{"id":2726,"date":"2010-12-06T07:26:53","date_gmt":"2010-12-06T12:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.soverydomestic.com\/blog\/?p=2726"},"modified":"2010-12-05T21:46:38","modified_gmt":"2010-12-06T02:46:38","slug":"peace-on-earth-december-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.soverydomestic.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/06\/peace-on-earth-december-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Peace on Earth – December Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wow. When I skip a few days or a week of blogging for real life, I tend to totally ignore it and carry on like it never happened, bu I’ve been absent for two whole weeks<\/strong>. It’s not life, it’s Christmas! I’ve been very dedicated to staying on task with my to do this year and it’s been going well, but I’m knitting every night, not blogging. So here I am, on track for my favorite holiday ever and back on track for blogging as well.<\/p>\n

When I sat down to write this I was afraid that I was a week behind for Courtney’s December challenge<\/a> – thankfully, I am right on time for the first in the series! The one thing she mentioned to do last week was light an extra large candle everyday and to make a note on the calendar that says ‘I Peter 5:7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.’ This passage has actually helped me quite a bit over the past couple of years so it’s familiar to me! As for the candle, I mentioned a few weeks ago that after the Making Your Home a Haven<\/a> challenge was over, I kept on lighting my candle. I honestly feel that it has changed my attitude because I’m in the kitchen or in areas off the kitchen so much of the day and night that it catches my eye all the time, and at this point even when it’s not lit I still stop and take a moment.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The challenge for this week is to schedule a bubble bath. I’m not a bath sort of gal, but I will schedule an extra long pamper session for myself. My dear friend Lindsay<\/a>, who I met in kindergarten and my still fairly new friend Jade who I met in January, always look their best and have really encouraged me to make the time to make that a priority if that’s important to me – and it really, really is. So far, so good. It is time consuming though, especially with my lifestyle (read: changing diapers, doing dishes, scrubbing corners, baking, etc) so time has to be taken every night to fix or change nail polish, take off make up, moisturize like you’d never think is necessary (‘your skin is thirsty May!’) and all that stuff. I have found that forcing myself to make time to ‘get pretty’ as I playfully call it, has helped me center myself too! I’m not really in that bathroom focusing on taking off my eyeliner or sugar scrubbing my knees and elbows – because really, what is there to think about? I’m in there letting my mind wander, thinking about the sort of things I’d never allow myself time to think about otherwise. You all know I’m a pretty thankful person as it is, but as I was changing my nail polish a few days ago, I thought about how amazing it is that I get to wake up everyday here in Canada and not in Haiti or Burma or somewhere I have never heard of that has equally scary situations going on. I think about how amazing it is that we have the cash for me to even have this ridiculous collection of nail polish or that I can somehow get away with wearing plastic jewelry at 30. I think about my babies and how none of them are technically babies at all anymore – about how healthy they all are!! Most of all though, I think about my husband and our marriage and I sigh. Not only are we still friends, but ever since we moved to the woods he’s gone above and beyond to make me fee happy here because he knows how much I miss Toronto.<\/p>\n

Anyhoo, the second part of this challenge is to read about the birth of Jesus. You know, the whole reason December is a big deal in the first place? \ud83d\ude09 Matthew 1, 2 and Luke 1,2 are on my list to read and re-read this week. I am feeling much more churchy than usual, and I don’t know if it’s because of Christmas or if it’s just that He is using this time of year to make my heart feel three sizes too big for my chest, but it does. It really, really does.<\/p>\n

*I just read this post<\/a> over at Inspired to Action and stopped in my tracks because it’s exactly why I get up so early every morning for alone time. Some days I actually get all the way out of bed and read my Bible with a coffee. Some days I just read in bed, and some days I just lay there and think and steal an extra snuggle with my husband – always thankful for this life.*<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wow. When I skip a few days or a week of blogging for real life, I tend to totally ignore it and carry on like it never happened, bu I’ve been absent for two whole weeks. It’s not life, it’s Christmas! I’ve been very dedicated to staying on task with my to do this year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[270,167,99,271],"tags":[11,391],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soverydomestic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2726"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soverydomestic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soverydomestic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soverydomestic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soverydomestic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2726"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.soverydomestic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2733,"href":"http:\/\/www.soverydomestic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2726\/revisions\/2733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soverydomestic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soverydomestic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soverydomestic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}