On the docket this weekend — my peak long run (for the half-marathon I’m running in 3 weeks…), more birthday celebrations, hearing the 17-year-old sing the Star Spangled Banner for an athletic event, and family photos. The photos will be an experience — the 4-year-old already complained about the sweater he will be wearing BUT I know my remembering self will be glad to have these photos, and I’m not sure the 17-year-old will really participate in formal family photos after this. So we should take them.

In the meantime, this week’s content round-up…The Before Breakfast podcast featured an interview with productivity expert Chris Bailey talking about the Rule of 3 and his point system for building good habits. I also suggested (quoting Jodi Wellman) that people “Make bit-sized bucket lists.”

Over at Vanderhacks I preached the virtues of vowing to “Leave the party while you’re still having fun.” Also, thinking about endings, I suggest people “Begin by thinking about the end.” I began a foray into video posting with one called “Send a note to your Future Self.” The (print) post behind the paywall this week was about how to finish the year strong and “Make the most of the next 100 days.” Please consider a free or paid subscription!

Over at the Best of Both Worlds Patreon community we are discussing how much time we spend outside and (in another outdoor-related topic) how we manage bad weather days (i.e. when kids are out of school). If you missed Sarah’s interview with Sam Kelly about how to get kids to notice what needs to be done, you can check it out here.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoy my writing, you might also like my books. I’ve written several on time management topics. The most recent is called Tranquility by Tuesday: Nine Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters. I really enjoyed writing this book about my favorite time management strategies, and what happened when 150 people learned them over nine weeks. Please check it out!

It’s a local move, and we don’t have to be out of the house immediately, so nothing is particularly high stakes. We can come back and get stuff. I’m sure we will. But still — it is a lot of moving parts.

I spent the past week feeling a lot of nostalgia as I took things down from the walls and packed up toys and plants and loose items that would be hard to move.

If the nostalgia was robust, I’m not sure the progress was. Looking back, this was probably not the most efficient process. We split up the family for the post Christmas week. My husband took the four older kids on a ski trip and I stayed home with the toddler (since I don’t really ski and he doesn’t yet — so we’d just be hanging out in a rental house rather than our own house, which has his familiar crib and toys…). I had some childcare, and I used that time to take bins of stuff over to the new house. But I am only so fast, and I am one person. Plus when I did have the toddler with me, moving stuff was painfully slow. Once the rest of the family came home, my husband and I could both load stuff in cars, and the teen/pre-teen children could carry things and unload them and I made as much progress yesterday as I did during the entire week. Moving turns out to be a team sport.

I am telling myself it will all happen eventually. I did record a few more episodes of Before Breakfast, and I did some revisions on the book. I edited emails for the time-tracking challenge that will run from January 10-16. And I spent a lot of time with the toddler. We played with his new toys, read a lot of stories and (yes) watched a lot of Blippi.

The new house wi-fi is definitely up and running so we’ll have that. We’ll see when the address change gets registered with the school district, though, so bus service is unclear. We may wind up driving for a while. The logistics are making my head spin. Well, one day at a time for the first week or two and then I’m sure we’ll get into the groove.

I did not stay up until midnight on New Year’s Eve. I went to bed around 11:15, but then the toddler woke up howling around 12:45, so I guess I rang it in in my own way…

(Though honestly he’s been pretty good about sleep this week — slept through the night most nights, and not too early in the mornings, and I don’t think that would have happened in a rental house, so I’m feeling good about that.)

We had a belated 2-year-old birthday celebration with the other kids last night. We even had half of an ice cream cake sitting in the freezer so we pulled that out for everyone to have a few bites. The little guy managed to blow out his candle quite well and is getting the concept of opening presents (though he had a lot of help there…all the other children seemed to want to help him!)

I have read about half-way through Twelfth Night in my Shakespeare reading project! I hope anyone who started reading War and Peace has enjoyed the first few chapters….