Good morning and Happy New Year 2015!
We had a fun family party last night. We went to Costco and bought a whole bunch of their prepared foods and had an appetizer dinner. We had pork egg rolls, jalapeno poppers, Lil Smokies in BBQ sauce, honey BBQ wings, rolls, a veggie tray, chips and dip, and a couple of desserts. We watched "How To Train Your Dragon" while eating, then Christie went to a youth dance while Jordan checked out the football scene on TV. We put the other two boys to bed at 9 since they get *so* grumpy if they don't get enough sleep. Even if they slept in, they would still be "off". Not worth it. So off to bed they went! I went to bed at 10:30 pm instead of staying up til midnight, but I might as well have stayed up because I woke up at about 2:30 a.m. coughing. I've had a mild cold and cough since Christmas and lately I've been waking up in the middle of the night coughing, then I'm awake enough that I'm having a hard time getting back to sleep. I've noticed in the past that when the air gets REALLY cold here, it's dry enough that any dust around just floats and I think that's contributing to my problems. It also doesn't help that when I wake up, I get my Kindle to read for awhile. I've been reading that the blue light emitted from electronic devices can mess with the body's natural sleep responses/hormones/etc.
So, one of my projects for this weekend is to thoroughly clean my bedroom. I mean as in, clear out all the clutter on the floor and surfaces (it got really bad with all the Christmas gifts I was hiding in there.
; dust all the furniture and pull it out of the room (even the bed!) and very carefully vacuum the floor, especially the areas that are under the bed and furniture. Wipe down the baseboards. Clean the ceiling fan. Wipe down the Venetian blinds. Clean the window and sill. Then put everything back.
My goals to help with my sleeping are: Two hours before bedtime, get off all electronic devices. No TV, Kindle, phone, or computer. I can read print books, work on sewing or scrapbooking projects or finish up housework instead of spending the time on an electronic device. Also, I will do better about keeping my bedroom uncluttered, dusted and vacuumed. And I will start keeping a water bottle on my nightstand so if I do wake up coughing due to a dry throat, I can take a quick sip and hopefully not wake myself up enough that I can't get back to sleep. I am also going to get back into exercising. When I was exercising more regularly, I slept better.
I am also in the process of going through our toys. I think some are ready to be retired. I've tried to keep about half the toys out to play with and half in storage and rotating through them but over the past few months, more and more toys got put out without any being put away so it's time to get that back under control. So I'll keep working on that project.
I'm sure I'll find other projects to do through the day so I'll just see where today takes me.
Have a wonderful day and I hope today is a great start to 2015 for you all!
Merilee
