Weekly Mileage #148 and Snow Tubing

Monday there was no school, but I'd planned on going for a trail run and hike as usual. Spraining my toe Saturday night put a stop to that. So no running, and I babied my toe since I knew I'd be walking and standing that night. It was feeling a lot better than on Sunday at least.

Monday evening we took the YW snow tubing. The weather cooperated with cold weather (it was actually in the high 20s when we were there) so there were no problems running the snow machines. We had a great turnout and the girls all had a lot of fun. Definitely not the cheapest activity, but it's fun to do something out of the ordinary once in awhile.

waiting my turn at the top

Wednesday we went to the Scout Shop to get a couple things, so on our way back we stopped in Shenandoah NP for a hike. The trail was a lot rockier than I'd anticipated, so my foot wasn't super happy the rest of the day. Nice views from the summit, though.

trying to get a smile out of everyone at the same time

the best they managed

the marker at the top- just under 3000 feet elevation, which is a lot for around here

Thursday I finally did my first bike ride of the year. Skipping the first few weeks of the month put me off track, but I'll be able to catch up as long as I don't skip any more weeks for awhile.

I had a lot of headaches the last half of the week, which greatly affected my ability to be productive and high functioning (boo!). I'm not sure if they're from changing up my supplements, sleeping weird, all the rain storms that have been moving through, stress, or the weight of my hair. I'm getting my hair cut on Wednesday, so I'll hopefully find out soon. The headaches affect my narcolepsy in weird ways- I find it soo much harder to keep my eyes open when I have one of these headaches. I try to avoid naps because I never know if they're going to screw up my nighttime sleep routine, but I actually took a nap Friday (without repercussions thankfully).

Friday morning we went to the fire station with our play group. All the little boys loved it! Ocean now wants to be a fire fighter. River wants to be a police man and own a pie and donut trailer.

Jeremy had drill this weekend, which made Sunday extra fun. I got the boys ready, went to Ward Council, ran home and picked up the kids, and ran back to church. And we were actually on time! After church we had ward youth council, so I brought the boys in for that with mixed success. Next month I'll have Sunshine take them to the nursery. We've had some leadership changes in some of the groups, but hopefully we'll soon move to once a month ward council instead of twice a month, which will make my life a little calmer.

~~~~~~

Thoughts about the definition of disability and how it applies to me.

I know some narcoleptics receive disability benefits (though it's hard to get approved, despite how difficult it can be to function normally and be a productive employee), but I hadn't thought much more about it. I don't plan on applying for disability, so it's just been on my periphery, not a major concern.

This week I came across a comment my sister made about applying for the National Parks Access pass, which is for people with disabilities. She has one because of her MS and she was telling our friend to apply for passes for her son and husband who both have type 1 diabetes, as does my sister's daughter. That's when I realized I'd probably qualify for a pass as well. I'd always thought the pass applied mainly to people in wheelchairs. My definition of disabled (or differently abled, if you prefer) was skewed way too narrowly.

To qualify for the pass, you have to have a permanent disability that severely limits one or more major life activities, and you have to have a letter from your doctor stating your disability and limitations. That got me thinking about how exactly my life is limited and how I'd communicate that to my doc for the letter, though I still wasn't completely convinced. The examples I came across included breathing, walking, hearing, learning, seeing, and such.

Then I read how the Americans with Disabilities Act defines disability. "A physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities of such individual" with major life activities including, but not limited to: "caring for oneself, performing manual tasks, seeing, hearing, eating, sleeping, walking, standing, lifting, bending, speaking, breathing, learning, reading, concentrating, thinking, communicating, and working". It goes on to list major bodily functions that are also considered major life activities: "functions of the immune system, normal cell growth, digestive, bowel, bladder, neurological, brain, respiratory, circulatory, endocrine, and reproductive functions".

And it goes on to say that even if medications have an ameliorative effect or symptoms are in remission, the disability is still there.

So yeah, I guess I am disabled. My sleeping is definitely affected, which in turns affects my ability to learn, concentrate, think, and even communicate. Searching for the right word that I know I know but can't come up with is a common and frustrating occurrence. Coherent conversations do not always happen.

Anyway, I need to go in for a physical soon, and when I do I'll ask for the letter so I can apply for the pass. Unlike our military pass that we both sign and either of us can use, only the person named (or their caregiver) can use the pass, so Jeremy wouldn't be able to use it if I wasn't with him. But he's eligible for the military pass as long as he's in the Reserves and by the time he gets out he'll have his disability stuff squared away and will be able to get his own Access pass. He could actually apply now, given the state of his back, but he wants to wait.

