What I focused on in December
1. Christmas
2. Family
3. Editing Oh, the joys of editing! 🙂
Birthday Challenge and Dream List Update
Birthday Challenge
Read 23 Non-Ficton books – I read 6
Write 23 book reviews – I wrote 6
Dream List
* Eat kettle corn – 12-19-14 At the Creation Museum Christmas Town
*Read twenty books in a month
Reading Update
Fiction:
18
Non-Fiction
6
Me last month: I only read three non-fiction books in two months? I think I’ll try for four or five of them in December. Nice…
I also wrote six reviews.
Needless to say, I did a large amount of reading this month. It was good. It was busy. It was fun. My reading spree started on a road trip where I had a lot of car time. {So very, very thankful I don’t get carsick!} Between the 23rd and 27th I read eleven books.
Traveling
In December I was only gone for 3 nights. That’s the second most I’ve been home any month this year. (In June I was only gone one night!)
States I was in: Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio.
New States I was in: None
What I’ve been Learning this Month
How to play that^ game. It’s amazing. Fun. Challenging. Strategic. My brother and sister-in-law got it for our family for Christmas and we played our first game on the 26th. I think we’ve played around 12 games in the last three days and I’ve played every single one of those games. It’s intense, people. Like, to the point where yesterday we realized that all five of the players were standing up, tensely watching the action. I’m a great enjoyer of board games and so Christmas time with lots of family and board games makes me very, very happy.
Ok, so what I’ve been learning for real this month: I’ve been reviewing this year for the last several days and working on my goals for next week. All that’s going to go into my 2014 review though, so I don’t think I’ll go into it here. So, y’all will just have to wait.
What I’ve been reflecting on though is this: God is able to do amazing things through seemingly un-amazing people. We’re each created for a purpose. And those hard times we go through? He can use those, too.
Plus, of course, the wonderful, generous, fantastically loving way Jesus came to earth as our Savior. I am so very thankful for that!
Other Things
A little over halfway through the month I finally got my new phone! After going for over a month without my own phone (my amazing dad let me borrow his when I needed one) it’s been incredible to have a phone back. So many books to read, music to listen to, and pictures to take. I’m so thankful for my mom and brothers for all the work they did to help with my phone.
I started a five day juice cleanse on December 26th. So far it’s been… Interesting. (Up there^ are some of the juices on the cleanse.) I can’t say that I’ve actually been hungry since I started it, but man, it sure is hard at times! We still have all our holiday festivities going on and I know I would be eating way too much food if I hadn’t decided to do this cleanse. My hope is to start out 2015 with my body brimming with health instead of slogged down with junk. (Check out the cleanse here.) They said the first three days are the hardest, and I’m on day four, so today should be good. I wanted to do it longer than five days, but with my upcoming trip to Africa, I don’t think it’s very feasible.
My “identical twin” Incredibly long inside story there, folks! from South America was able to come and visit our family for a couple of days with some of her family, so that was really great! And, getting to go to the Creation Museum with her was great!
Over all, getting to spend copious amounts of time with family this month has been more than amazing. I love my family stupendously. They’re fun, encouraging, helpful, loving, sweet, ornery, kind, generous, quite competitive and just all around wonderful.
And board games. Board games, people. I don’t think I ever grow tired of them. The hardest part is holding myself back because sometimes I get so um… crazy, that my family won’t play with me any longer. So far, I’ve been able to contain myself reasonably this season.
So, what about you? What have you been up to in December?
Noveltea 
Wow. I haven't commented on here in a REALLY long time. I'm glad that you had a good month. I think that game pictured above was “Ticket to Ride”? We love that game! It's a lot of fun!
I hope you have a great week!!
-Bekah
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I think to answer your question I would really have to start a blog of my own. Lacking the time for that, I must say that December has been so busy that I feel a little relieved to see the end of it! But January is coming, and it promises to be almost as busy, if not on the level! It has a way of making me look forward to the rest we will have in Heaven. I'm glad you had such a good, at home month. You will have to show us that game sometime when we visit again!
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You've been busy. December has been busy for me too. I hosted a gift-wrapping party, traveled to Texas and back for the holiday and now I'm on a movie watching spree. Santa was good.
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Hello AIdyl! I just discovered your blog today! Sounds like you have had a busy December!
I look forward to reading more from someone who has the same first name as I do (and uses it backwards like I often do!!)!
Feel free to visit my blog, on which I go by the name Kelpie, not my real name, Lydia. 😉
http://www.createdbythecreated.blogspot.com
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