miles on my bike was the most efficient way to hit my mileage goal for the year. Only a few miles left!

Weekly Mileage
Monday- 1.60 mile trail run
Monday- 1.95 mile hike
Thursday- 2.10 mile hike
Friday- 1.19 mile hike
Saturday- 2.00 mile trail run
Saturday- 1.30 mile hike
Saturday- 15.00 mile bike ride
total- 25.14 miles

50 hikes towards #52hikechallenge
2.56 kayak miles towards #365milechallenge

172.54 outdoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
41.16 indoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
145.0 bike miles towards #365milechallenge
361.26 miles total

Sunday Funny

The boys have had fun dressing seasonally lately.

I especially love this combo: the plaid shorts with daddy's Christmas socks pulled up past his knees. Not shown: the heels of the socks are halfway up his calves.

Super Santa is also a favorite:

 Ocean also dressed up his fluffy red pillow as Santa. I think it looks like Bob the Tomato dressed as Santa.

Weekly Mileage #143 and All the Notebooks

Monday it was raining again so no trail run or hike. Instead I squeezed in work sessions where I could throughout the day. I got some notebooks finished and hit the post office two minutes before closing to ship them off.

We had freezing rain a couple days and most of the week was below freezing. Despite that, I'm finally over most of my cold (just a bit of phlegm left), so I would have done more hikes, except I had to focus on getting notebooks made and shipped as quickly as possible.

Even though my listing clearly states 6-8 days to ship, plus the actual shipping time, people placed orders as late as Tuesday, hoping (or just plain expecting, in some cases) to still receive their order in time for Christmas. In the interest of keeping happy customers, I did get all the orders in the mail by Thursday, so they should arrive in time, but I'll need to be more specific next year so I'm not doing so much work right before Christmas.

Monday night was the winter Court of Honor, where Sunshine received her Second Class rank. She earned it a month or so ago, but she didn't receive the patch till now.

Tuesday morning was our last music lessons of the year. Afterwards we picked up my second batch of paper. When I placed my order last week, I'd actually placed two orders. One that I could pick up quickly, and a larger order with adjusted lines. Sunshine didn't like how thick and dark the lines were in the original order, so I had the print shop adjust the lines (1 pixel wide instead of 2). That took a couple days, which is why I placed an order for the original paper as well, since I needed some paper right away. I do like the thinner lines, so it was worth waiting a little extra time. While I was at it, I doubled the order so I wouldn't run out quite so quickly. The paper in the first order was spoken for before I even picked it up, and I needed some of the paper in the second order for notebooks.

That night Sunshine and I had our second stint at the Scout Christmas tree lot. Once again we sold one tree. Definitely not the best location or time.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I worked on notebooks whenever I had time and I got the last of them shipped out Thursday morning. I made and shipped 13 notebooks this week plus 6 more in the past month, for a total of 19 music notebooks. I wasn't expecting to get that many orders, but I will plan for this next year and have some on hand already made, with leather and paper ready to go, so I'm not ordering more of both while trying to get orders out like I did this year. Apparently people think my music notebooks make great gifts :)

The success of this season has given me ideas for the future. I'll be building more of a stockpile of all my notebooks so I'm ready for any orders that come in. I'll also contact some local antique and gift stores to see if I can rent some space. I'd like to see how sales go when people can touch and hold the notebooks before they buy them.

One good thing about making so many notebooks in such a short time is that I have my systems down and have cut down on the time to do each step. Working in an assembly line fashion also speeds things up as I do the same step over and over for multiple books. A big time saver has been the acrylic template I made for tracing the covers. What used to take 15 minutes as I measured and re-measured and checked for square, now takes 3 minutes tops, and I can mark the stitch holes in the spine at the same time. So far I've only done the template for the music book cover, but now that my orders are up to date, I'll have the time to do the templates for the other covers.

My order of acrylic sheets for the templates came wrapped in bubble wrap. Those big bubbles are so satisfying to pop, regardless of how old you are :)

Thursday morning after a post office run with the last of the notebooks, our Christmas cards, and ornaments for the grandparents, I went on a short hike with the boys.

ice on a shallow part of the river

That afternoon Ocean had his hearing test finally. We'd had to reschedule in October when he had that nasty staph infection in his ear. I was worried that the infection might have done some damage, but that was not the case. His tubes are clear and functioning, and his hearing is great. He can hear all registers and there's no problems. It's very reassuring to know that his hearing wasn't impacted by the infection. And it's good to know that he can hear just fine. So if he's ignoring us now, it's because he's a strong-willed 4 year old, not because he can't hear what we're saying :)

Thursday night we went caroling with the YM and YW. It was cold but fun.

