karenika

December Daily 2016 – Day Nine

I finally got some time to catch up on my pages.Day nine was going to David’s school and watching the arts and electives culmination. I got a copy of the program.

I love adding these into my journals.

David performed two Beatles songs: If I Fell and Here Comes the Sun.

and he made this beautiful lantern which depicts scenes from his short story. I love love loved it.

I was grumpy about going to this culmination after a terribly long Friday and realized I would have missed so much had I not gone!

December Daily 2016 – Day Eight

Here’s day eight! I talked about our Jewish Christmas tree today. I will likely have more pages about our tree but I still wanted to make sure to do this one.

Love those blue lights.

I then added a photo of my tree in daylights

it’s a little 5×7 insert.

and then in the back, it’s night:

see you tomorrow! 🙂

December Daily 2016 – Day Seven

Day Seven is all about the cookie decorating party we had at work! I added a page with my photo of my decorated cookie.

a shot of some of the awesome decorations for the back:

I like adding these random pages into the album:

and then in the original day seven page, I put a shot of the whole table and did some journaling. We had this one edible stocking where you could write your name so I snagged one and added that to my page, too.

so grateful for my job!

December Daily 2016 – Day Six

I wanted to commemorate our puzzles for Day Six. We’ve been working on this Harry Potter puzzle for over a week and finally finished it!!

Here’s a single page look:

I’ve been trying to keep it simple this year so it’s still doable.

December Daily 2016 – Day Five

Here’s day five! Every Sunday I go to the farmer’s market to get the boys’ their berries for the week. It is one of my favorite things to do so I wanted to make sure to put it here.

And the little photo on top is from my friend Evelyn’s party. She’s a parent at my son’s school, an amazing writer and she runs the Young Adult book club I go to. Love her!

That’s it for day five 🙂

Living Intentionally – 49

Weekly Intention: Wow, week 49. This year is racing to the end. Last week was crazy busy and gave me less than zero personal time. Including the weekend, which means I didn’t do much of what I wanted to do last week (except for work.) So here’s what’s on my mind for this week:

I did buy some Christmas presents but I’d like to be done with that 100% this week.
I booked us a vacation for a short trip in December I’d like to do a bit of research so we can have a plan for when we’re there.
I’d like to spend some time on my 2017 plans, it feels like I might never get this done.
I’d also like some downtime this week. Some time to sleep, some time to rest, some time to slow down.
Also, we need to buy clothes for our trip to Canada since it will apparently be -20Celcius and living in California, none of us have clothes or shoes for such weather.

Choices I want to make:

One: I will choose to work enough that I don’t worry about work this week. Do what needs to be done.
Two: I will choose to do my December Daily.
Three: I will choose to spend some quiet time with myself. Do journaling. Something to ground myself.

I am looking forward to: enjoying the moments of this week.
This week’s challenges: not that i want to jinx it but nothing looks too terrifying this week. a trip to work, one trip to N’s school, two trips to D’s school, book club. Which sounds like a lot but it’s a quieter week for me, may it stay so. the biggest challenge will be to finish xmas shopping and to get our clothes+shoes for Canada especially since I hate shopping.
Top Goals:

Work: stay on top of email + newsletters + asap do lists. let’s make this happen!
Personal: i almost don’t even want to write make the 2017 plan. maybe just journaling this time?
Family: presents+shopping+slow down and be nice!

I will focus on my core desires (kind, strong, true, generous, brave) by:

I will be kind to Nathaniel this week. I would like to give him a bit extra attention. And help David with math.
I will be strong and get xmas done, wrap all the presents, and buy the warm clothes we need.
I will be generous with our trip, i will relax.
I will be true to myself about my limits. some things will get done, many things won’t. that’s just life.
I will be brave with the shopping. i so hate shopping.

This week, I want to remember: that adventures are good. they are worthwhile. even the ones that don’t work as expected.

Here’s to a wonderful week. Happy December!

December Daily 2016 – Day Four

Here’s day four! Today is all about the Google Holiday Party. There were two sets of photobooth shots I loved from this party. So I put my favorite one on top.

and it flips open to the other one and I also glued our ticket from the Tech Museum and the bracelet we wore to get into the party.

That’s it for day four. I’m already loving this project so much.

Weekly Reflection – 48

Three Choices I made this week:

One: I chose to do a lot of work. At last count, I had 47+ meetings last week. Not to mention the email and todos.
Two: I chose to spend almost all of Thursday at David’s school, volunteering for many hours.
Three: I chose to do fill my weekend up, too, a bit unintentionally but here we are.