All that brought some thoughts about being defined by your chronic illness/disability. Some people say they don't want to be defined by their ----- (fill in the blank). But I think we are defined by it, even if we don't want to be. Dealing with the symptoms/limitations/etc caused by chronic illness or injury/disability make us who we are. We would be different people if we didn't have to deal with those things. So yeah, we are defined by our disabilities.

And all this comes on the heels of an article I read about people who are dealing with invisible disabilities and the discrimination they face versus people with visible disabilities. Think handicap placards and people being judged because they don't "look" disabled. There's actually a change.org petition going around to issue orange placards to people with invisible disabilities to cut down on the judgmental attitudes and nasty notes they've been receiving. Go here to learn more about it and sign the petition. And go to this link and share the video with others. Thanks!

Weekly Mileage
Wednesday- 2.57 mile hike
Thursday- 10.00 mile bike ride
Saturday- 1.50 mile treadmill walk
total- 14.07 miles

2020 totals

4 hikes towards #52hikechallenge
0 kayak miles towards #365milechallenge

18.07 outdoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
1.50 indoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
10.0 bike miles towards #365milechallenge
29.57 miles total

Sunday Funny

This spring/summer the boys had a hard time with their f's, so instead of Minecraft, they'd say Minecrap.

I'm not a huge fan of Minecraft, so I'm more than willing to perpetuate the name Minecrap, and we all tend to call it that.

I tolerate Minecrap as long as they're being creative and building things, so Sunshine and River do get to spend some time on it. The real problem is that given the opportunity, they'd spend all day on it, never doing anything else.

Our New Computer Desk

other than the ugly computer chair, I love everything in this picture!

Let's step back to October 2018.

I was more than tired of computers being all over the dining table, so I decided to build a desk where they could live. But first I needed to find or make space for it. Part of why I sold the buffet was to make room for a desk. Once the buffet was out of the way, I sorted through our wood stash for some of the wood and bought the rest of what I needed.

I used a combination of this pattern and this pattern. The first desk was what I was initially going for, but we wanted a space in the desk to store the computers. I thought about putting in drawers, but decided a lift top would be quicker and easier, and I'm all about quicker and easier right now. I got the lift top from the coffee table (the second link above). I ultimately decided to switch out the legs for a simple 2x4 leg with braces. Fewer cuts and a lot less time, which was the real impetus for the decision. If I wasn't doing it on a budget, I'd have ordered some legs like I used for the dining table, but the 2x4s are solid and sturdy and do the job while being inexpensive.

After cutting the frame pieces during the day, I threw the frame together that night. It turned out I didn't have long enough screws, but I used what I had. I always intended to take it back apart to sand all the wood, so not having the right screws wasn't as big an issue as it could have been.

After living with the frame in the living room for several days and deciding it was a good size, I took the frame apart, labeling each piece as I went. We'd had cold rainy weather lately, but we had a warmer day in the forecast, so I took advantage of that to sand all the 2x4s before putting them back together with the correct length screws.

I built the desk box from salvaged wood from shelves pulled out of Sunshine's room. Though I did have to buy a sheet of oak plywood for the top, as well as an oak board for the hinges to attach to.

I've used a piano hinge before, but I remembered why I dislike them. They're a pain to install properly.

I painted the legs the same color I used on the boys' beds, but it took me awhile to get around to staining the top. When I did, I stained it black, in an effort to hide the inevitable dirt and grunge that I knew would collect.

I don't have a good picture of the desk in the living room, but this screenshot from a video shows where it sat behind the couch. Here you can see the shelf I added for the extra monitor that Jeremy uses on occasion. It was sitting on top of the desk, but then you couldn't lift the top to get at anything inside. Moving the monitor restores that accessibility.

The desk was blocking the door to the back deck and it was becoming really annoying to try to squeeze past whoever was sitting in the chair while trying to go out that door. Moving it to the library has improved traffic flow so much in front of the back deck door. I'm also very pleased that it just fits in the space available on this wall.

Right now the inside compartments of the desk need to be cleared out, but they hold a surprising amount of stuff. I have hinge arms I still need to attach to keep the desk tops from banging down, but it hasn't been a priority yet.

