why january lasted a year

I mean…am I right or am I right?
This January feels like it has lasted for 75 days.
And I am ready to move on!

Surely you’ve seen a dozen memes that make light of how January has dragged on and on and on and on this year. January is the month where most of the world creates a new set of resolutions, a different work out plan, a healthier way to eat or even just a new word to live by this year (that’s MY personal favorite). By February 1st we’re exhausted, have given up or feel like the month has taken FOR-EVER to get through.

But here’s the thing…
Let’s go back a beat…

The last six weeks of the year are spent in a dizzying array of Thanksgiving plans, holiday decorating, cookie parties, gift giving, company parties, family travel plans, Christmas, Hanukkah and any other holiday you’re celebrating and THEN we top it off with New Years Eve. It’s the most wonderfully busy time of year and I am so here for it. Allow me to share what just a portion of ours looked like…

This year we celebrated Christmas with four of our six kids home and then took our annual adventure to Yosemite. With road closures and diversions it only took us two days and a four hour stint absolutely stuck deep in mud and snow ON A DIRT ROAD late at night but we finally made it there for a night.

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After Yosemite we spent a few days in San Francisco at the work apartment and visiting with the grandparents and aunties. It was a blast! Watched New Years Eve fireworks thirteen stories up in the city and then piled in the car yet again for our long drive home on New Years Day…that’s when the real fun happened!

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New Years day my oldest brought his fiance home for the first time, our 23 year old came home with her boyfriend from Sacramento and our 21 year old daughter and her boyfriend came home. For four days and nights we had ten of us under one roof and it was one of the best times I can remember having together. We played games, made tamales, played basketball, did a tourist trip to Hollywood and showed the fiance the pacific ocean. But my favorite by far was the firepit on the last night. Looking around at the incredible human beings we’ve had a hand in raising and watching them joke, love on and tease one another was pure joy.

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And then January 6th the kids went back to school and all went back to normal. Or at least in theory. That’s when we should be jumping into new routines, developing new habits, running into 2020 like our lives depended on the momentum we gathered in January.

But now that it’s coming to an end what it really felt like was a transition month. We spend so much time getting ready for the holidays, planning them out and enjoying them that as moms I feel like we need a moment to reset. My month was full of cleaning up and clearing out. (And if you, too, still have a pile of stuff you don’t know where to put after the holidays just sitting on a corner table somewhere-I salute you!)

I took time to figure out what type of morning and evening routines I could incorporate to make my life a little more streamlined. I tinkered with the gym and running but also wound up with strep throat and did a fair amount of resting. We all jumped back into life on January 6th but we did it with a mentality of shifting. If I had added a new workout routine, eating plan and exciting new goals I would have felt like it lasted a year and I would be wiped OUT. But instead I feel rested, ready to start getting things done, like (most) everything is in its place and a lot of the laundry is done…because let’s be real…

It’s a transition. It’s owed some honor and respect. As we move into what’s honestly a rather contrived notion of new year, new me can we allow for the reset, the recovery and the transition to the new calendar? Because honestly at this point, while I’m glad it’s over, I’m grateful it looked a little different this year and I’m ready and excited to turn the calendar to February and enjoy that month full of hope, not with broken resolve but with joy and anticipation for what this year will bring.

To transitions!
And to your January being over.
Cheers, my friends…