I read/learned: I read Crosstalk and Leave Me this week. I have a few books checked out from the library that I don’t want to read but won’t let myself move on which is stupid so I’ve read a lot less than usual this week. I’m almost done with Hungry Heart, too. I watched the last Stanford Election 2016 class and the final OLW presentation. Almost no TV this week. Too much going on.
I celebrate: finishing the Harry Potter puzzle we were working on for weeks. It was a hard one!
I am grateful for: my manager and how supportive he is of me. And all my workmates.
I focused on my health by: nothing. i suck at this.
I made art: december daily is here, yey!
I let go of: getting anything personal done this week. it was a busy work, kids’ schools and commitments week.
Core Desire Check-in:

Kind: I’ve been kind to David’s school this week. I was there for 7+ hours.
Strong: I was strong with work and allllllll those hours of meetings.
True: I was true to my goals for this week. Connecting back at work.
Generous: I was generous with work and David’s school.
Brave: I was brave to show up at the Google Party and my friend Evelyn’s party. Small talk is not my favorite.

Here’s to another good week! 🙂

Weekly Reflection is a year-long project for 2016. You can read more about my projects for 2016 here.

December Daily 2016 – Day Three

Here’s day three. Today is all about Breakfast with Santa which we’ve now done for six years.

The night before was a birthday party Nathaniel attended for his best friend and they sent him home with a lot of balloons.

On the back is our Santa Photo (doesn’t he look so happy?! – not!) and some journaling about what they discussed.

and then some breakfast photos with me and the kids and jake and the kids and then our photobooth photos.

And of course the journaling 🙂

Happy Day Three!

December Daily 2016 – Day Two

Here’s day two! I decided to keep this day light. I loved this photo of the two boys looking over the Nintendo DS so I just snapped it and then wrote a small amount of journaling.

I like the way the page looks and the transparency.

a simple one today 🙂

December Daily 2016 – Day One

Here’s day one! Yesterday was a full day. I started with dropping Nathaniel off and going to David’s school for my regular Thursday volunteer spot. On Thursday mornings, two other parents and I discuss books with 11 3rd and 4th graders. We arrived early and were able to check out the Book Fair for a few minutes and David went to class and I went to reroute the Lit Club kids (we usually meet at the library but it was closed due to Book Fair.) This week’s meeting was our final one for Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy. After the discussion, they went back to class and the three of us walked to the library to do the notes we leave for each kid in their binder. That plus discussing the next two weeks took up most of the time I had left before I was scheduled to work at the Book Fair. I then moved on to learn how to use the cash register and spent the next three hours working there. When I finally left David’s school, I feverishly checked all my email and drove back home in time for a meeting. Two meetings later, I picked up Nathaniel and then rushed back home for another meeting. I had a hair appointment after that so I asked Jake to pick up David and left.

I won’t bore you with the details but the next hour was a mad insane rush of trying to see if Jake could make it to the shuttle stop before David got there (spoiler alert: he didn’t!) and finding another parent who was there so she could hang on to David until Jake could get there. All of this remotely while I was getting my hair done. Fun times. Once David was safely home, I dialed into my final meeting of the day (from the hairdresser no less) and made it back home around 9pm where I pretty much went right to bed. Don’t you feel tired just reading that?

Alas, I decided to make my first day about the morning at school since it was all about volunteering with my kids and how much it means to me. I had more than one photo so I made a little flap and put the Book Fair photo first.

When you open it, you can see the second photo with the two other parents sitting on the floor with me and adding post-its to each kid’s binder. And I wrote my journaling on the other side.

and that’s it for day one! 🙂 Here’s to hoping Day Two is considerably less crazy.

December Daily 2016 – Beginnings

Since I generally lag a day behind for December Daily, I figured a good way to start is posting my initial pages. I will do my best to keep up with this each day and see if I can post, but considering how my schedule is considerably more hectic than usual, we’ll see if I can manage this.

After much deliberation, I decided not to put anything on the cover of my journal yet. The items I put usually fall off over the years so I didn’t want to bother this time. We’ll see if I change my mind by the end of the month. So when you open the album, the first page you see is this:

The first page is an overlay, it’s transparent so you can see the photo below.

here’s a closer look at the snowflake:

when you flip the transparency, you get to this page. I wanted the first thing to be a photo of all of us as of now :

it’s become my tradition to start the album with “and so it begins”: