{"id":118,"date":"2011-01-04T08:08:05","date_gmt":"2011-01-04T08:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/10.131.168.108\/wordpress\/?p=118"},"modified":"2011-01-04T08:08:05","modified_gmt":"2011-01-04T08:08:05","slug":"four-days-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/2011\/01\/04\/four-days-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Four Days In"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s already four days into 2011. &nbsp;So I guess this is my &#8220;Happy New Year&#8221; post. &nbsp;Sorry it&#8217;s a little late!<\/p>\n<p>I hope you all had a marvelous holiday and New Year celebration. &nbsp;Our weekend was pretty much&#8230;um&#8230;uneventful. &nbsp;We did not stay up until midnight. &nbsp;We did not spend New Years with anyone but our little family. &nbsp;We had no plans or big dinners or parties or anything. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And it was really relaxing, for the most part. &nbsp;Eric worked on his new hobby: baking. &nbsp;He made three kinds of bread and tried making crackers over the weekend. &nbsp;I guess it&#8217;s not a bad thing that he went back to work today&#8230;we&#8217;d have to start a bakery and sell what he made if he was home much longer! &nbsp;As for the rest of us, the kids played and generally enjoyed our attention. &nbsp;I have started on a new writing project and did laundry and caught up some of my chores. &nbsp;I got to go grocery shopping all by myself on Saturday. &nbsp;And we enjoyed a more relaxed&nbsp;Sunday morning because our church did a single 10 am service instead of two morning services. &nbsp;So, overall, it was a really nice weekend.<\/p>\n<p>As for things like resolutions&#8230;I don&#8217;t really make them. &nbsp;But I have started my pen-n-paper journal again which I do at bedtime. &nbsp;I realized how much I missed doing that because it lets me decompress and pour out my day before I go to bed, thus helping me sleep better (usually). &nbsp;And while it often does overlap with this blog or my FB updates, I think it&#8217;s just good to empty my head of all my crap at least once a day. &nbsp;It makes for a less stressed Shannah&#8230;and that is always a good thing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m also trying to just focus more on the Good News. &nbsp;My MIL&#8217;s pastor made a point the day after Christmas that has really stuck with me. &nbsp;If I don&#8217;t tell people about Jesus&#8230;it&#8217;s most likely because I&#8217;ve stopped seeing Him and the gospel as &#8220;GOOD NEWS&#8221; &#8211; it&#8217;s become an agenda, a checklist, an academic exercise. &nbsp;But it isn&#8217;t good news anymore. &nbsp;So this year, I want to regain the sense of just how good that good news is&#8230;for myself&#8230;every day. &nbsp;And then, I&#8217;m hoping God uses that to inspire me to be more eager to share that good news with those around me &#8211; Christian and not. &nbsp;So that&#8217;s my sense for where the year is starting out. &nbsp;We&#8217;ll see how it goes. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And, since it&#8217;s been been a few days since I blogged, I thought I&#8217;d include a &#8220;normal life&#8221; update as well&#8230;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Megan is really moving forward these days. &nbsp;She&#8217;s added laughing and grabbing to her repertoire recently. &nbsp;She was actually pulling the loop that makes the music play when she was in her bouncy seat yesterday. &nbsp;It took me a minute to realize that Erin wasn&#8217;t doing it for her! &nbsp;And we did get her on video laughing. &nbsp;Maybe I&#8217;ll try to post that&#8230;since baby laughter is one of the best things in the entire world!<\/p>\n<p>So Alex was up again last night. &nbsp;I realize that is not necessarily unusual. &nbsp;But this time&#8230;he was laughing and playing and bouncing in his crib like he was waking up from a nap, not awake in the middle of the night. &nbsp;In fact, when I heard him, I thought it must be like 5 in the morning. &nbsp;Nope&#8230;midnight. &nbsp;Thankfully, they both laid right back down when I told them to (he&#8217;d gotten Erin up by that time), and I covered them with their blankets and went back to bed. &nbsp;I didn&#8217;t hear much else. &nbsp;But still&#8230;it was little weird to be woken up by laughing, not crying!<\/p>\n<p>I got $75 in gift cards for Christmas. &nbsp;I think I&#8217;m going to spend them on clothes. &nbsp;Now if I can just get to a store sans children&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>We went to Home Depot yesterday. &nbsp;You know&#8230;I can remember being dragged to stores like that by my parents when I was a kid and HATING it. &nbsp;But now&#8230;I get surprisingly excited about buying a new garbage can (for taking to the curb) and lightbulbs for our halogen stand lights. &nbsp;I guess I&#8217;ve officially become an adult!<\/p>\n<p>And on one final note&#8230;as much as I love having Eric home (and I do), I am very much looking forward to getting back to a normal routine. &nbsp;So, on that note, I think I&#8217;ll get my day started and see where it goes! &nbsp;Happy Tuesday!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s already four days into 2011. &nbsp;So I guess this is my &#8220;Happy New Year&#8221; post. &nbsp;Sorry it&#8217;s a little late! I hope you all had a marvelous holiday and New Year celebration. &nbsp;Our weekend was pretty much&#8230;um&#8230;uneventful. &nbsp;We did &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/2011\/01\/04\/four-days-in\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}