The desk is wide enough that two people can work at it or one person can spread out with plenty of space.

Weekly Mileage #147 and the Sprained Toe

Monday I went for a trail run and hike. The rest of the day was taken up with working on my laptop, taking Ocean to speech therapy, then taking Sunshine to Scouts.

It doesn't show up as well in the photo, but the green moss at the base of these four large trees was a bright contrast to the brown leaves on the ground.

Tuesday night Sunshine and I went to the second half of our SCUBA experience. We learned about the physics of SCUBA and why you have to be careful with depth and pressure. Interesting stuff. Hopefully we can get SCUBA certified in the next couple years.

Wednesday morning Ocean had a preschool makeup class, so I went for a hike and ran some errands. After lunch I spent time with my Silhouette, cutting vinyl for a project we did Thursday with the YW.  I'm glad I didn't wait till Thursday to start it, as it took longer than I'd hoped. Vinyl projects always do, since I don't do them enough and always make mistakes and have to re-do things. If I'd waited till Thursday to get started, I would have been super stressed out.

It was a misty morning, and while the sun burned the fog off, there was still droplets on the trees, if you look closely.

Getting the vinyl done on Wednesday meant on Thursday I only had to print a few papers, then I was ready to go.  That left me time to work on my never-ending work project.

That night, we started our YW activity by handing out Personal Progress awards to those who finished them by the end of the year (including me!) and Faith in God awards to our girls who just moved up from Primary but finished it before the end of the year.

Then we talked about setting achievable goals and the girls worked on setting some goals and writing letters to themselves about those goals. Then we had them put the vinyl on their whiteboards so they can write down their goals and keep them where they can see them and remember to work on them.

I'd seen something similar online and realized it would be fairly easy to do for our YW. I got these whiteboards, which come in a 30 pack with markers and erasers (just the right number for our ward), and I bought this tape for the dividing lines. I used vinyl I've had sitting around for years for the words, and I used the Silhouette design software to do a couple fonts for the girls to choose from. All in all, each whiteboard cost less than a dollar fifty to put together. Not bad. If you had to buy vinyl, that would increase the cost a bit.

Friday wasn't a super productive day, but I was able to get the vinyl on the whiteboards for the girls who weren't able to come on Thursday night. They don't take a long time, but I did do some squinting while peeling the backing off the words and I ended up with a borderline migraine. Those always interfere with my ability to function as well as I'd like.

Saturday morning we had our ward youth planning session where we planned out the combined YM/YW activities for the coming year. It's always interesting to see what activities the kids want to do.

At one point the forecast had called for snow, but we only ended up with an icy drizzle. I'd planned on doing a bit of running on the treadmill after the planning session, but time got away from me. Before I knew it, it was time to go to the swimming pool. Sunshine needed to pass off the aquatics requirements for her first class rank and we both needed to do our annual swim checks (necessary to participate in any water-based activities).

We both passed our swim checks, but I banged up my big toe when I jumped into the pool. We have to jump in feet first, and I thought the water was deeper than it was, so I jumped with pointed feet instead of flat feet. My big toe made contact with the bottom of the pool first, and it didn't feel good.

Sunday morning I thought maybe I'd broken my toe. It was swollen and turning purple, still sore, and it hurt to walk. I was prepared to go to an urgent care center after church, but sometime during Sunday School it stopped hurting so much. It's still swollen and purple, but it's easier to walk. So I'm back to thinking I just sprained it. Hopefully it heals quickly, as I need to start increasing my running mileage so I can get ready for my next half marathon. Luckily I've got enough time before I need to start my training cycle, so I should still have time to let my foot heal before I really need to work on increasing my mileage.

*** I'm all caught up on some posts that were scheduled for December and January, so be sure to scroll back to see if you missed any earlier posts ***

Weekly Mileage
Monday- 1.40 mile trail run
Monday- 2.35 mile hike
Wednesday- 2.13 mile hike
total- 5.88 miles

2020 totals

3 hikes towards #52hikechallenge
0 kayak miles towards #365milechallenge

15.50 outdoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
0.0 indoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
0.0 bike miles towards #365milechallenge
15.50 miles total

Sunday Funny

trying to convince me to help him get up 

This past summer Ocean picked up a phrase from some show on Netflix, and then proceeded to use it all the time. The phrase?

"Um, a little help here?"

So funny to hear that phrase coming out of a four year old's mouth.

Weekly Mileage #146 and First Snow of the Year!

catching snowflakes

This week we started getting back to our routine after the holidays.

Monday I wasn't able to go for a trail run and hike because I had a chiropractor appointment and groceries to buy. I'm moving my future chiro appts to another day of the week so that I can still squeeze in a trail run before doing the grocery shopping every other week.

I'm still working on moving content from one site to another. Technically it's all moved, but I had to re-brand the printable worksheets with my travel site's blog name, and as I started doing that I realized I could improve the printables with some editing and re-writing. So I've been working on that all week and am almost done. Unfortunately, the edits to the printables mean that the lessons that go with those printables also need to be edited and re-written. So, I'm not done yet with this project.

I also worked on two notebook orders. One was a second order from someone who ordered a music notebook and wanted a notebook (non-music) with more pages than I usually include. I did it, but I won't do it again. Trying to sew a thicker chunk of paper into the cover was a time-consuming challenge. It's not worth the time I put into it. A good learning experience though.

Tuesday we had snow in the forecast for around midday, so all the local schools closed. This has happened in the past, but inevitably there's no snow when they cancel school preemptively. Tuesday was the exception to the rule!

It started snowing big fat snowflakes just as we arrived at music lessons. By the time we left 45 minutes later, there was already decent accumulation.

leaving lessons- this is a gravel road, so snow stuck to it easier than it would a paved road

It snowed for the next four hours, with about 3 or 4" of accumulation. It started to melt a bit in the late afternoon, but temps dropped overnight, so it was still around Wednesday morning.

the custom order notebook I shipped out this week

I took the notebooks to the PO after it stopped snowing and then worked on my printables some more.

Looking down our driveway. I love this view when it's covered in snow!

I spent all day Wednesday working on my printables and making good progress.

beautiful sunrise

Thursday we finally got the date for our appraisal (we're refinancing the house and have been working on the process since October). Naturally it was for the next day. At least it wasn't till later in the afternoon. So I spent the rest of the day Thursday and most of Friday cleaning and tidying and telling the boys not to make messes (harder than it sounds). It's not strictly necessary to do these things for a refinance appraisal, but we do want the house to look as good as possible (it's got some definite weak points right now).

Thankfully the painting in the kitchen was all done and we'd already tidied up the yard. We've been working on things here and there so that we wouldn't have to do it all at once at the last moment.

Friday I rearranged the furniture in the living room and the library. The big desk that's been in the living room was causing serious traffic flow problems since it sat right in front of the door to the deck. I moved it to the library, where it just fits along one wall and makes it look more like an office. I left one arm chair in there and moved the other into the living room.

I feel like the furniture finally fits in the library after trying many different configurations over the years. It's a small space with two doors and two windows, which makes it hard to fill properly. The living room feels better with the desk gone. I don't love the current configuration, but it's better than it was and is probably about as good as it'll get. It's even more awkward than the library: it's long and narrow and has a fireplace and three doorways.

Saturday morning I went for a short trail run and hike. I've been so busy all week that I haven't logged any outdoor miles. My step counts were good Thursday and Friday with all the cleaning, but I didn't count them towards mileage. It was good to get out finally after spending so much time in front of my computer this week. It was a wet, drizzly, muddy run and hike, but I'm not complaining: I got to spend time outside.

A little later Jeremy and I went bowling with the other team leads and their wives. Bowling isn't my favorite thing to do and I dislike having to socialize with complete strangers,  but it went pretty well and we had fun. I even scored a double strike my last frame!

Then in the evening Sunshine and I went to a SCUBA experience hosted by our Scout district. We went to a local pool and a local dive shop brought equipment and we got to try it on and spend some time in the pool. It was disconcerting at first. It actually reminded me a lot of breathing through a CPAP, which I also found disconcerting (I tried Jeremy's one night awhile ago). The mask over the face and being forced to breathe through your mouth and not your nose just feels unnatural. Despite that, we had a good time. The water was so murky though!

I had issues equalizing my ears, finally got it to work and was able to descend lower. Sunshine couldn't equalize her ears, so had to stay in shallower water, but still had a lot of fun and wants to do more. We have a class Tuesday night where we'll learn more about SCUBA, and that will leave us with a SCUBA experience patch we can put on our Scout uniforms. We'd like to become SCUBA certified, but it would be about $1500 for the two of us and that's not in the budget right now. Hopefully in the not-to-distant future, though.

