Happy Holidays!

Well, hello there and Happy Holidays!  Let the holiday season begin.
I tried to make my blog look a little "Christmasy".  I may tweak it a little bit.

Ok.  So since I have not blogged in forever, let me reintroduce myself.

My name is Roan Johnson.  I am happily married to the love of my life, Jimmy. We celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary back in June. We have five children:  Olivia--20, Julie--18, Clay--16, Leah--11, and Sam--9.  I am a full time homemaker and homeschooling mama.  This is my 15th year of homeschooling, and with two girls in college, I am down to teaching only three children.

I enjoy planning and organizing, reading, running, sewing and scrapbooking, although I never seem to have (make) time for sewing or scrapbooking. Sometimes I enjoy cooking.  I am a faithful weekly menu planner. I like routine in my days, and clutter and chaos stress me.

I am a Christian. I love my church family. I aspire to learn more and more from God's Word, so I always have some sort of Bible study plan going on.  Over the years I have completed the Read The Bible in 90 Days Challenge I think 3 times.  I am planning on doing this challenge again beginning in January.  I cannot recommend that challenge (and it is a challenge) enough.  To read the entire Bible from cover to cover in such a short period of time really impacts your life.  It helps to get the big picture of God's plan for His creation.  Currently I am reading High Voltage Prayer (the workbook) by Edwin Crozier, and I am also studying Acts for our weekly Bible class.

I began blogging in May of 2008, and I blogged diligently and regularly until the beginning of 2015.  I explained about why I took a hiatus in this post.   Then I announced that I would blog for 100 days straight, beginning on my birthday, September 16 (which is 100 days until Christmas).  But then I failed at that.  When you get out of the habit of doing something, it is really hard to begin again.  We just read about that in our book club book Better Than Before by Gretchen Rubin.  Beginning a new habit is fun and exciting (most of the time), and your motivation to succeed is high.  When you experience a disruption in your habit and you desire to begin again, it is much harder the second time to be successful.  I have experienced that difficulty recently in both my running and my blogging.  Both are activities which I enjoy very much, but for some reason have struggled with actually doing them.

So. Hello again.  I am not making any promises this time, but I do plan to share some thoughts, encouragement, holiday planning tips, and just the mundane happenings of my life on somewhat of a regular basis.

This afternoon I am taking down my fall decorations to prepare for Christmas decorating tomorrow!