Friday after speech therapy Ocean and I went for a short hike. I wasn't able to do as many hikes as I'd hoped this week because I've been working on notebooks, but I should still be able to get my 52 hikes for the year.

We found a random deer leg in a clearing with no sign of the rest of the deer. Also no idea who was munching on it.

We found some cool ice crystals.

the white wormy looking crystals is water that freezes as it gets pushed out of the ground

After our hike I started painting the kitchen walls. It's so nice to get away from the grubby yellow. It was supposed to be a cheerful color, but somehow it just ended up looking grubby. I also started caulking and painting the crown molding that I hung years ago but never did anything with. I'm not done with that part yet, but I'll finish it as I do the second coat of paint on the walls.

first coat on the walls. the second coat will be a little lighter.
don't the cupboards look so much better? of course, now the counters and floor look truly awful.
we'll do the counters and floors (and the sink) when we rip everything out. this is just a stop-gap measure.

Saturday I went for a short trail run and hike. Definitely feeling out of shape after being sick, but it was good to get out again. That afternoon Jeremy and I went to a local running shop that specializes in trail running and I got my first pair of trail running shoes! I can't wait to try them out on the trails. Merry early Christmas to me :)

Sunday just as we were leaving for church the internet tech stopped by to figure out why we've been having problems with our internet. He was scheduled to come Monday, but we got a text 15 minutes before it was time to leave and he was there 5 minutes later. Needless to say, the kids and I were a bit late to church. Jeremy had left as the tech arrived because he had a meeting with a high councilor (he's now an assistant ward clerk). The internet outside the house is fine, the modem is fine, it's the wiring. Blech. The tech gave us a couple ideas to try first, but if it doesn't work, we'll have to replace the wiring. Adding to our internet issues is that we have no choice when it comes to internet providers. We have DSL, but fiber optic or high speed is not an option. We could do satellite internet, but that's even worse than DSL. Lots of fun.

Weekly Mileage
Thursday- 1.30 mile hike
Friday- 1.08 mile hike
Saturday- 1.10 mile trail run
Saturday- 1.35 mile hike
total- 4.83 miles

46 hikes towards #52hikechallenge
2.56 kayak miles towards #365milechallenge

162.40 outdoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
41.16 indoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
130.0 bike miles towards #365milechallenge
336.12 miles total

Sunday Funny

"I'm a zombie!"

And then he started licking his arm.

He had a little (ok, a lot of) fun eating all the green frosting after they decorated christmas trees.

Weekly Mileage #142 and the Concerts

Monday as soon as I dropped off Ocean at preschool I placed my paper order. I had hoped to go for a trail run and hike after that, but it was cold and pouring rain all day. I still wasn't over my cold, so I was not willing to get wet and cold.

Tuesday we drove Jeremy to the VA hospital after music lessons so he could get another shot in his back. They decided not to and to wait another month or so, which is good, but a pain since we all had to drive there and back for nothing. They decided to wait since his last one is still working a little and they don't want to do the shots too close together since they will eventually stop working. Keeping them spread as far apart as possible prolongs the usefulness of this particular therapy.

That night I started staining and painting the rest of the kitchen cupboards. I stained half the bases and primed the uppers years ago, but then pooped out and never finished. We're refinancing the house and need a new appraisal, so I figured it would be a good idea to have the house looking as good as possible. ie, no mismatched, leprous cupboards.

those uppers may not look bad in the pic, but in reality they were pretty terrible.
half the bases on the island to the right of the pic were also only half done.

Wednesday it was cold with a teensy tiny amount of snow:

It may look like frost, but we're calling it snow, even if it did melt away pretty quickly.

That morning I picked up my music paper and got the orders shipped that needed to go out that day. Then I finished staining and painting the cupboards. I've been wearing a mask and using a neti pot and my sinuses are staying clear and not gooping up into a sinus infection.

Thursday I put doors and drawers back up and put the knobs and pulls on them. I still need to paint the walls, but I should be able to get that done this week.

