Workouts, Wake ups, and Writing

What worked (and totally flopped) in 2024

January is meant for reflecting, and I love spending the entire first month of the year doing just that. Every January around our wedding anniversary (eight years this month!), Joseph and I sit down and set goals for the year with a dream date (you can find out more with Steph Weinert’s template here).

It usually takes us a few date nights to work through each category of goals, but at the end, we have goals as individuals, as a couple, and as a family in the following categories: Faith, family, finances, fitness, food, and fun.

Throughout the years, this dream date has sparked conversations about everything from reading together as a couple to the way that we make lunch after Mass on Sundays. Those goals have motivated us to host friends for dinner, go on date nights, and spend time on retreat. We’ve even moved our TV downstairs and rearranged our front room as a listening / dancing room after setting a goal of quality family time without screens.

Hilariously, last year we must have gotten a little burnt out on goal setting (or just distracted) because there were no goals under the “fun” category. However, I think we managed to have a lot of fun in 2024! And we also had some total flops.

I loved reading

Ashlee Gadd

and

Katie Blackburn

reflect on their year and their writing inspired me to sit down this afternoon and do the same. Here’s a quick look back on what worked (and what didn’t!!) this past year:

What worked in 2024

Working out and gaining weight. After a disastrous relationship with food in my early twenties, I was ready to experience healing and approach nutrition and working out in a way that honored my season of life and my story. I’ve been underweight for almost a decade, but before last year I’ve never gotten serious about reaching a healthy weight. My goal was to work out consistently (at least twice a week) and gain twelve pounds over the course of the year.

There are two things that made it possible for me to reach that goal in a healthy way. First, protein. I listened to this podcast and made it a goal to eat 1 gram of protein for every pound of body weight every day. In the beginning, that was a real challenge. With practice, it’s become a lot easier (hello MEAT). I snack on a lot of nuts, eggs, and greek yogurt. This upcoming year I want to nail a protein ball recipe and have some stocked in the freezer.

The second tool that made this goal possible this year was the Chelsea Method workout app. I knew I needed to find a way to workout during the day with my kids running around. This workout plan sends a five minute video each day right to my phone. It also comes with a group chat feature, where other moms keep you accountable to your goals. Since I got serious about working out, I’ve logged over almost 2,000 minutes of movement. I started out barely being able to get in a work out a day. Now I’m working out twenty minutes a day consistently. The kids love it (there are mom-and-me workouts, too!) and ask me when I’m working out. That’s motivating!

Waking up. This past year, I set the goal of waking up before our kids. In an ideal world, I would wake up, take a shower, pray, drink a cup of coffee, and work out before the first kid started stirring. But my kids are early risers, so that means I have to wake up at 5am to get all of that in. Most days I’m up around 5:30am and get to the “drink a cup of coffee” part of the routine before Ada joins me on the couch begging for breakfast. I’ve also roped Joseph into the early wakeups (most days) and I love spending time with just him before the kids are up for the day.

Reading. I’ve led a Well Read Mom book club for the past three years and I love how it makes the goal of reading a book a month totally possible. But it’s also helped me build the habit of reading, which has made picking up additional books simpler.

Favorites this past year included Saint John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation, True Grit, Hannah Coulter, The Wind in the Willows, Peace Like a River, How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told, and The Funeral Ladies of Ellerie County.

Date nights. I thought that bringing home a medically complex little one would make date nights rare, if not next-to-impossible. But we connected with a local Catholic nurse who our kids love and she’s made a monthly date night (out of the house! Dinner! Rock climbing! Thrift store browsing!) possible! It’s not just that we totally trust her with all of our kids. It’s that each month, she shoots me a text with a list of dates she’s available and all I have to do is pick one. Amazing. Total gift.

Front yard gardens. We wanted to make gardening and eating locally grown produce part of our family culture this year—and putting our garden in the front yard made a big difference. Previously, we had a small garden in the backyard. When we moved the garden to the front yard, it meant that we looked at it every morning out the front window. We also walked by it every time we rode bikes or left the house on a walk. That made things like watering and weeding a much more natural addition to our morning routine.

Another change that made a big difference in the success of the garden was planting some things I’d talked about for a while, mainly some cut-and-come-again flowers. I ended up with dahlias and zinnias this past year, and it was such a joy to have little bouquets all over the house in the late summer. We also loved herbs like basil, mint, and parsley! And cherry tomatoes, kale, and arugula were a huge hit.