When we finished that, we came home and I worked on my YW lesson. We had a combined group so we could teach all the girls how to be a fully functioning, contributing presidency member, something that we haven't had in a long time. I also worked on a short talk for the Temple and Priesthood Prep class Sunday evening. It was a busy, busy day, but I somehow managed to get to bed almost on time.

mud on the trail shoes is a sign of a good run

I mentioned last week that I've been working on getting up earlier. The insomnia has improved, thankfully. I'm still not getting to bed as early as I'd like, but I'm getting there. I had good success getting up and getting some work done first thing in the am. I'm not getting up as early as I'd like to eventually, but I am getting up earlier than I was. So I didn't get up early enough to get a lot of work done, but definite progress was made and I didn't feel awful. Giving myself half an hour to get fully functional before attempting to work seems to be a key part of being functional and productive.

Another update: Ocean has adapted very well to life without bobby or thumb sucking. On occasion he'll carry a stuffed animal around with him, but he's not super attached to them. I'm not sure if there's a correlation, but he's also having more mornings where he wakes up dry. River still sucks his thumb at night, but has never had an accident, so there's not a strict correlation between the two. I suspect Ocean is just maturing out of it, and it happens to coincide with us taking away his thumb and bobby.

Definitely weird weather this week. We had snow on Tuesday and on Sunday it got up to 66*!

Weekly Mileage
Saturday- 1.21 mile trail run
Friday- 1.30 mile hike
total- 2.51 miles

2020 totals

1 hike towards #52hikechallenge
0 kayak miles towards #365milechallenge

9.62 outdoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
0.0 indoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
0.0 bike miles towards #365milechallenge
9.62 miles total

Sunday Funny

This happened a few months ago.

River: "Mom, you gotta come here."
Me: "Why?"
River: "There's a giant spider in the basement."
Me: "Well, get a shoe and squish it."
River: "I can't. I'm afraid it will jump on my face."
Me: (sighing) "Ok."

I went down stairs, looked at the <admittedly> giant spider, went back upstairs and grabbed my phone for a picture and a rain boot for squishing purposes.

It wasn't inclined to move around a lot, so I also grabbed a ruler to get an accurate measurement of its size. And then I squished it. I thought about trying to put it outside, but I wasn't sure it wouldn't try to jump on my face.

Definitely the biggest spider I've seen around here. Gives me the heebie jeebies just thinking about, even several months later <shudder>. And yes, it probably was a friendly, helpful spider, but I don't want to share our house with spiders that large, even if they are friendly.

2020 Goals

You can find my 2019 mileage totals in this post, and my 2019 goals in this post, back in January 2019.

I set a lot of goals because they help me accomplish things. In the past I've set some unrealistic goals, but I'm getting better at pinpointing things that are both important to me and achievable. Having something to work towards motivates me to keep moving and not turn into a vegetable on the couch, even when it's really tempting because I'm so dang tired all the time.

Thoughts about how things went in 2019

My mileage totals were half what they were in 2019, but I still hit my goals of 52 hikes and 365 miles.

I spent a lot of time working on my businesses and that tended to take precedence over getting as many miles in as I could have. I also worked to find a good balanced schedule of enough sleep, a good bedtime, a good wake time, the right supplements, and the right food.

Mileage
I'd hoped to hit 365 foot miles and 365 bike miles, but I only managed 366 total miles. Honestly, all things considered, I'm happy I hit that many.

Hiking
Despite my intentions otherwise, I spent the last couple months of the year squeezing as many hikes in as I could. It wasn't as bad as in 2018, but it was still more than it should have been if I'd been just a little more diligent.

A lot of the hikes were solo hikes as I went after a trail run or squeezed one in while out running errands. Sometimes it's just easier to knock out a couple miles when it's just me, who moves a lot faster than the kiddos. Not that I didn't still take the kids with me on some hikes.

Running
I didn't do a lot of running in 2019. Partly because I was letting my foot fully heal, partly because it just wasn't a priority; working on my businesses was. That said, I did start trail running when Ocean went back to preschool in the fall. I haven't had great experiences with trail running in the past (this race and this race were both a bit on the traumatic side), but I'd read somewhere that trail running was great for strengthening your core muscles. I don't have good spatial awareness so I was concerned I'd fall a lot, but the opposite is happening. I'm being forced to pay more attention to where I am and where my feet are going, and I've only fallen once. And I'm really enjoying the challenge of running on hilly trails.

