New

New year, new goals.

What are you most looking forward to in 2013? I am turning 29 this year. Our son is turning one in August. It’s not unrealistic to think that I could be pregnant this time next year. (Though, if it were up to just me, I’d happily wait until 2015!) I’m looking forward to growing as a person and getting stronger at the box. Working on my writing and maybe even running a race. I’m ecstatic about watching Dillinger grow and turn into a little boy this year, even though he will still be a baby a year from now…

Who knows what this year will hold? Joy or tragedy? Goodness or pain? Like every other year, most likely a little of both. But I am looking forward to it.

My goals for this year.

1) Not to buy any more tee shirts. I own WAY too many. It’s ridiculous. This was my goal for 2012 however, I got pregnant and tee shirts are essential to pregnancy survival.

2) To read a book every two weeks or the equivalent thereof. (I noticed that David Hoang has the same goal!) Super excited about this one. Starting with The Historian. :)

3) To get to the box 5x/week by October. (Yikes!)

4) Be the best wife and mom I can be.

Ok, so 4 is a cop out right? Ha! I need more specifics on that one. More on that when they come, I’m sure.

Looking forward to a fantastic year!

I know resolving to make yourself better can often be setting yourself up for failure but at the same time, no one ever built a house without a plan. Do you have any goals or resolutions for 2013? I’d love to hear them!

Friday Love: Joy (And Bling)

I’m obsessed with my Christmas present. In fact, I don’t think I have been this excited about a gift in several years. Possibly ever. Santa was good to me. Or my husband thought I deserved a push present. (He deserves a new car for the trauma of watching, I guess? I will work on that!) Whatever the case, I am a happy girl.

Of course, I would have been happy with NO presents. I have an amazing marriage and beautiful little boy who charms me daily. We have our health and I’m one of those lucky mommas who gets to stay home with her baby. Currently, I am enjoying a glass of wine and watching one of my favorite movies. I’m beyond content. We don’t have everything we want but we have far more than we need. We deserve hell. Anything beyond that is the grace of God.

We are grateful.

What are you loving this last Friday of 2012?

Thoughts From The Old Folks Home…

I love Dr Thomas Sowell. Probably an odd thing to say about an old man who I have never met but it is true. I could say I love his work but I feel like that doesn’t make the point clearly enough.

As I said, I have never met him though Nick and I have discussed grabbing a few people and roadtripping down to Palo Alto to do so. It’s definitely on my bucket list. He’s currently 82 and teaches economics at Stanford. (Between him and Condoleezza Rice, Stanford is by far my favorite Ivy League school.) Dr Sowell is forever sharing little bits of wisdom so I thought I would pass them on to you.

Enjoy.

—

They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. But maybe the old dog already knows about the tricks that only seem new to the young – and doesn’t think much of those tricks.

The old are not really smarter than the young. It is just that we have already made the mistakes that the young are about to make, so we already know that these are mistakes and what the consequences are.

People who talk about “earlier and simpler times” are usually too young to remember those times – and how complicated they were.

You would think that young people, with decades of life ahead of them, would look further ahead and plans for the future more so than older people. But it is just the opposite. The young tend to be oriented to right now, while old times think about the future of their children and grandchildren, and worry about where the country is heading in the years ahead.”

Nothing is more ridiculous than discounts for senior citizens, when people in their sixties have far more wealth than people in their thirties.

There are no dead end jobs. There are only dead end people.

—

I feel as though I need to point out that Dr Sowell would find the title of my blog amusing not insulting. Especially considering the fact that he does not live in a home and is still working full time.

All the above quotes were taken from The Thomas Sowell Reader, Basic Books, 2011.

Random Thoughts (Which are usually offensive?)

I offend people a lot. I don’t view this as an asset though I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t sometimes enjoy it. I really need to work on being more positive and kind and less… abrasive.

Found out recently that in some places, you can recent cash from the government if your child is diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. In a country run by perverse incentives, all I will say on this matter is that it will be very difficult to find a cure if many of the children who have autism don’t actually have autism. (The Thomas Sowell Reader, 2011)

I find it highly comical that a company would send out an email on Christmas Day with the headline “Happy Holidays”. Is the concept of Christmas so offensive that we can’t even type the word? Maybe we should just shortcut all this silliness and turn Christmas into a swear word. “Damn it to Christmas, you fool!” Yeah. I could get behind that usage… ;)

The furniture we’ve purchased via Craigslist is way nicer than the pieces we have picked up at Ikea and Target. I  used to hate the concept of buying things used (exception for cars) but buying something of poor quality because it’s never been used by anyone doesn’t make a lot of sense to me anymore.

Currently, I am eating whatever I want whenever I want it. I can barely maintain my present weight (about a pound over pre-baby weight) and milk supply. Dear everyone looking for a magic diet pill: It’s called CrossFit and breastfeeding. You’re welcome!

(Christmas Abbott, stolen from the Progenex website.)

This year in the UK, the 10th most requested Christmas gift was “a dad”. I know a lot of guys who want to get married someday and I hope they are paying attention to this. Father figures needed. It’s a job that will empty your bank account, frustrate you beyond belief and have rewards that will live on long after you are gone.

“Despite the problems that come with aging, I would not be a teenager again for $1,000 a day plus expenses.” – Dr. Thomas Sowell

Merry Christmas Part 2!!

Love, The Douglass Family

Christmas Traditions

I know it’s childish of me but I am not a big fan of tradition.

Growing up, we had LOADS of Christmas traditions. I mean buckets full. Let me list just a few.

