A Season of NEW

{The Hank Man on Christmas Eve with my brother}

Christmas is past, so let the New Years posts commence.  Much like everyone's frantic New Year's Resolution flock to the gym, it is my duty as a blogger to write a New Years post, amiright?  I figured I needed to get this post done sooner rather than later, since one of my New Year's Resolutions will be to be more on top of things.

Done and done.

I not-so-secretly HATE New Year's Eve.  For some reason, I find it extremely depressing.  I don't know if it is because high school and college were filled with some pretty crappy New Year Eves.  Whatever the reason, I despise it.  Henry kind of gives me an excuse to maintain my low-key ways.  I am hoping we can get some take-out, rent a movie, and go to bed early and perhaps Henry will start the 2014 off by sleeping through the night.  A new mother's dream.  :)

It's also not a secret that the last couple of years have been nothing short of a challenge for Phil and I. 2011 was filled with trying to have a baby and then trying to find out if I had cancer.  2012 was the year I dealt with cancer.  2013 made me a mother and we lost Phil's dad.  I don't hate the last few years for being hard.  The challenges made me grow as a person and helped to build a strong foundation for Phil's and my marriage.

However, I'm hoping for a low-key year.

I'd like a year with few major life changes.  No health crises.  Perhaps a year of not meeting my insurance deductible.

I'd like a year that we aren't functioning in full stress crisis mode.  A year where we can sit and relax and enjoy this life we are building together.

I want to sit and play with Henry without feeling major life events looming over me.  I want to find the joy in taking care of my husband, son and puppies.

But I think what I am most excited about, is I want to discover what I'm about again.  I used to LOVE doing so many things.  Cancer and pregnancy helped rob me of my motivation to do the things I love.  Now I'm not even sure what those things are anymore.

Because I am not the same person anymore.  The last few years have REALLY changed me.  Part of it is that I am emotionally different now.  I deal with things a lot differently now.  But I am physically missing my thyroid.  I have heard horror stories from people post thyroidectomy that their energy levels never get back to what they once were.  I need to find my new normal.

For the first time in a few years, I am hopeful.  I have a sense of peace about this next year.

So Phil and I are preparing to say good-bye to 2013, and cheers to a happy, healthy 2014.

Happy New Year!

2012/2013

I was going to do a nice little recap of 2012 and post it New Year's Eve, but Phil and I have been crazy busy the last few days.  I'm not even totally sure what we've been doing.  I think it was just catching up on laundry, putting Christmas stuff away, and cleaning the house.  Has my nesting kicked in?  I don't know, but I dusted the coasters, so I would say probably.

And after I thought about what my recap from last year would look like, it felt a little like dwelling on the past.  When Phil and I went to my neck scar's birthday dinner, we were talking about how different things were now than they were a year ago.  And we both agreed that we were leaving 2012 better than we came into it.

2012 - Cancer treatment, Puppy, and Pregnancy.  In that order.  The year definitely got better as it went along.

That's really all that you can ask for.

We are happy to say good-bye to 2012, and are hopeful that this year has a lot of great things in store for the Janneys.

Do we have any resolutions?  I'm going to call them goals for the New Year, rather than resolutions.  Resolutions never seem to happen.  So here they are in no particular order:

-  I'd love to get back into shape.  And by shape, I don't mean round.  :)  That gym membership we paid for all of last year and used a total of 5 times (each) is calling to me.  I have lofty goals of completing those two half marathons I said I was going to do in 2012.

-  Get to work on time.  Shamefully I will admit that I am usually a few minutes late.  Horrible HORRIBLE employee.

-  Keep up on the laundry.  This goal will be even more important once the babe gets here.  Currently, I like to wait until we have 75 loads of laundry to do and then kick and scream through the entire sorting, laundry, folding and putting away process.  It's the adult thing to do.

-  Be a better wife.  Between the cancer stuff and early pregnancy, Phil definitely took care of me more than I took care of him.  I'd like to pull my weight a little more.  And there's becoming more and more of it (as is evident by my ever increasing thyroid medication dose), so it is more important that I do that.  :)


That's all I've got for now.  I think that will be enough to keep me busy for a while.  At least until May when my main goals will switch to showering at least every other day and sleeping when possible.

I hope 2013 is happy and healthy for all of us!!

The rest of 2012 (and some 2013)

As I mentioned at the beginning of the year, my goal for 2012 was to kick cancer's ass.

Thanks to the wonderful news I got on Wednesday, I am definitely doing what I need to to achieve that goal.  There are still a few steps on the process to truly kicking thyroid cancer to the curb (mainly finding the right medicine to keep my TSH nice and low).  I'll never be fully done with thyroid cancer.  But once my thyroid levels get back to normal, I should be feeling up to getting back to a normal life.

