One Second Every Day: January

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Cheree Moore (@mo_haus) on Feb 1, 2020 at 3:28pm PST

One second every day in the month of January. It was actually a really good month for our family. Jack got his cast off. We completed lots of hikes. Daniel and I got away for a weekend. Isaac kept us entertained. And it ended for me with a Ladies Conference to hear Lysa Teurkerst speak with some of my good friends. 

Embracing Weekly Hikes in January

Green Gorge on Signal Mountain

My word for the year is Embrace and I am working to embrace this period of my life, as well as the things that make me me. Right after Christmas we took our kids camping in Gatlinburg (camping equals embracing being us, Gatlinburg crowds is borderline us). Anyway, Dollywood was offering free season passes to pre-k kids for this year. I thought that might be fun. Can I just say going to Dollywood was a complete bust, as far as our family was concerned, and definitely NOT embracing who we are. We hope to go back later this year and redeem our experience, but I'm also letting myself be okay with not always loving what everyone else loves.

Middle Creek on Signal Mountain

Another thing I'm embracing this year is my love of hiking. I've been hiking for a really long time. I will turn 40 later this year and I fell in love with hiking when I was twelve. Thankfully I married a guy who loves the outdoors as much as I do. And we are working to transfer that love to our kids.

New Year's Day Hike with friends, Middle Creek on Signal Mountain

A few years ago I made it my goal to get outside with Jack EVERY SINGLE DAY. And we did. We #optedoutside365 and it was totally doable. When Jack was in kindergarten I made it my goal to hike with him every week. And we basically did. But last year, I let the pressure of making sure our homeschool was legit enough sway me to do less hiking with my boy (plus it was a hard year weather wise). But no more! I just finished reading Call of the Wild + Free and I committing to going back to doing the things that our family loves. Embracing the things that make us us.

We kicked off the year with our annual New Year's Day Hike with friends. It was a short and sweet hike next to Middle Creek, here on our mountain. It was with friends we love. And it was so good.

Then instead of doing a one-on-one hike with Jack, I waited for a time I could let Isaac tag along. We visited one of our favorite haunts: Green Gorge (which is practically in our back yard) and I knew we had to keep it up. Nature does something to us. It calms us. It brings peace. It prompts wonder and curiosity. We need a healthy dose of it at least once a week.

Green Gorge on Signal Mountain

After posting about our hike, I had two friends ask if they could tag along. Um yes! Please join us in the things we love most. It makes it even better!

Since then we have completed three hikes with a group of friends. There has been some variation in who shows up, but it has always been a great experience.

Greenway Farms in Hixson, TN

Our second weekly hike was to Greenway Farms. I wanted to keep it simple so I could gauge what the group was capable of. We did a lap through the woods. We walked past a wetland area where we saw ducks and heard bull frogs.

Then we came to a huge swampy area. Instead of turning around, the kids figured out how to navigate past it (I think everyone made it across mostly dry).

Everyone was in good spirits so I suggested we walk up and over the quarry to the bottom. I thought the kids would want to throw rocks and sticks in the water. It was a cold day but we had all warmed up for the hike. It turned out the kids were more interested in climbing the cliffs and taking an alternate (more dangerous) route back to the car. We completed almost four miles and everyone was so excited about their accomplishments.

Blood Mountain, North Georgia Mountains

The following weekend, Daniel and I snuck away for a quick trip, just the two of us, to Blue Ridge, Georgia. Choosing to do the things we know we love, including driving down a rutted out dirt road in the dark on our way to dinner. We embraced the fact that we felt better being within two hours of home for our FIRST WEEKEND away from our kids (EVER!). We rented a beautiful cabin in the mountains and ended up doing an almost 5-mile hike to the top of Blood Mountain. Temps dropped from 38 to 29 while we hiked. But it was perfect. It felt like getting back to the us, before we had kids.

Glen Falls on side of Lookout Mountain

For our third weekly hike, I had our friends meet us at the Glen Falls Trailhead on the side of Lookout Mountain.

The two-mile hike involved large boulders to climb on, a passage through a rock that led us on top of a waterfall.

It was cold and there were icicles hanging in the creek, but the kids had such a good time exploring the creek, pushing their limits, putting up with the moms telling them not to fall in the icy waters!