Every year we went downtown to have our picture taken with Santa. I think my last Santa pic was when I was 24, despite being promised my entire life that I would no longer be obligated to sit on Santa’s lap past 18. At this point, Santa gets excited to see us. GROSS.

We put up the tree the day after Thanksgiving. My mom has two trees. One we were allowed to decorate and one we weren’t allowed to touch. I have a similar level of OCD surrounding our tree but we don’t have enough ornaments yet for it to really matter. Dillinger will be experiencing a lot of wrath next Christmas when he starts breaking my ornaments. KIDDING, they are all from Target and Pottery Barn. In short, easily replaced.

The first two weeks of December were spent singing in Portland Christian Center’s Christmas choir. Which was and still is spectacular. Especially considering the fact that these events are free!

Christmas Eve my uncles come over and watch It’s A Wonderful Life with my family. I never loved the film and frankly, the only movies I can watch more than twice involve wizarding education, Hobbits or a few hundred Spartans in loin cloths. Oh, and Vulcans. Otherwise, I’ll pass. I really wish I enjoyed the movie but it really just doesn’t do it for me. Something about the lack of CG… no, I think it’s a little depressing for the most part. I don’t like depressing movies.

Christmas morning, my mom takes a picture of us with every single individual gift we opened, using her digital camera. I’m not entirely sure where these pictures go. I would be willing to wager that my father has set up several hard drives containing only Christmas photos. My mom used to make the best breakfast from scratch that you’ve ever had but I guess 30 years of making Christmas breakfasts with zero thanks really isn’t that enjoyable. Who knew?

Lastly, on Christmas afternoon, already bored out of our minds, we would round up any friends who were free and go to the movies. Two years ago we went to the Bradys’ instead – family friends for almost 20 years – which was admittedly far more enjoyable than Black Swan. (Gag me.)

So now I have my own family! YEAH. And what are our traditions?

I have to be honest. I don’t really want any. I’m kind of tradition-ed out. I haven’t asked but I’m pretty sure my mom had so many Christmas traditions because her parents didn’t have them. And here I am being a brat, not wanting any because I had so many! There’s no way to say for sure. Maybe in ten years we’ll have created loads of traditions. Perhaps ten years from today, Dillinger and I will be sitting on the couch watching The Lord of Rings just like we are now. Who knows? I’ll happily develop traditions if he wants. If he doesn’t care, we probably won’t.

Here are a few years of Williams family Christmas photos for your enjoyment.

Weekend Recap

House is a mess but it’s our Monday. Both my guys are asleep so there’s a few minutes to blog.

Dillinger is learning new things every day and reacting to things he hasn’t noticed before. Makes me happy.

 

Finished Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Finally. Loved it. Highly recommended.

Picture of us in the Glass family Christmas letter.

We went for a walk along the Yakima River yesterday. It was barely above freezing out but lovely nonetheless.

Every year my mom dragged us to see Santa at Meier and Frank (now Macy’s) downtown Portland. She said we could stop going after we graduated from high school but that turned out to be false and she expects us to be there STILL. (My youngest sister is 20.) In protest my sisters dressed as hookers to the photo. They are my heroes.

Happy Almost Christmas!

So Long, Seattle

This post is very clearly late, as in the chaos of moving to Oregon and then back to Washington in 8 weeks, it never saw the light of the internet. But it is a short summary of my thoughts on our move to Yakima.

—

When I first moved to Seattle, I was pretty stoked. I’d talked about moving to Seattle for years and when I finally had the opportunity, I jumped on it. It didn’t hurt that I met my husband ten days later.

Seattle has been my favorite city for a long time. Probably since high school. It was like a fancier, prettier, bigger version of Portland. There was lots to do, lots more people, more opportunity and so on. I loved the mountains, the water, the handful of perfectly warm, summer days.

But there was a lot not to love, of course. The weather, the traffic, the cost of living all sucked. There are plenty of free things to do but finding parking for those events was downright oppressive. There were so many people, and maybe some of my naivety is gone because I really didn’t feel comfortable by myself downtown. (I do not feel terribly comfortable by myself downtown Portland nowadays, either.) Our community group was about 4 1/2 miles away and it took us 30 minutes to get there. So much of it was ridiculous.

All that to say, I do not think Seattle is my favorite town anymore. I don’t have a favorite town at this moment if we’re going to be 100% honest. And I wouldn’t be opposed to moving back to Seattle in the future under the right conditions. But for now, I am happy to be a small town girl in eastern Washington.

Photo by my friend Jeremy Echols. Harbor Island, Seattle, WA

Thursday Hateday ;)

Trying some new ideas with video. I’m such a huge technotard but I’m trying to change that so bear with me? I’d really appreciate it. Here’s my little rant for the week!

Throwback Thursday

Wow.

So these pictures should have been posted a long time ago. 12 months ago, to be exact. But I had SO much morning sickness – all day sickness, really – and was constantly exhausted and miserable. So that did not happen.

Initially, Taylor, Abbey, Sarai and I had planned to drive around the Olympic Peninsula. But it was January and the weather didn’t exactly cooperate. But we had a lot of fun finding oddly named roads, getting pulled over for going to slow in the passing lane but too fast for the conditions (really), eating lunch in Port Angeles and taking the ferry back to Edmonds. Man. I miss Seattle.

Anyway.
Without further ado, Throwback Thursday. At Dungeness Recreation Area outside of Port Angeles, WA

Needless to say, it was quite windy on the Strait of Juan de Fuca that day. :)