Some Random January Fun

Ryan has decided upon a new project for the winter weeks ahead. And believe me: none of you will see this one coming.  Enjoy!

 Listen to Spill the Beans

Thanks (again...still...) to all of you who are lifting Ryan up in prayer right now as we continue to seek answers and solutions to the great health mystery of 2017! Yesterday morning, he had a HIDA scan and the results showed his gallbladder is only functioning at 20%. YAAAAAAAAAAY!!! WE have never been so happy to get bad news in all our lives! He has an appointment later this week with a surgeon to see his surgical options, and we are grateful to be able to take a step in SOME direction!

Meanwhile, we are one glorious week into a brand spankin' new year, and despite the fact that I've learned way more medical terms and doctor names than I ever intended in the span of a week, I've actually also done a variety of other fun things that I thought I'd share!

I made a little acrostic with the word January, because, well, I'm a nerd.

Jeans over yoga pants. || I made a goal that I would spend fewer days in yoga pants in 2017. It is so true that working from home leads a girl to slack off on appearance over time. My goal was to put on actual jeans more often and save the yoga pants for extra cold or sick days. SO far, I'm doing better! You know. A week in. :)

A new product from Lemongrass Spa. || I had a foot spa set that I'd not tried because I didn't have a little tub to soak my feet in anymore. And I kept forgetting to put one on the shopping list. But I finally remembered, got the tub, and last Friday, whilst I finished the final pages of The Secret Garden, I gave myself a little pedicure. Heavenly.

New habits in Scripture writing. || Perhaps you've seen this on the magic of Pinterest too, but there's a website called Sweet Blessings that has a daily Scripture writing plan for every month of the year. I'd never participated before, but I wanted to give it a shot this year. I haven't missed a day yet and I'm really enjoying the discipline of writing out a short set of verses every single day.

Undoing bad workout habits from the days of sickness. || The weeks of respiratory yuck took a toll on my workout habits. It's hard to be aerobic and such when you can't breathe without dying. So I committed to getting back into regular workouts in the new year, and even with the unexpected schedule of ER visits last week, I did get back into it!

Adding new recipes to the rotation. || I felt like at the end of last year, I was using the same five recipes over and over, and I knew I was bored with our eating choices, so I well imagined Ryan was bored too. {If only we'd known the chicken and veggie restrictions to come!} So I've been scouring cookbooks and Pinterest for healthy new recipes and have made a handful of successes AND failures already this year. My goal is to try one new recipe a week, but the gallbladder interruption has increased that more than I planned!

Reading books from my shelf. || Last year, I read an average of a book a week {plus a few bonuses} but almost all of them were new releases from publishers. Of course I want to keep up with that, but I also want to continue making my way through books I already own but haven't read. This week I chose a copy of a book I already owned, rather than something brand new!

Year four anniversary book DONE! || My goal is always to stay as current with my scrapbooks as I can, but the end of any calendar year always presents a challenge, because our anniversary AND Christmas come all in a row. I want to work hard to catch up before I forget the important details. Last Saturday, while Ryan worked, I knocked out our anniversary book! Now I just have to finish up 2016 {which is caught up to December 21 right now} and start 2017. And I didn't intend for the first week to be so scrapbook worthy!

So that's been my January fun. How 'bout you? Anything new, fun, or different in this first week of a new year?