Snoopers Rock in Prentice Cooper on Suck Mountain

Then today we had our fourth hike of the month. Five other families braved driving down gravel roads to an out-of-the-way spot in Prentice Cooper State Forest. The hike was a quick 0.5 mile walk out to the spectacular view from Snooper's Rock. With an oxbow of the Tennessee River spread below us. This is such a gorgeous spot (a favorite of Daniel's to ride dirt bikes to, let him know if this is your jam! Jack and I have done it on dirt bikes and it's a lot of fun).

Mamas were pushed up against their comfort zones as we were on an exposed rock with big drops down into the river gorge. After some quick pictures, we headed back into the woods where the kids delighted in finding creeks to rock hop across and small waterfalls to climb up. It is the end of January, but with temps in the 50s it was a perfect day to explore like this.

We are looking forward to more hikes with various friends in the weeks and months to come. I joked with my boys that we could go somewhere new every week for the rest of the semester and never hit the same trail twice. I'm pretty sure that could be done. We will probably circle back to some favorites. I am just thankful to be back on the trail, with my boys, and I am loving that our friends are wanting to join us every week.

In the Picture

Before I had kids I read all kinds of blog posts and articles about the importance of moms being in the pictures with their own kids. Too often we are just behind the camera lens. Since I waited so long to have my kids, it gave me a lot of time to consider this and I have worked diligently over the last eight years to get into photos.

So this year, when Facebook released their little year-end video –– the one I normally look forward to seeing; the one where whatever digital algorithm determines what gets in the mix –– I was more than a little sad that I was not in a single one of the photos (besides the leading profile pic). While it was a nice reminder of good memories (mostly with my kids), it didn't actually include me. What the heck, Facebook?

This got me to thinking that I want to be better about taking pictures with my friends. While I am pretty good at taking photos with my boys, and mostly good about snap pictures with Daniel, photos with my best friends are a little more elusive.

So to everyone who humored me for a big group pic this year, or took a minute to pose just the two of us, a big heartfelt THANK YOU. It means a lot to me to have a photo of us. I have moved a lot over the course of my life and I am grateful for the photos that document friendships I've had over the years.

A good friend of mine moved away last year and I only have a couple of photos of the two of us. I have tons of our kids together, but not so much of us. For several years, she was my person. She was there to celebrate the good stuff and offered a listening ear and wise counsel on the not-so-good stuff. I wish I had more pics of the two of us.

If I ask you some time in the future, I hope you will pause and take a pic with me!

Word for the Year: Embrace

 

It's been eleven years now since I began the practice of starting the new year with a word to set the tone for the 365 days to come. If I'm being honest, this past year I have been wrestling with the attitude that King Solomon expresses in the Bible: that there is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9). 

Another year of coming up with a word for the year: check. 

Another holiday tradition completed: check. 

Another book read: check (60 last year).  

Dishes and laundry to do: check. 

Food to shop for and cook: check (never-ending checks). 

So many things that make me feel like I'm just spinning along on a hamster wheel of life.

Here's the thing though, even with the mundane-ness of everyday life, those checks also give comfort and stability. The traditions I'm busy trying to check off my list are things that draw my family closer together. They are the things that anchor us and connect us to each other. Weekly things like church provide stability when life feels a bit off kilter. Routine? Yes. But they are also comforting. 

In recent years I stopped doing some of the things I loved in the past because they felt more like chores. I stopped blogging –– it felt like I was just writing about the same thing all of time. I stopped experimenting with recipes, even though I love to cook –– too much complaining from the peanut gallery. Jack and I quit doing our weekly hikes –– there were lots of excuses like the weather and effort to pull it off each week. (To be clear, our family still had a lot of amazing adventures, but my attitude felt off).

One of the definitions for embrace is to accept or support a belief / theory / or change willingly and enthusiastically. 

This year I hope to work on embracing life as it is now. In the doldrums. In the day-to-day as well as in the moments that are more exciting. I want to embrace life where I am at. Motherhood is a beautiful place. I want to focus more on:  "Finding the extraordinary in my ordinary."  Even in the days that are ordinary, there is beauty to be found in each moment. I hope to embrace those things and find a greater degree of contentment in the every day parts of life this coming year.  

As a secondary thought, I am taking a cue from Disney's Queen Elsa and working on letting some stuff go this year. Every year there are things that need to be let go of. Pride. Expectations. Sometimes relationships. If it was meant to be in my life, it will come back. I'm working to embrace the harder parts of growing up and also parenting.

Words from previous years: 

Fortitude {2010} │ Adaptation {2011} │ Patience {2012} │ Deliberate {2013}│ Joy {2014}│ Peace {2015} │ Release {2016} │ Savor {2017} │ Healing {2018} │ Be {2019}