Business
I had a lot of successes on the business side of things, but I also had some setbacks. I made some pretty drastic changes and I'm feeling confident about where I'm going with my businesses.

Goals for the coming year

Yearly Mileage
In 2019, my goal was to do 365 bike miles, 365 foot miles, and 20+ kayak miles. I didn't hit any of those numbers, only doing 366 miles total.

In 2020, my goal is 370 bike miles (I like to ride in 10 mile stints, so I've rounded up), 365 foot miles, and 5+ kayak miles. More would be great, but just in case things don't go well (always a possibility when dealing with chronic illness), I'm keeping the numbers on the lower side.

I'm also going to work on staying on track with my mileage throughout the year so I'm not cramming it into the last couple months. So I need to hit 185 bike miles and 185 foot miles by the end of June. The kayak miles are more flexible.

Hiking 
In 2019, my goal was to complete 52 hikes and continue working on increasing the average length of our hikes. I planned to do this by doing more solo hikes, as the kiddos don't really enjoy hikes longer than 2 miles. I did a lot more solo hikes, but my average length decreased. Mostly because I always felt pressed for time.

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In 2020, my goal is to complete the first 21 hikes by the end of June and the second 21 hikes by the end of December. I also want to increase the average length of my hikes to at least 2.25 miles.

Races
My goal for 2019 was to start slowing running again and build my mileage base back to where it should be. I did some running, but not much. I also wanted to figure out my fueling needs while sticking to the ketogenic diet. I didn't do enough running for that to come up and I only stuck to the keto diet for the first half of the year.

This year I'll do a few local races, mostly ones I've done before. If I can make the scheduling work, I'd like to do some local trail races. I don't have a specific goal for number of races, I'll just do them as they fit in my schedule.

I do plan on running a half marathon the first weekend in June and will possibly do my first Ragnar trail run this spring or summer. The Ragnar race will depend on scheduling- Jeremy, me, my sister, and my brother. Jeremy to watch the kids, my brother and sister to run the race with me if they can work it out. If they can't, I won't do the race this year. I've got my plan to train for the half marathon after building up my running mileage, so hopefully all will go well. I am concerned because my stamina has taken a huge hit since my narcolepsy got bad a year and a half ago, but I'm hopeful that with the gradual approach I'll be ok. If not, I'll defer the half marathon a bit longer and just do a 5k instead.

Training for the half marathon will give me the opportunity to figure out how to fuel properly while doing keto (more on the keto in a minute).

Business
2019 was a year of growth for my businesses. I worked on my existing companies and didn't start anything new.

1. I had a slow start with my Etsy shop, but I had several items listed by November. I sold several notebooks earlier in the year. But December was super busy, with lots of music notebooks selling. They were by far my most popular item.

2. I finished one e-book for my travel blog and it was included in a travel bundle in July, which brought new traffic to my site. I didn't increase my page views enough to get in with one of the big advertising networks yet, unfortunately.

3. Early in the year I decided not to continue selling on Amazon, so I stopped sending items in. I sold out my last item in December. I haven't closed the business quite yet (I need to figure out the paperwork), but that's in the works. It was a relief to make the decision to close the Amazon business. I don't enjoy shopping and it took a lot of time to source products, so quitting this venture has opened up my schedule a bit.

4. I built up my personal finance blog and hired my Pinterest VA to work on that blog as well. Despite both our efforts, this blog really never gathered much of an audience. I transferred site hosts in November/December and lost 2/3 of my content. I thought I'd backed up my site, but after the transfer completed, I found out I hadn't. I was able to find 1/3 of my content by searching for cached pages, but the rest had never been cached. I decided not to rebuild the site just yet.

In 2020, I plan on a lot more growth in my businesses.

1. I'll continue to add products to my Etsy shop. I'll also build out my Shopify site, which will allow me to have a shop with my Oak Hollow Cottage website. I want to get my notebooks into 1 or 2 local shops. I will be more diligent with my social media posting to drive traffic to my shops.

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2. I'm combining my personal finance site content with my travel site. I decided it was too much work to rebuild my personal finance site and I realized I could pivot that content to apply to my travel site. I'm currently working on transferring and reconstructing the info for that. I'm still working on increasing my page views and will also start focusing on SEO (search engine optimization- so I show up in Google and other searches). I'll also learn how to use Facebook and Instagram advertising.

