It always feels weird to wrap up December after doing all my 2019 general recaps and bests-of. Still, so much happens in December that I don’t want to skip the monthly round-up. These always make nice memories to look back on!

Christmas
Since December is pretty much “Christmas Month” in my family, I figured this deserved its own category this month, haha! There have been wonderful and fun things:

• finally getting our Christmas decorations up, even though it was way later than normal
• my Harry Potter advent calendar, with teenie weenie Pocket Pop dolls
• St Nick’s day with the boys
• sending and receiving Christmas cards
• watching PeeWee’s Christmas and Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer
• listening to the most hilarious version of O Holy Night that ever existed
• making sugar cookies, including one I decided to dress up as Prump complete with orange skin, black heart, and “bone spurs” – can’t wait to bite off his head – and also if this silly entry bothers you, sorry not sorry, I never say much political here but I can’t stand the idiot so there you go
• terrible wrapping jobs – we gave up trying to wrap well years ago
• reading the boys’ Christmas stories
• the best new hoodie ever! (Christmas eve gift)
• being out all of Christmas day – at my mom’s house for the morning, then my dad’s in the afternoon, including a hike and a cornhole tournament that Jason and I won
• a few late-arriving gifts, including a Cinderblock mug, Cinderblock hoodie, and an oversized Namaste kitty sweatshirt that is soooo comfy and cozy. I have the best friends and family!

Reading
Because of our move early in the month, I got backlogged on books. I had so many library books come in all at once!! However, I ended up trying and returning most of them, so the load became manageable. Ended up reading three books this month, best of which was definitely Starsight. Beyond that, I got my bookshelves organized at the new house, which was a plus. For two weeks, everything was all jumbled together randomly…

Watching
Um…I meant this to actually have some stuff on here. I meant to watch the Aeronauts, which looks awesome, and I had a ticket to attend Little Women with my hiking group. I also got the Chernobyl series from my library to watch with Jason, and my son checked out both Rocketman and Bohemian Rhapsody. None of it happened. We were too busy to watch any of the movies, and the two from the library were due back. I got sick on Christmas night and had to cancel my ticket to Little Women. Then I found out Chernobyl has a lot of vomiting in it, which is an absolute nope for me, so that was a bust, too. Maybe we’ll see some good movies in January?

House
Obviously, we moved this month. And while our new home has its fair share of problems (little ones the owner didn’t take care of when she had renters in here), there is a lot to love about this place: Carpet in the living room, so I can start running again in a way that is easy on my body. A window seat in the dining room. An island in the kitchen. A shady back deck. A small yard (we’ve had too many large yards!!) with almost no slope. A tree that actually changes color in the fall. Beyond all that, I’ve loved putting together my spaces. Putting my bedroom and the living room together just felt right. Despite all the exhaustion of moving, the entire process felt positive and heartening. It was also wonderful to finally get our previous house on the market. Whew! Fingers crossed it sells quickly.

Health
As I anticipated, any health-related stuff has been on the back burner as we work through changing houses. I did run a 5K midway through the month, and I tried to keep up with exercise as much as I could over the holidays. I joined a group of plus-size women hikers on Meetup and went on several hikes with them over the month. (I was meant to attend some non-hiking activities with them as well, but illness had me cancel them all, boo!) They have been amazing and have definitely encouraged me to think outside my comfort zone. Otherwise, I sadly ended the year sick (for the first time since last January!). At least it waited until after Christmas to flare up, right?

Highlights of December
So many of the happy things this month were wrapped up in different categories above. Christmas always makes me very happy! Some other things that made December lovely:

• our Esperanza finally bloomed – unfortunately, it’s at the old house, heh

• Ambrose accidentally singing “do the hanky panky” instead of the hokey pokey ha!
• getting the release date for the next volume of the Stormlight Archive!
• Laurence wrote a poem about a vampire who couldn’t quench his thirst until Death told him the universal thing that all mortal beings crave: Hawaiian Punch. Ha!
• the Elf Run 5K
• the Jimmy Kimmel wax figure video, which had me laughing for days
• finally getting a dryer after three weeks without one – our previous dryer broke during the move (it was quite old) and then the delivery estimate on our new one kept getting pushed back – and then we had to call in an electrician because the new dryer was wired incorrectly…on and on, but FINALLY I got the laundry done. Whew!
• our 20th anniversary!
• making a running vision board
• bonfire night on NYE with my extended family, and afterwards leaving my boys with grandma so Jason and I could bring in the new year together!

Coming up in January/2020
It’s a new year and a new decade! Perfect for starting new in so many ways. I know it’s cheesy to believe in new starts like this, but I love them. I have plans and goals and books to read throughout the year. Morrigan begins his third new start soon (third time’s a charm!). Jason and my sister Becky have birthdays in January, including Jason’s big 40th. The other two boys are back to school, and I have lots of silly TV shows cued up to watch as I run laps around my new living room. Soon we’ll put the Christmas decorations away – we only kept them up this long because we had to wait so long to put them out! – and it’ll be a fresh start all around. We’re determined to make it a good one in the Gignacery.