What I Learned in January

How in THE WORLD is it the end of January???? When I did my week planning on Sunday, I flipped over to February's tab in my planner, and it was just so weird. But weird or not, the end of January has arrived, and I am prepared to carry on with my monthly tradition of sharing the things I've learned in the last 30 days. Hope you enjoy!!


Before I share my list, it is Tuesday, which of course means there's a new podcast! You'll get to hear a little more about our "A" date (see yesterday's blog for photos of that) and also Ryan's big dream fulfilled this weekend. (And I didn't even know it was a dream!)

Listen here.

Okay...NOW on to the lessons learned in the not-super-wintry month of January! 

1. The materials used on floats in the Rose Parade have to be all-natural. 

Maybe I'm the last person on earth to know this, but I sure did not have a clue until this year! Ryan isn't a big parade lover anyway, but he knows I like them, so we watched a bit of the Rose parade and I kept hearing all the talk of ground rice and coffee beans and such things being used on floats, so I had to look it up. True story! All natural items are required. Impressive to see what they came up with and how authentic it all looked!

2. I like reading old books.

Like ACTUAL old books. Old copies of old books. Not reprints of old books. Mom gave me her copy of The Secret Garden, which was given to her in 1947, and it was extra fun to read this American classic from pages that were equally classic. 

3. Writing Scripture is a helpful practice.

One of the new things I'm trying this year is writing out a few verses each day. I'm following the plan from here, and I'm learning that pausing to focus on verses long enough to write them out with my own hand is a good thing for me. It makes me ponder and retain the topics, and I'm looking forward to learning much through this practice this year!

4. We {as in the Shaffers} were not created to live on chicken alone.

Ryan's gallbladder issues this month forced us to eat a very bland, all chicken based diet for a while. Now, we love chicken as much as anyone else, but we sorely missed variety in our diet! Thankful that Ryan was able to have surgery so quickly to remove the offending gallbladder, and we have enjoyed reintroducing variety and flavor to our diet! 

5. Potty training a ten-year-old cat is definitely classified as an adventure.

If you've somehow missed the posts this month, well, I'm sorry, first of all, but the news is that Ryan has decided he's so over cleaning out litter boxes, so Braeya has been on a toilet training adventure. Because when the folks on Shark Tank say you can train a cat to use a toilet, he took them seriously. Somehow I think it has to be easier to train a tiny human than an old cat, though she has done better than I expected. I'll give her that! {And yes, in this photo, she has curled up in the litter to rest. Sigh.}

6. Ryan, coming out of surgery, is HILARIOUS.

I am just straight up sorry all of you had to miss having a front row seat to watching Ryan come out from under the anesthesia after surgery. He was absolutely hysterical. I wanted to film the whole thing, but alas, I was afraid the nurses would yell at me for it. (Even though I knew he would want me to be filming and has completely enjoyed the short clip I did get. I knew what I was doing.) So funny. I don't want him to require surgery ever again in his lifetime, but if ever he does, we know we're in for a treat on the flip side!

7. Out of eight new recipes I tried this month, six were good enough to make again.

Between getting back to a stricter version of clean eating (after a very UNCLEAN! December) and Ryan's diet needs during the gallbladder days, I tried a lot of new dishes this month. My two failures were, ironically, the first two things I made, and it made me a bit nervous for the future of the month! I tried a slow cooker spinach quiche that we ruled out because it wasn't flavorful enough, and a skinny Baja chicken taco recipe that had a clean Chipotle sauce on it, and I'm pretty sure that contributed to Ryan's worst gallbladder attack. OUT with that recipe! But you can look forward to seeing (at some point) recipes for chicken taco soup, a spinach chicken salad with oranges, cranberries and almonds, chicken nuggets, Blizzard cookies, chicken noodle soup, and chicken Parmesan strips! My goal was to try one new recipe a week, and while there were a couple of weeks when I did not, the number I tried averaged out to double the goal!

So that's what I've learned in the merry month of January! :) How about you? Any new things?  

Linking up with Tamar!