My Happiness Project: Week One

For the first week of my project (last week, July 1-7), I picked two things I wanted to create good habits with, then to continue them throughout the rest of my weeks. And forever, obviously.

I felt I kind of HAD to pick "Home," since I'd be moving, unpacking and settling into a new home. 

Naturally, I picked "Marriage" as my second area, because my marriage is my most valued possession. It's so easy to take it for granted, but I don't want to.

So here was my game plan/results:

Home

- Get COMPLETELY unpacked and settled (last time we moved I was still waiting to hang stuff and unpack some things when we moved out. Yikes.)
----> I don't have everything hung, and I'm still moving things around in my pantry and from cabinet to cabinet based on my mood, but I did pretty good!

- It's the little things: close cabinets & drawers, keep closet & pantry doors shut, keep clutter off the coffee table
----> Still working on this through the clutter, but I'm making a conscious effort to scan a room when I leave it and just tidy up a tiny bit - close the doors, turn off the lights, put things back. It makes a difference.

- Don't put anything off that takes less than a minute to do. I unabashedly stole this one from The Happiness Project because it just stuck with me so easily. It just makes sense and it's simple.
----> I actually wrapped up and put my curling iron away you guys. I'm serious.

Marriage

- Pray together before bed. I know. Pathetic that we didn't already do this. We had such different schedules for most of our marriage so far, that we didn't always go to bed at the same time. Now we do, and I wanted to make this a habit.
----> This has made the single biggest difference of anything I've ever tried to do to improve my marriage. Wow. We take turns praying aloud each night and it really is amazing. It means I'm not making to-do lists in my head mid-silent prayer, not falling asleep, not forgetting things I wanted to pray for/about. And it's really made me feel like we're on the same team after a crazy freaking 2 months of chaos.

- Stop criticizing. I'm the worst. Even just little things like "You never take out the trash" said in passing. Where is that getting either of us? No where. So why do I do it? Because I'm the worst. If it helps, I'm also super mean-critical of myself pretty much every second of the day. Doesn't help? Ok.
----> I'm working on making requests, not criticisms or demands. Like "Hey could you please take the trash out after this inning? You are my favorite. Thank you."

- Learn our Love Languages. I'm a big believer in love languages, so I re-read the book this week. It was really interesting to see how different it was from when I read it 2 years ago when we were newly engaged.
----> The Beard is a big quality time language guy. He loves it when I make time to just watch a baseball game or a movie with him, no Pinterest, no books, just cuddles. As a chronic multi-tasker, it doesn't always come naturally. But I'm working on it!
----> I'm an Acts of Service girl. It really means the most to me when he does things that I know he doesn't want to do. He thinks this means what I really love is torturing him. So we're working on that. (GOING TO MOVIES ISN'T TORTURE, RYAN)

- Family Counsel. We sit down, talk about where we're at, how we're doing, what we're worried about, what we need to work on and make a plan. We used to do it a lot when we were first married, and it kind of trickled off, I guess. Welcome back, marriage DTR!!!!
----> We did it! We even took notes and made lists and goals with due dates! We also decided on a family motto - "Do More." Good, right?! We recognized that laziness is so tempting to us, we need to fight it actively.

Overall, I'm pretty pumped after week one. It was a good, doable week and I feel refreshed and happy. The tough part will be continuing with these resolutions as I add new ones each week.

Chaos

Sorry for the radio silence over here people - I sent off my little brother on a mission, went to the East Coast for a week to study the Revolutionary War period (post forthcoming), returned home to pack, moved the next day and here I am, finally with wifi and a second to take a breath.

We're not all the way unpacked at our new place and we were all over celebrating yesterday, and even worse - things are getting really ugly with our previous landlady who we really really liked and is screwing us over. It sucks. I hate confrontation, I hate conflict, I hate betrayal, I'm naive and I expect people to behave in a kind and reasonable way.

My bestie Eliesa pinned this and it just really helped me calm down and get some perspective.

 

We can dwell on the fact that we have had little to no control over our lives since May. We can let our hurt and anger in our landlady situation fester and destroy us. We can whine about our tiny new apartment and our lost deposit money.

But we won't. Life is a bona fide train wreck for us right now, but we have a lot of great things on the horizon. Our new place has a pool! I'm 2 minutes from a Target! My commute to school is like 5 minutes! Our new ward won't be 80% old people! Glen Coco is gonna make some puppy friends!

This Weekend

This Weekend I...