3. I will officially close my Amazon business.

4. I may start my personal finance site again in the future, but I haven't decided what I want to do with it yet, so I'm holding off. Focusing on just my handmade business and my travel site are keeping me plenty busy, so I'm good leaving it alone for now.

Cub Scouts/Scouts BSA
In 2019 I completed the other four ticket items for Wood Badge. My goal was to have them all done by April at the latest, but it was the end of May before I finished the last one. I was officially beaded in October. I was released from my Primary calling in April or May and am now working with the Young Women, so no more Cub Scouts.

As a kindergartener, River is old enough to enter Cub Scouts as a Lion. We've decided to hold off on signing up the boys until they're in second grade and old enough to be Wolves. Lion and Tiger rank require a parent to be by the boy's side at all times, and we just don't have the time for that right now. We don't mind being involved, but that's a bit much for us currently.

Sunshine is in Scouts BSA, currently at second class rank. We'd like her to earn her Eagle in the next two years, so we're focusing on merit badges and rank advancement. I'm registered as a merit badge counselor and am helping the troops (we have a boys troop and a girls troop) as the health form coordinator. At some point I might take a larger role, but I don't have the time right now. I do go on as many campouts as possible, since they are usually looking for a trained female leader so the girls can attend.

Health
In 2019, I continued to take Plexus products, and they've helped a lot. I credit them as the reason my blood work looked so good when we were trying to figure out what was going on. I continue to enjoy the lack of PMS and painful cramping that used to come every month, as well as increased energy (just think how fantastic I'd feel if I didn't have narcolepsy!).

*** want to learn more about Plexus and how it can help you feel better and have more energy? ***

*** go to my website here, and then contact me for more info ***

I was able to go low carb/almost keto for the first half of the year and even managed to lose some weight. Unfortunately, I fell off the wagon when we went on vacation and have not been able to get back on track.

I've tried a variety of supplements and other things and have a fairly good routine going. Amino acids in the AM, don't sleep in, eat as close to keto as possible (the higher fat content makes it much easier than just low carb), judicious use of low doses of caffeine as needed, Plexus supplements, 7 hours of sleep, Frankincense essential oil, a weighted blanket, and regular moderate exercise. I'm much more functional than I used to be, though there's still room for improvement.

This year I'm getting back to keto, training for my half marathon, and getting to bed on time (sooo hard for me) so I can be as productive and functional as possible. If I can also lose some weight along the way, that would be great.

Family
In 2019, we were going to work very hard at fully using the new study manual the Church put out. We weren't super successful. Between my super busy schedule and Jeremy's overtime hours and our super energetic little boys, it's proven very difficult to make this actually happen.

We're trying again this year, and our later church schedule should help for at least our Sunday study time. Jeremy should only have a few more months of overtime left, and hopefully we can get back on track once his schedule opens up.

We're also working hard to get our finances in order and are hoping to start our adoption paperwork within the next few months.

what are some goals you've set for yourself for 2020?

Kitchen Updates

This was what our kitchen looked like when we first bought the house. White appliances, orangey oak cabinets, awkward hanging cupboards over the island.

I took down the hanging cabinets, and it opened up the kitchen so much.

I installed crown molding and primed the upper cabinets and painted the walls.

I also stained half the bases, but never got around to finishing them. It was a sad state of affairs for way too long:

I finally made progress. I finished staining the bases, painted the uppers, and installed knobs and drawer pulls. I also repainted the walls (that yellow never looked quite right) and caulked and painted the crown molding.

Where we are now:

There was a huge open space above the fridge when we bought the house. I built a cupboard up there, but it's an odd size that I can't find pre-made doors for, so the curtain does a good job of covering all the stuff we have up there.

Eventually we'll rip everything out and replace the cupboards, counters, sink, floor, and dishwasher. The other appliances have been replaced since we bought the house. Unfortunately there's no point doing the counters or sink or floor (even though they're all hideous) until we do the cupboards, which won't be cheap. But for now it looks better and one of these days we will get the kitchen looking a whole lot better.

When we replace the cupboards, we'll mostly do large drawers in the base cupboards. I think they're a better use of space and have better accessibility than cupboards that you have to crawl on the floor to get to the stuff at the back. I'm also looking forward to an actual backsplash behind the stove.

The pantry will also be updated. We plan on installing large drawers on the bottom half and shelves on the upper half.