Family vacation. We took our first family vacation with all the kids last year. We packed the car and drove everyone down to Florida for time at the beach. Then the kids and I were able to tag along during Joseph’s work trip to Georgia and stretch our vacation time out even more. I was a bit nervous to travel with all the kids, but they did fantastic in the car and we had so much fun exploring new places together. We don’t have any trips planned this upcoming year, but I’d love to do another road trip with all the kids again sometime soon. It’d be a total dream to get them all passports and try an international trip someday!

Ice cream. There were so many amazing ice cream runs with our kids this year. We have a new coffee/ice cream shop up the road that employees people with disabilities and we biked up there this summer. Then another one of our favorite local ice cream shops opened a location close to us and we’ve shamelessly frequented it for baptism anniversaries, birthdays, and just-because outings. Oh! And I can’t forget the gelato spot we found after an afternoon at the art museum. It’s just become a lovely Langr tradition to grab ice cream together to celebrate everything—big and small.

What totally flopped in 2024

Scheduled quality time with our kids. One of our goals as a family was to spend one-on-one time with each kid once a month. It didn’t have to be fancy, it just meant grabbing a kid for some quality time while we ran errands on the weekend or went on a walk during the week. In the beginning of the year, we did great at this. But as the year progressed and the school year started up, we just got less intentional. I’m looking forward to focusing on this goal again in the new year.

Finding a rhythm as a dog owner. Poor Bishop. Our 2.5 year old golden retriever is getting better and better at not being an absolutely insane nut. However, we haven’t been the most consistent about setting expectations for him around the house. Some days he’s given a little bit of freedom and we let him out to play and gnaw on a bone in the living room. Other days, he hangs out in the kitchen behind some baby gates.

There was a few weeks this spring that I took him for a walk every morning, but that got derailed by summer schedules (or lack thereof). The more he’s out and about in the house and playing with our kids, the more enjoyable he’s getting. I’d love to get better about letting him have consistent time on the main level of the house this upcoming year (and work on getting back into a daily walk routine, which was good for both of us).

Screen time. Screens are hard. And I made some huge shifts in the way that I approach my phone: It’s in black-and-white mode all the time, I have no internet browser, and I took email off of it entirely. BUT I still spend more time online than I’d like. Getting curious about when I reach for my (very dumb-downed phone) is something I want to focus on in 2025.

Decannulation. We started out the year confident that William was going to be able to decannulate (have his trach removed) by summer. But a surprise airway collapse in the spring meant another year of no baths (he takes a sponge bath and I wash his hair in the sink), swimming pools, splash pads, or leaving the house without a suction pump over my shoulder. Right now, having a trach is what’s best for Will, and surrendering to the Lord’s will for that has been a long journey this past year.

We’re hopeful that decannulation is still possible, but the path forward involves a big reconstructive surgery that comes with substantial recovery time. Please keep William in your prayers—and us as well.

Decluttering. Gracious, I have such lofty goals for this each year. I tend towards minimalism, but every January I want to spend a day for each room, purging as I go. This year I want to be better at stopping the clutter before it gets to the house. Ironically, I’m the worst at this with my thrift store browsing and Buy Nothing group finds! I need to create some criteria that help me navigate whether something really needs to come home with me.

Writing. I love Laura Kelly Fanucci’s reflection on Marilynne Robinson’s thoughts on writing. When someone asked her why there was a twenty-five year gap between the publication of her first and second novel, Marilynne responded: “I didn’t stop writing. I had children. Each child was a book I didn’t write.”

There is a crew of absolutely beautiful, hilarious, clever, and sometimes disregulated children running around this house and they are a total gift to myself, my family, and this world. Even though they’re hungry every five minutes most days.

Saying “yes” to each one of them has meant saying “no” to many, many writing projects this year: books, freelance opportunities, speaking invitations, volunteer writing work, collaborations…the list goes on and on.

I simply don’t have the time I used to have for writing. And committing to the opportunities I said “no” to this year wouldn’t have been to the service of myself, my marriage or my children.

However, I can still carve out time to write (and my family witnesses me naming writing as something that matters!). But it’s more like writing a podcast show note page every other week or typing up monthly newsletter.

This season of intense parenting of little kids won’t last forever, as many strangers remind me while I browse the aisles of Costco. But I know they’re saying it because it’s true. One day, I’ll wake up at 7am instead of 5am and still have a quiet house, an open notebook to write in, and little interruptions. And I have a feeling I’d wish for the little years with all of the little problems and little needs back in a heartbeat.

My theme for 2024 was to savor—to be truly present to the present moment and not wish it would go faster. I think it’s a theme I’m going to, dare I say, savor for this year, too.

Thank you for reading along in 2024! I can’t wait to keep sharing my writing with you in 2025.

In His Sacred Heart,

Chloe