Christmas break has been a wonderful time for me. I feel more relaxed and rejuvenated than I have in a very long time. I set some goals for over break and I have already completed a lot of those goals... and I still have about two weeks left!
First of all, we got to spend a week with family. That was a wonderful time. We spent the first several days with mine then journeyed over to Stillwater and spent time with Tyler's family. We got to see pretty much everyone we wanted and had great quality time with both families. I got to spend time holding my new niece, Bynlee, which was definitely a very important part. I have no idea how much longer we will be living close to my family so I have to take as much time as possible to make sure my nieces don't forget me =)!
After we came back from Oklahoma (which I was ready to do.. mostly to sleep in my own bed! Being away is nice, but I am glad that there's always a time to come back!) I did something that I have been wanting to do since August, but due to my deep committment to school, it was put off. I tackled our second bedroom. By the time I was working on it, we could barely walk in it. I am typically a very tidy person when it comes to how I keep our house, but this room became the "miscellaneous" room in which we put anything and everything we couldn't find a place for... not to mention half of Tyler's clothes are in the closet in that room, making that whole room a closet for him. I am pleased to say we can walk in there now! It is SO clean and SO organized. I have a box of things that I plan to get rid of, not to mention some clothes to get rid of.
One of our Christmas presents is a beautiful bookcase that Tyler's dad built for us. Boy do we need a big one! Ozark has the tendency to load couples with hundreds of books by the time graduation comes. So I got to move our two small book shelves downstairs and am now using them for decorative and storage purposes. This is great because our house is much more decorated than before. It feels a lot more like our home. It only took me 6 months to get it how I like it =). But this also means we have plenty of room in our second bedroom for our new bookcase which will hopefully come soon! It's so nice to have accomplished that. Especially because the next time I will need that room will probably be to be packing everything up. It's nice to know it will be neat and organized whenever I have to pack all of our stuff up.
Cleaning out that bedroom and making the downstairs of our townhouse more "homey" was a big goal of mine... I am very glad I accomplished this!
I also got a new book for Christmas (which it took me all of 2 days to read... now what?). It's called The Hunger Games. I have heard about it for awhile now, just about how great it is. And it truly was! It was definitely a good fiction choice for my break. I have the next two books on order through my workplace. But now I need to read some more non-fiction. That's the part that has not happened yet.
Needless to say it has been a good break. I have desperately needed a break after being in school non stop since January 2010. I know that even Tyler notices how much less stress there is in my life and how much that helps us. It's not that anything was wrong, but there's just a freedom and joy found in a stress-free time that can easily go missing in a stress-filled time. Next semester goal: not lose that freedom and joy even though I know I will be stressed. I can do it!
Happy New Year!
