Our New Adventure

Hello and welcome back!

Something we love that is part of our new home is lots of outdoor space. That wasn't something really important to us until we had AJ, once we had him and saw his growing love for the outdoors, we knew we wanted to have somewhere with more outdoor space.

Our new home backs up to a beautiful pond and it has been so fun to watch AJ just stand in awe of the swans, geese, heron, and one singular duck that inhabit the pond. He has always had a bit of an obsession with ducks and other birds, so this is so much fun for him.

Now that we've been here a while, we've started to learn the routines of the birds of the pond. A lot of days we get to watch the swans eat their breakfast and their dinner. Our dog is not so excited about them but the rest of us love to watch them. They are quite funny in what they do but I suppose they find us funny as well considering we just like to watch them doing their normal activities.

Like the birds, we are getting into our new routines as well. For a while, it seemed we must just be on vacation and not staying. It doesn't so much feel like that anymore with all the cleaning and cooking I'm doing now. In the new town we live in, coupled with our extreme pickiness, we are very limited in eating out anymore. Which is probably a good thing but certainly adds a lot more work. Between all the cleaning and cooking and chasing a young 2-year-old who has decided walking is overrated and running is the only form of transportation acceptable, I'm completely tuckered out by the end of the day. I've now got my little night routine of watching an episode of Little House on the Prairie and then going to shower and bed (okay, I try to make it just one episode but that doesn't always happen because I am obsessed).

I love routines and falling into these new ones has been slow but is coming together nonetheless. We decided when we moved in that we would take the remainder of the summer to enjoy the outdoors and worry about a lot of the big jobs inside when the cold came and we had no choice but to be in. Now of course that doesn't neglect normal housekeeping but is really more so organizing, decorating, and other jobs like that. Do you know what I've realized? That's completely fine. The house doesn't need to be decorated perfectly within the first couple of months of being here. Not everything needs to be organized with labels and fancy boxes right now. It's been so nice to have that mindset right now. It really takes off a lot of pressure and gives more time for us to make memories and just get comfortable in our new surroundings.

One thing I really enjoy about watching Little House on the Prairie is how simple times were then and although it is just a TV show, it's still very telling of the time period the show is set in. People worked so hard always and really took time to rest on Sundays. Their work was done because it had to be. I feel that's a rather foreign thing to us in the new age we live in. Procrastination is at its peak right now. As I form my new routines, I have been adopting some of these simple time routines as well. I'm also listening to the Little House series on Audible right now and hearing the description of how they did regular chores (like laundry for example) makes me extremely grateful for my washer and dryer. It kind of just helps shape my perspective and makes me more grateful for how much easier things are for us now then it was all those years ago. If they can work hard with all the extra effort it took to do simple things, why can't I? I get in slumps so easy but I'm determined to work hard for my family, for my home, and for God.

I'm hoping maybe sometime soon I can start sharing some routine posts on here. Morning, evening, and cleaning routines I think would be fun to write about. I think I've only ever written about one cleaning routine I had in our old house. So perhaps a routine post comes out soon. Who knows!

This was a very random post but I felt like writing.

Thank you for reading! I'm so glad you're here.

Until next time.