- Packed up approximately 1/3 of my house 

- Saw World War Z (AWESOME)

- Successfully completed the Zombie Chase 5K at 11 pm under the full moon and then

- Had a midnight IHOP date with our favorite double couple, Haley & Chris

- Slept 3 Hours

- Head down to Mapleton for Mitch's 9 am farewell

- Say goodbye to my baby brother for two years (Fukuoka, Japan)

- Come home to pack another third of my house

- Fly to Boston! Leaving the Beard to pack up the remaining third of our house (I get home late Sunday and we move Monday)

Yahtzee. 

I'm a-leavin'... with a moving trailer

I've posted about my new job and plans to move, but now the ball is really rolling. We found the perfect place! It's a brand new, just-finished basement apartment in a gorgeous new house in Draper. We are right by the Draper Temple, and boy do we have an amazing view. The family upstairs is super nice and totally adorable. It's about a 30 minute commute for both me and the Beard (I come down the hill right onto Bangerter and The Beard is only a couple minutes to the Southbound I-15).

Did I mention there is a Kneaders right down the hill?

We move next week. As we start boxing things up and planning the move it's starting to really hit me. We're so blessed and I'm very excited, but this will be new and big for us.

Things I Will Not Miss:

• My creepy Texas Chainsaw Massacre basement
• Driving into Springville or Spanish Fork for a grocery store/pharmacy
• Being 10 minutes from the freeway
• Our 90+ degree house (they didn't believe in air conditioning in the year 1900 when this house was built)
• Being in my home ward... yeah. 
• Dead skunks EVERYWHERE

Things I Will Miss:

• Being 10 seconds from my family
• Aunt Lisa's salsa deliveries
• La Casita, The Trolley, La Dolce Vita, Sammy's, Happy Sumo, Shoots, all of our favorite local places
• A 2 minute commute to work
• The Cocoa Bean with my girlfriends

But this is life right? Moving on, moving up. I've got my Beard. I've got my Glen Coco. Everything is going to be great. :) 

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes!

After Jeanette tweeted obscurely about new life changes, Katie and I got on her case about writing a blog post to update us all on her exciting summer plans. At school and following graduation, I've been getting a lot of questions as well. Our lives have changed dramatically in the past month, so I suppose an update is in order.

I have been interning at Mapleton Junior High as a 9th grade World Civ/Geography teacher for this entire school year. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Education program, basically this means I'm a slave. I have my own room and teach my own stuff  (read: not a student teacher), have to attend a million more meetings and work on two different portfolios, all while getting paid half salary. And the sickest thing about it? I still loved it. :) However, what is less than lovable is that I am not guaranteed a job. Our school lost 3 FTEs and a Geography teacher from another school in the district put in to transfer here. They couldn't hire me. It's been a pretty stressful few months looking for jobs and really just grasping at straws. I used up the remainder of my few personal days to drive all over the state for interviews, checked websites constantly, pulled my hair out....

Finally, I was offered a job at Sunset Ridge Middle School! They are a pretty new school, and they are doing some amazing things. They are a National School-to-Watch, which I think is super cool. I'm really excited to be a part of it. I'll be teaching half 9th Grade Geography and half 8th Grade US History.

In case you haven't already googled it, Sunset Ridge is in West Jordan. Clear the freak out in West Jordan. Like against the copper mine. Like the edge of civilization. It's 70 minutes from where we live right now - hence we have started looking for housing in the Salt Lake Valley!

Conveniently, although scary at the time, The Beard's branch of Online Image in Orem shut down the day after we heard about my new job. They offered him a job at their Murray branch once they move into a new office building with enough space in June. He decided he didn't want to wait around for that job, so he started applying for other jobs. He was offered several and finally settled on Larry H. Miller Dodge/Lincoln in Provo! We're pretty excited about him as a car salesman, especially because he doesn't have to be obnoxious or pushy or deal with the finances at all. He just gets to ride around with people in new cars and make friends. Any of you who know The Beard know how great he'll be at that. :) Also, we're both in the market for new cars... so it couldn't come at a better time!

So my school year ends on Friday, we'll move up to Salt Lake somewhere (any ideas people? We're already liking Daybreak a lot) and The Beard will be able to transfer to one of the 40+ dealerships up north. I'm hopefully going to get a puppy next week when I'm officially free. How cute is that little guy? To think I could have my own... I get to excited just thinking about it. It's working out pretty well.

It will be weird to leave the Valley. It will be sad that I can't just drop in after school to visit my Blade. And family... I guess. :) It will be weird to move somewhere and know no one in the neighborhood. It's weird that  we're actual adults and our lives are changing. This could be a permanent Salt Lake life for us.

But we're so excited! The crazy and rapid turn of events actually relieved us because we can see the Lord's hand in all of it. We're so grateful to still be within an hour of our families, have good jobs and of course, each other! As long as I have The Beard... life is wonderful!