Huh... gotta think real hard about what life was life before we were looking into fertility clinics and found those dang lumps in my neck.  Ok so life will never be like THAT again.  But we will figure out a new normal and forge ahead.

For the last couple of months, I have been keeping kind of a mental list of the things I wanted to do once we got this cancer business behind us.  It is still sinking in that the hard part is behind us.  That is a different post for a different time.

Here's what we have planned for rest of 2012 (and the beginning of 2013):

- Europe!!  Our good friend, Ryan, recently moved to The Netherlands for a couple of years.  Sounds like a good excuse to go to Europe to me!!  Our grad school friends are all planning on going over there for like 2 weeks to see Ryan and do some travelling.  I am so excited about this trip!  So far, we are thinking Ireland, The Netherlands, and Spain. 

- Work on my photography skills.  Since we are going to Europe and all.  I want some kick ass pictures this time.  Not like the point and shoot ones I took when I lived there.

- Run again.  I signed up for The Color Run on Team Smuppies with Jes.  She says she isn't a crazy marathoner and she'd better not be lying since I haven't done much in the way of physical activity in the last 6 months.  Hopefully when we actually meet each other in real life, Jes and I actually like each other.  If not, this could be an awkward 3.1 miles.  I also kind of want to do the Walt Disney World Half-Marathon (mostly because I want to go to Disney World) but I don't think that will happen.

- Visit Karla again.  I miss that girl.  She must have g-chatted with me every day while I was waiting for my scan results.  It was a wonderful distraction.  And since I haven't gotten to see her since her wedding, it has been too long.

- Learn Spanish.  Preferably before we go to Spain.

- Visit Phil's college roommates again.  Those guys are stinkin' awesome.  Seriously.  I am secretly hoping I can convince all of them to move to Oregon.  I'm thinking Oregon girls are the best chance for this.  Too bad ALL of my friends are married.

- Find my inner domestic goddess again.  Remember when I used to cook and clean?  Back in the day when my husband didn't have to do ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING for me?  Yeah... those days did exist.  I would like for them to exist again.  So would my husband.

 

- Become Mrs. Dr. Janney.  Techinically it would be Dr. and Mrs. Janney.  But whatever.  We are SO CLOSE to Phil being done with grad school.  As if the last 6 months weren't hard enough dealing with cancer, we have about 4 more months and then Phil should be done with grad school and be a full blown Toxicologist.  Yay!

I think we are due for some fun adventures and I am really excited because I really feel like there are some good times ahead of us.

2012 Goals

I know what you are thinking... 2012 started 2 months ago.  A little late to be setting out goals for the year.  Well, when 2012 began I didn't even know for sure I had cancer so I was a little apprehensive about what my goals would look like.  There were 2 very different paths:

Fight cancer or have babies

Since I ended up having cancer, babies were out.  Turns out you shouldn't have babies for like a year after the radioactive iodine.  Silly doctors.

Seeing how trying to have babies is what started this whole thing, we were even more devastated when the word "malignant" got thrown our way.

So it took me a little while to figure out what the near future was going to look like for us.  Not only was I not going to be having a baby, but I was going to need another surgery and oral chemotherapy.  Throw in messed up thyroid hormones and I pretty much knew 2012 was not going to be the year I lost a bunch of weight or ran marathons.  I needed realistic goals for what I would be able to accomplish this year.

I finally figured it out. 

{My birthday present.  And yes... that is a giant jar of Hersey's kisses.  Brandie and her daughter, Lexi, gave that to me as a get well present.}

I'm going to learn Spanish. 

I took 2 years of Latin in high school, which will prove to be really useful if Julius Caesar ever comes back from the grave.  Or if I decide to do my own translation of The Bible.  I'm pretty good with the NIV translation, so maybe a language like Spanish will be a little more useful.  Plus Jacob is in a Spanish/English immersion school so I figure we can learn and speak with each other.

One of Phil's friends, Tyler, learned Korean using Rosetta Stone so I figured I would give it a try for Spanish.  My parents and Phil's parents gave me some Amazon gift cards for my birthday which I used to purchase Level 1.

It came in the mail Tuesday and so far I haven't spent a ton of time working with it.  I have, however, learned to say "the girl drinks."  I'm practically fluent.

I have some other goals too, like clean the house more often, be better about hanging clothes up, be neater, etc.  But I'm actually really excited about the Spanish one.  We'll just see if my thyroid hormone hazed brain will allow me to learn.

P.S. - I wrote this post while Phil was ranting to me about Survivor.  If the words "fire", "tribal council", or "Jeff Probst" are in the post anywhere, sorry.  :)