Describe your bedtime ritual.

My bedtime ritual varies...daily. But each of these activities takes place at some point every night.

*Brush teeth.
*Take out contacts.
*Wash face.
*Use *ahem* facilities.
*Apply hand lotion.
*Apply strawberry Chap-stick.
*Write in 1-line journal.
*Say evening prayer.
*Set alarm.
*Plug in phone & turn ringer down.

Those things happen without fail. These things happen with some regularity...

*Read until I fall asleep & the book hits me in the face.
*Scroll Facebook until I fall asleep & my phone hits me in the face.
*Apply foot cream & put on socks.
*End of day planning in my bullet journal.

I'm not too complicated-but sometimes I do hate that there are so many steps before I can go to sleep. On nights when I'm wiped & I've stayed up too late watching Netflix or I got sucked into the interwebs, the bare minimum involves brushing teeth, taking out contacts, & washing face.

I just realized it is ridiculous that I have spent this long to describe my bedtime ritual so sweet dreams!

What is your family's Christmas story? (Your traditions, your rituals, etc.)

*Mom & I have at least 1 annual holiday baking day where we plan lots of treats & goodies we want to give away and spend the entire day listening to Christmas music while we work in the kitchen. It is seriously one of my favorite traditions & I am so thankful to live close enough to her that we can do this.

*Speaking of baking, these treats are holiday staples in our house from my childhood: peanut butter kiss cookies, Christmas Tree cookie press cookies, elf biscuits, party mix (similar to Chex mix), tiger butter, and new additions in the past couple of years-cheese straws & shortbread.

*We ALWAYS eat pizza for Christmas Eve dinner. (Just like we ALWAYS eat Mexican food for Thanksgiving Eve dinner.) Store bought, carry out, homemade-doesn't matter. Just pizza.

*Enough of the food. On years that we're all together my dad always reads the Christmas story from Luke. When I was much younger, he would play Christmas hymns on the piano & we would sing along. This was when we did our advent wreath each Sunday as a family long before spouses & grandchildren entered the picture.

*Also from my childhood, my mom had a set of self-playing Christmas bells that were attached to garland that she hung from the mantle or in the kitchen. She would turn those on every Christmas morning & we would listen to them play the Christmas songs (both sacred & secular) they were programmed with.

*Since I've been married and really in the past couple of years, Z & I have gone on a Christmas date at some point during the season. While we've never said it had to be anything fancy, it has turned out that way. Last year we had dinner at The Edison at The Grove Park Inn and sat out on the porch afterward (on an unseasonable warm December evening) & talked & dreamed & laughed. This year's date was our overnight stay at the Biltmore as mentioned in my post from January 1.

There are many more traditions I would like to start & am working on some of them-buying an ornament that represents the year or big moments in the year, writing a letter to Z each year, giving to a needy family each year, etc. Perhaps 1 day I'll get it together enough to accomplish everything my overzealous heart desires. But until then I'll relish the memories I make with the traditions I have now.

So what are some of your Christmas rituals & traditions? Maybe you have one I need to add to my list...

What's 1 thing that you hope to achieve or accomplish this year?

I hope to achieve healthiness. My weight may not get to what I want it to be but I want to be healthier for my husband and children to be able to enjoy me and for me to be able to live a FULL life so I don't miss out on anything. The time is right and I need to do this for myself especially with potential big changes this year (baby??? house???).

What's on your goal list for the year ahead? What plans have you made to help you reach that goal?

Describe 3 moments from the holidays that you wish to remember.

1. Z & I stayed at the Village Hotel at the Biltmore during Christmas week. It was an incredible experience & I am so glad we did. We wandered Antler Village & the winery before dinner at Cedric's Tavern & a romantic night in our rustic modern room. We had a delicious breakfast at The Inn (Belgian waffles) and then wandered the area around the house. It was a great time with special memories!