That night we went to the Trans Siberian Orchestra concert with the older two kids (Ocean got to hang out with friends). Jeremy and I went to a TSO concert 15 years ago and when we saw they were coming to town, we decided it was time to go again. I'd ordered etymotic ear plugs to filter the noise, but I forgot them at home. Definite noise overload. Also light overload. They still love their laser lights and we were sitting in the nosebleed seats and ended up with super bright spotlights blinding us during two songs.

Despite the noise and light overload, it was a good concert.

Friday evening was Jeremy's work party. He took the older two kiddos while I put Ocean to bed. He was so sleep deprived (he always is since he insists on waking up earlier than he needs to and he doesn't take naps) and I was still dealing with system overwhelm from Thursday's concert. This happened after we had the mobile sawmill out in the spring, too, but it wasn't quite so bad this time. The best thing to do afterwards seems to be to keep stress and stimulation to a minimum and wait for my system to calm down.

Saturday morning we dipped pretzels for our YW fundraiser. It went quicker than we were afraid it would, even with only a few girls showing up. I'm not sure yet if we made enough money to make this worthwhile, so the jury is still out on whether we'll repeat it next year.

After dipping pretzels, I worked on notebooks. I cut out covers for my 12 open music notebook orders and then folded and sewed all the paper I picked up Wednesday. I've figured out some routines and made up some templates that I use when cutting the leather and marking the holes for the stitching that make things go faster.

That evening Sunshine and I went to the Lindsey Stirling concert. Sunshine's a big fan so even though it was right after the TSO concert, we went to this one too. I remembered my earplugs this time and while the noise level wasn't nearly as bad as the TSO concert, it still would have been too much. The earplugs meant I was functional the next day, so they're definitely worth it.

waiting for the concert to start

It's funny that we haven't been to a concert in 15 years and this week we had two. As I joked to a friend, it'll probably be another 15 years before we go to another one. These two worked out because they were both local. Time is an issue, so we're not going to a concert if we have to travel to see it.

Sunday we were up at 4 to drive 3 hours to drill. Jeremy's unit had a Christmas party that family members were invited to Sunday afternoon, but they still had drill stuff in the morning. It was a bit annoying on the timing, since the kids and I had to find something to do while we waited for Jeremy to do his drill stuff. I wasn't about to take the kids to some random ward by myself. Ocean is a high energy child and has a hard time sitting still and being quiet for longer than 5 seconds. After way too little sleep I did not have enough energy to try to help him be calm and reverent. Too bad I can't siphon some of his energy into me.

We stayed in the car for an hour or so while I attempted to nap, then we found a park and went for a short hike. The boys were able to run around and the fresh air helped me feel more alert. It was a muddy hike, but I'd anticipated this (it was a rainy week) and brought a change of shoes and pants for everyone.

that's the trail, not a stream

After our hike we changed into clean clothes and went back to the armory for the party. It was a reasonably good time, but not enough to make this an annual thing.

We had a rainy week and between that, doing the cupboards, and catching up on my notebooks, there wasn't much time for hiking. Thankfully, I did get a lot done, and I'm feeling more like I did in October, before I got glutened.

Weekly Mileage
Sunday- 1.40 mile hike
total- 1.40 miles

43 hikes towards #52hikechallenge
2.56 kayak miles towards #365milechallenge

157.57 outdoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
41.16 indoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
130.0 bike miles towards #365milechallenge
331.29 miles total

Sunday Funny

While we were at Gettysburg, I tried to get a good picture of the kiddos. To say the boys didn't cooperate very well is an understatement. We did eventually get a decent one, but only after a couple not-so-great ones. The one above is especially hilarious.

I do actually like this one, except that I know Ocean isn't really smiling here- he's just making a face.

Weekly Mileage #141 and a Business Win and a Business Setback

I wasn't able to go on a trail run or hike on Monday because I had a chiropractic appointment and errands to run. The monthly appointments continue to keep my headaches to a manageable level (ie, mostly gone).

We've been fighting colds all week, to varying degrees. I feel like I got hit the worst, of course. Despite that, I have managed to get some stuff done. Though that's more because I've got deadlines I'm working against.

I've been working on notebooks for my Etsy shop. I've added these flap notebooks, which I really like. I'd made one in the spring, but the leather I used was really stiff and I wasn't really happy with it. I bought this leather because I love its flexibility, but it turned out to not be great for laser engraving. It's got an oil finish, which I'm pretty sure means it's not a veg tan. Veg tan leather is really all you're supposed to put in the Glowforge- anything else is too unpredictable, if not dangerous (due to fumes). It may not be a candidate for engraving, but it works great for these flap notebooks.

