Back to Life. Back to Reality.

Welp. 

I'm back to work. 

As of Monday, Jan. 6th.

The girls are back to school, too.

And let me tell ya. 

It was not an easy morning!

Waking Ava up is pretty brutal. 

"ONE MORE MINUTE" as she is smashed, face down in her pillow. 

This child is 5. JUST turned 5. Phew. She's gonna be a fun teenager. 

It didn't help that I didn't prepare myself to come back. 

We've been so focused on the kitchen and I really wanted to keep the momentum going.

Not only that, but being gone from the office for that long...while it was really nice...it made it so that I had SO MUCH TO CATCH UP ON.

Thankfully, my office was closed for the first week, so I wasn't missing anything from that week.

The week after was relatively slow, but there was still activity to stay on top of. 

My team is amazing and handled it all and I only got one phone call. All other inquiries I was able to handle via text or email.

So all of Monday was spent getting my shit together and pretending I had a clue of what was going on.

Tuesday was a bit better, but I think it's going to take a week to get myself put back together. 

On our way home from daycare, we got to see a few deer! This always makes the girls happy. 

There was one more to the left. They were SO close to us! On our way to daycare, we often see deer. We also count cows and donkeys at the farms we pass by LOL. 

As much as I'm still getting my shit together, I'm really pumped for 2020.

There are many things to look forward to.

Steve and I celebrate 10 years of wedded bliss and are super lucky that we get to travel to Italy and Greece to celebrate this milestone. 

We are vacationing with friends for the 4th of July and will be "boat people" for a few days. Our lodging is literally right on the water. 3 floors in this condo, with water access for our friend's boat. Steve and I will be renting a jet ski to ensure we'll be able to all travel as a group if we have to go by water (there is another family joining us also - I've known the dad since I was like 9). I cannot wait! there are 8 kids between us, all around the same age. We have the only two girls. LOL. I think being around all those boys will leave Steve thanking GOD that we have two girls. Haha! 

Not only is it a great way to spend July 4th, with our friends, but this will be the girls' vacation for the year. We were supposed to travel to Las Vegas and the girls were going to come with us (duh). But since our plans have changed, the girls will be staying with my mom instead and Steve and I are traveling alone (whaaaat? I haven't been away from my kids for more than 3 nights and it was torture). So they won't be going on a vacation really. So this invite was perfect! The girls will LOVE it.

My mom is moving home and I am so excited. I definitely see myself hanging at my mom's house with the kids on weekends and such. I can even stop there for dinner when my office moves - it'll be like 10 minutes from my mom's house, so it'll be nice to be able to stop over sometimes. 

Ava will start K this year. I'm happy and sad all at the same time.

Pumped for this girl to be in a FULL day of school - I know she will thrive. She's SO freaking smart.

She's super excited to ride the bus with Mila and be a "big kid"

But man. It means I'm REALLY out of the baby phase and that phase is just getting pushed further and further away.

I turn 38 at the end of this month.

I'm almost fucking 40.

I don't feel OLD or anything, but I know I'm aging. It's weird. I definitely don't feel "old enough" to be 38.

So many good things to come this year. I can just feel it. 

I don't usually make resolutions. 

But here are a few things I guess I could look into. Maybe not like resolutions, but goals or things to get accomplished this year? 

- Eat better (DUH)

- More exercise (UGH)

- Read more (now that the girls are older, I can sneak away to read. Plus, I love that my girls will see me reading and then run and grab a few books to join me)

- Reduce screen time for the entire family - Monday I started with no screen time. I allowed about 20 minutes after dinner for Mila to play her OSMO and for Ava to use her tablet. Pretty proud that I stuck to it. Even just with a DAY of not having electronics/screens, their imaginations have exploded. I love that. So we will continue to monitor and limit. We got really lax over break. 

- Build our barn

- Start our herd (I'm now also thinking alpacas!)

So, it was a rocky start to the week, but hopefully it'll calm down a bit as we get into the week and I get my shit together.