2. Christmas dinner was special since all of my family was together. Even with my 4.5 month old nephew's fussiness, it was nice for all of us to be there and spend the night at Mom & Dad's. We shared lots of laughs after dinner & Henry kept us all busy with toys, painting, & Transformers.

3. New Year's Eve was fun since we have kind of started the tradition (2 years now) of Mom & Dad coming to Asheville. We had dinner at Tupelo Honey and played dominoes while enjoying a bellini bar. We watched the ball drop but didn't see it (thanks to the networks) and I shared a kiss with my love.

What are some of your most cherished holiday memories?

The struggle is real y'all.

As I sit here with The Bachelorette Finale in the background (only 1/2 watching since I totally read the spoilers early in the season), I gotta say it's pure chaos to be up in my brain these days. I am ALL. OVER. THE. PLACE. 99% of the time I feel 50 shades of crazy. Not in the I'm-gonna-break-bad way but in the who-the-heck-am-I do-I-even-know-myself-anymore way. Anybody feelin' that?

Unfortunately, I have no idea what to attribute this to. The past few months just seem to have me on a downward spiral into myself. In the past 6-8 weeks, I've learned more about who I am and what makes me tick that I know how to process. It's so weird to be 31 and still having such grand self-realizations. In some ways I resent it because HELLO! I could have been such a better daughter, sister, & friend with this info. So hopefully I'll use it going forward to be all of those things as well as the most important-a better wife.

Just to spell it out a bit, here's a few of the lightbulb moments I've had lately...

   7. I'm an ISFJ on the Myers-Briggs spectrum. Seriously!?!?!? Introverted????? Never in a million years would I have guessed that about myself-until a year ago or so. While I have no idea what shifted, I am thankful that the shift I felt in my personality is justified-even through a free online test. The rest of the type description is fairly spot-on as well although reading about yourself can cause some major resentment as well as Aha! moments.

   3. I've been pretty down on myself the past few weeks. I believe my lament to my husband is "I'm fat. I feel lazy.* I have no friends. I'm doing nothing with my life.**" No I'm not depressed-well, maybe situationally-but moreso, Z & I are in a transitional season of life right now. We left our last ministry position 6 months ago & since that was all I'd ever known in our marriage, I've been left feeling a little bit like the rug's been pulled out from under me. Not that I want to go back to ministry-we may circle back to that point a little later. But I am a person who (bad for me) finds my identity in what I do or my job, and while I may still be employed by a church, I am definitely not in the same position as when we were serving. And since serving & helping is my language (thanks enneagram!), I'm lost. I also am slow to develop relationships as it is so not having a very big social circle has really thrown me for a loop. I used to always just rely on my church circle so I'm resentfully learning that I will have to be more intentional in developing friends.

(Not to worry-we've found a church we're planning to plug in to as soon as we can get Z's work transition somewhat settled.)

   1. One of my very best friends who I've known for 15 years deserves a BIG OL' APOLOGY. He doesn't read this blog but I hope to have this conversation with him in person sometime. Basically, I was a manipulate b!^*$ to him for a good portion of our high school & college years. Now that I know it's because I wasn't feeling appreciated (Type 9, need I say more?), I feel like a complete jerk. Suffice it to say that I think we should give high schoolers these tests so that they start out their grown-up lives with a better understanding of themselves.

These are just a FEW things I am working through and trying to process to improve myself. The only reason I am okay with realizing all these things in my 30s is because I am in my 30s-a time in my life that I am most comfortable and accepting of who I am. So yeah, I'll take it.

All this has me in my head a lot but I wanted to write out some of it here-mainly because I don't have many readers & maybe someone will stumble across it and be encouraged as they process who it is they truly are.

*I am overweight but am definitely working on it. Feel healthier now than I have in a long while.
**I have done a lot with my life. I am in a relaxed season, learning some things (see entire above post) so I'm trying to be ok with that. And God's working on nudging me towards some things He wants me to do.

So, any of my 3 readers struggling with figuring yourself out & being ok with what you find? If you have any other personality type info or websites, feel free to share!