The funny thing is that out of the variety of notebooks I have listed, I'm only selling the music notebooks right now. In fact, I've run out of my staff paper and have to go the printer first thing Monday to see how quickly they can reprint paper for me so I can get my orders filled on time. I've sold 11 music books in the last 3 weeks!

It's interesting to see that the music notebooks are selling so well. I'm guessing they'll all be given as gifts for Christmas. But the sales velocity means I could probably raise the price on them after the holidays. The cost to produce these is higher anyway because of the printing costs, so raising prices would improve my margin.

Wednesday I went for a hike because I needed some fresh air. It wasn't fast or strenuous, but it got me moving.

Friday I thought about going for a hike after speech therapy, but it was too cold. If I'd been feeling well, that wouldn't have stopped me, but I was not feeling great, so it was enough to put a kibosh to that idea.

Friday afternoon I discovered that I broke the site I'd been trying to transfer last week. I thought I'd saved backup files, but once everything was transferred, I couldn't find the backups. I was able to rescue about a third of my posts by copying and pasting cached views, but two thirds of my posts are still missing (they weren't cached). Super frustrating and depressing. In the grand scheme of things though, it could be a lot worse. This was my newest site, with the fewest posts. I was able to rescue a third of the content. I was able to piece together the titles for 98% of all the posts, which gives me a starting point at least for knowing what I wrote about. I still have all my images as well.

My first thought was to start rebuilding my site, but after some thought, I don't think I will. I'd planned on pivoting slightly with that site after the new year, so why not just make the pivot a bit more permanent. I don't need my site for the pivot, at least not yet, so I'll leave it be until I'm ready to start writing for that site again. In the meantime, I'll repurpose the content I was able to save and incorporate it into my travel site. I can change the focus a bit and make it relevant to that audience. This is actually a double win- only writing for one site AND having a number of pre-written posts that just need to be tweaked a bit. This will save me a lot of time, allowing me to focus on some other aspects of my businesses that need some attention.

So it's not how I would have gone about doing things, but having the issue mostly decided for me is freeing. Finding the silver lining and figuring out how to make it work for me rescues the situation from the disaster it could have been. Though I'd still love to recover my lost posts and save myself the work of recreating them...

Friday evening was our ward Christmas party. They had asked for people to share musical numbers before the dinner portion. Since Sunshine needs to rack up some performances for her Music merit badge, I volunteered her and River. They played a simple version of Angels We Have Heard on High, with her on the piano and him strumming chords on the banjo. They did a great job! After the short program (there weren't a lot of volunteers), everyone headed in to dinner and we headed home. I was feeling pretty crummy and half the kids weren't feeling great either. If Sunshine and River hadn't been performing, we wouldn't have gone at all.

I forced myself outside for a hike on Saturday, just to keep from getting too far behind. There's just over 3 weeks left in the year and I have 10 hikes to do still. I went slow, and there was definitely no trail running, but it was still a bit draining. The fresh air was good though.

That afternoon I let the kids decorate sugar cones in lieu of doing gingerbread houses. Gingerbread houses, even the graham cracker versions are just too much of a commitment- time, energy, etc. We decorated sugar cones in YW Thursday, and I realized it was the perfect substitute for gingerbread decorating.

the tree I decorated at YW

The boys lasted just long enough to decorate their trees, and then they were done. They never would have lasted for a whole house. Even better, the only thing I had to do was ice Ocean's cone for him. River did his own.

They enjoyed demolishing them afterwards, though I think they only ate about half of each one.

I think we may have found a new tradition!

After taking pictures of the kids' trees, I headed downstairs to work on notebook orders and organize my workspace better. This is when I realized I had run out of staff paper. I thought I had more, but there is no more hiding anywhere. When I thought back about the music books I'd made, I realized that yes, indeed, I'd used up all the paper (my original order had been enough for 10 books). Time to order more!

Weekly Mileage
Wednesday- 1.70 mile hike
Saturday- 2.00 mile hike
total- 3.70 miles

42 hikes towards #52hikechallenge
2.56 kayak miles towards #365milechallenge

156.17 outdoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
41.16 indoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
130.0 bike miles towards #365milechallenge
329.89 miles total

Sunday Funny

Ocean stuck his head under the bathroom faucet and then came into the living room to tell me that "I have spiky hair!"