Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Happy 10th Samuel!


Oh how far you've come little guy - when I look at these pictures of you as a darling baby! You are easy going, fun loving and so pleasant to be around. Happiest of birthdays to you - welcome to double digits! May God continue to give you a heart for HIM!





Tuesday, January 30, 2018

January Goals Update

Well, here we are one month into the new year already - time just marches on. I wanted to do a little update on how our January goals went:



Goal: have pizza and sparkling grape juice for New Year's Eve; talk about 2017 and what we hope for 2018; play games together as a family.

Goal met: we did this! After just getting home from a trip, I scheduled a Walmart grocery pick up order and included frozen pizza and the sparkling juice and this was extremely easy and nice to have a memorable evening for so little planning!





Goal: clean out closets in girls room to allow each to have her own, rearrange bookshelves in both their room and laundry room to accommodate each girl having her own bookshelf and opening up space in their room; make fabric curtains for their shelves to hide clutter. Before pictures above.








Goal met: This was a big one! For years, we've had a bookshelf in one of the closets in the girls room, it was our main library basically. But as they have gotten older it finally dawned on me that they probably needed their own closets. I also had two matching bookshelves in different places in the house so moved those back together and made the little curtains for them. I let each of the girls buy one item to help organize their closets. We love the difference this has made! After pictures above!

Goal: institute Friday night dates

Goal met: we will only miss one Friday due to David taking Samuel away overnight for his 10th birthday! It has been really nice having this time planned in and enjoying these evenings together!

Goal: resume logging my meals on My Fitness Pal, health journal, vitamins and walking

Goal met:Thankful to say that I succeeded on this one! Assigning certain days to walking has really helped me this time around, so I walk M, W, and F mornings before breakfast. It only takes about 15 minutes!

Goal: try a batch salad every week for the month

Goal not met: right after getting home, we did well on eating salad that first week until I saw a lot of info in the news about romaine and an e-coli scare. Rather than risk getting sick, we did not each much salad this month.

Goal: purge Christmas bins

Goal halfway met: Right after Thanksgiving when getting out our Christmas decorations, I did a re-sort of our bins. Finally after all of these years, I wanted to separate what we get out every year and what we get out only when we don't travel {tree things}. Why didn't I think of this sooner, actually I didn't - David did! Anyway, I did some cleaning out then. When we put it all away, we only got out three bins and put away what we had enjoyed so I did not drag ALL the bins back out at this point.

Goal: try one new Crock Pot recipe


Goal met: We tried Taco Soup similar to this recipe but I do not use chunky tomatoes or green chiles. It was delicious after a busy CC and ballet day and it was chilly weather, so the perfect soup weather! This is a keeper!

Goal: have tea time at least once and make gingerbread whoopie pies from the December Magnolia Journal while discussing the theme wonder.

Goal in progress: we haven't done this yet but I have the cookies made and ready!


Goal: host a mom's night and plan a movie night with a friend


Goal halfway met: instead of an evening, several sweet homeschool moms and I met for breakfast one Saturday morning and may have stayed until almost noon! It was lovely and ever so simple to plan. Movie night is still to come!

Goal: follow up on an idea to do something for someone God places on my heart

Goal met:during my Quiet Time in December, God brought someone to mind and I followed up on the idea He provided of a way to serve her and her family.

Wow, this was encouraging to me to update and look back on the things that have been accomplished this month. Excited to make a February list! What goals did you meet this month?

Monday, January 29, 2018

Slow Day



















































Posting Slow Day early this week because we have a family birthday on Wednesday!