2018 IN ONE SECOND EVERYDAY

I documented 2018 using the One Second Everyday app and loved it.

It captures our everyday moments of the year, the ones that make up a life. You can choose to do one second or 1.5 seconds, and most of my clips are 1.5. You can also choose two from each day, and I did that for many, so my clip is a bit longer than if you stuck to 365 seconds.

I skipped many, many days, especially in the fall when I was so sick. It’s flexible like that and if you miss days (or weeks or months!) it’s not a big deal. You can choose from other days you have saved or just skip and move on.

I love this method for kids! I took a million photos but hardly any videos of Trey before I started documenting this way, and I feel like it’s the new “family VHS” video format. We have tons of video footage from my childhood so I’m happy to capture Trey also in this way, and to be documenting all the details beyond a photo - voices, sounds, movement. It’s a rich medium, and a simple app to use.

2018, WRAPPED

It’s been quite a year for us. Recapping some highlights I want to remember.

In October 2017 we closed on our house, and we spent the next 6 weeks painting every possible surface: every door, wall, cabinet and trim got a shade of white. In December we moved in, and more projects started. It seemed like almost every weekend from December - June was spent on updates. Some memorable ones: tiling the kitchen backsplash, subway tiling the shower, floors in both bathrooms, designing Trey’s room (which over the course of the year turned from gender neutral nursery into full-on toddler boy) and perhaps my favorite update of all: the playhouse. My favorite make-from scratch-furniture item was/is our 10 ft. dining table.

We got to play a lot too. Some memorable trips: celebrating Grammy’s 90th in Palm Springs in February with my whole extended family, just Daniel and I to Andaz in Scottsdale in April, Leavenworth with Daniel’s side of the family for my father-in-law’s birthday, two trips to Almanor in July and September, and a fun trip to Napa for another family birthday in October. So many good memories from those trips.

The highlight of the year was finding out our second baby is on the way. Best news! The fall was a thick fog for me of morning sickness and trying to get through the days, but I continued to be active, and I think that’s what saved me this time. My sickness lingered longer, but wasn’t nearly as severe as with my first. I got out for a one mile walk, every single day, even on my toughest days. Sometimes, all the relief I got that day was that 20 minutes of moving. I am well into my second trimester and finally past the sickness, and mostly am just so grateful to get to carry life again.

Trey was an early talker (and I am a pediatric speech therapist), so we got to watch his language explode between 18-24 months firsthand. I work with so many children who are delayed, so it’s always shocking for me to see him so far above developmentally average for his age. He started a new preschool/daycare part-time in January 2018, and has absolutely thrived. We are so thankful for all of it: for him, for his teachers, for work I enjoy, for such good care.

After maybe a two year hiatus, I started running again. In April, a group of friends were doing a squat challenge together, and I decided I am not really a squats kind of girl, but I really enjoy walking and running. I joined our thread, and my challenge was running a two mile loop in our neighborhood, a couple times a week. It turned out to be the single most game-changing factor in my motherhood, work, self-care, and overall outlook on life. In May I upped it: I could do either walk one mile, or run two miles, but I had to log at least one mile, every single day. I am so proud to say, from May 1 to December 1, I did it. There were months in the summer where I was stringing together two mile runs consistently, and I was possibly in the best shape of my life (even moreso than when I was running half marathons, because I was doing it so consistently), and then months in the fall where I barely got in a one mile walk when I was so sick. But the fact that I was doing it every single day really helped. It just became part of my daily routine. In total, I logged somewhere between 210 - 420 miles. This is so crazy to me. Possibly my most active year, ever. And I started almost halfway through it.

It’s December now, and the dark, cold, and rain has set in, and many mornings the frost and ice on the ground has made me nervous for a fall while pregnant, so I am not sure how this is going to look in the winter months for me. I do have a gym membership, I just prefer to be outside. The winter is an entirely different conversation for me altogether and I am still working out my plan for this one.

Things we are looking forward to in 2019: welcoming this baby. It’s going to be a big year and I am so excited. I love the baby stage and I loved those early months with Trey and I am so excited and overwhelmingly grateful to get to do it again.

A couple trips are in the works for us and I am really looking forward to those as well. Some pre-baby and some post. I will be taking a longer-than-average maternity leave (for this country) and am grateful for that. Trey will start preschool in the fall. Our house projects will slow. I will spend a lot of time nursing. I am looking forward to all of it.

Thanks for being here. Wishing you a joyous holiday season and great start to your new year.

OUR 2018 CHRISTMAS CARD

Holiday cards! I live for these. Absolutely love them. Love designing them, writing them, getting them, decorating with them, seeing the changes in our family and friends’ families year after year, all of it.

But also, I want to recognize that many things about holiday cards can feel stressful. The photoshoot (if you choose to do one), getting everyone to look at a camera, dealing with the tantrums and emotions of toddlers and/or multiple children and babies, the picking of the photo, the design, the getting the updated addresses, the mailing. It can feel…overwhelming, to say the least, not to mention expensive. I get why people opt out. I have a few tricks up my sleeve to take as much stress out of the holiday card as possible. Here is how that went for us this year:

We traded a photoshoot with a friend (at their generous suggestion, not ours), who is an actual, real-life, full-time, professional photographer. (Thank you, Joe). How I feel about that is this: I tried so hard to return the favor, and good luck editing your batch.

We spent the morning on a ferry ride, and it was mostly just fun to hang out and catch up. We got photos as a bonus, but it did feel very non-stressed, not the point of that Saturday morning. We also happened to get great weather which is kind of like winning the lottery in the late fall in Seattle.

For the design, I went with Postable, who I’ve used before, when Trey was 6 months. (See that card here.) I absolutely love this company and think their concept is so brilliant. I use their (free) address book to keep my addresses up to date throughout the year, and when I need an updated contact I can press one button and it emails my contact for me, and they enter their contact info, saving me mulitple steps. Genius. You can also use their address book without using their cards - just as a way to keep yourself organized.

I picked my design, edited the card, and wrote a little something about our year on the back. That Christmas tree photo was taken at a local Christmas tree farm, and I followed the same formula I usually do to get the majority of our family photos, which goes like this: I bring my big camera and tripod, set the 10 second timer, and run for it. Free photoshoot! We got this in about 5 takes since the battery was dying and the boys were over it. But we got it. Done and done.

The feature I love the most about Postable is not only will they address your cards for you, but they have an option to send them out for you. This saves me hours, and I don’t have to lick a single envelope. Some people love the art of handwriting the addresses and writing a note, and I get that, so you can also choose to have them sent to yourself. But in this season of life, anything that saves me time around the holidays is a win for me.

Love love love these. Happy holidays!

Thank you to Postable for partnering with me on this post.