18 Things Before 2018

For some reason, I feel substantially more motivated in September than I do in January. I love the start of the new year in January and all of the goals to accomplish in a calendar year, but truth be told, January is SUCH an unmotivating month where I live. It’s not easy to start to develop fitness goals when it’s -30C outside for the next 3 months and there’s a pile of snow 6 ft high in your driveway (this is an exaggeration but not too far off). It’s harder to find fresh and delicious veggies too. However, I love setting reading goals and writing goals in January, and it is a good time for decluttering and organizing.

This year, September feels like a fresh start. Next week, I am switching to a permanent part time position in my current job. When this came up as an option for me as my full-time contract was ending, I talked to Brian about it and we both decided that this is right for us right now. Our younger daughter will now have the chance to go to preschool, and I’ll have more time with both of them. I’m also hoping to have more time for ME. (and maybe a cleaner house, too :)). It’s very exciting and very motivating overall.

All of this being said, September is feeling great so far. We are eating quite healthy and making real lifestyle changes. I have been running more than I did in the summer heat. I’m getting back into reading after vacation left me drained. I have more energy, and I am sleeping better. I am nurturing my relationships as best I can. I am hoping to get back into blogging more too and I have some fun updates in mind.

So here are 18 things I’d like to accomplish before 2018 (thanks for the inspiration for this post, Steph!)

1) Complete my Goodreads goal. I know, I know, quality over quantity, etc. Actually, this should be no problem if I keep reading at my current rate, but I always read a bit less when I’m not working full time because I am parenting more, and I don’t have as much commuting time to read (Right now I’m at 76/100).

2) Beat my 10K time from 2015. I’m aiming to do this at the end of October in my last race of 2017.

3) Par down my wardrobe. I don’t think I’m ever going to be cut out for a capsule wardrobe, but working only 3 days a week means I don’t need quite as many “office” outfits.

4) Develop a new budget and stick to it. Our finances will change a bit with my work situation, but there’s no reason we can’t stick to a new normal.

5) Sort my way through the ultimate homemaking bundle I purchased earlier this year and start utilizing all of the resources.

6) Read and implement suggestions from The Four Tendencies and Reading People. I’ve been anxiously awaiting both of these books and pre-ordered both of them to have on my shelf. Can’t wait to learn more about personality and achieving goals.

7) Carve out more quality time with Brian (at least 3 meaningful date nights before Christmas).

8) Set up and maintain a reasonable “office space” in our home for myself. Along with this goes blogging more regularly. Brian is all for building me a new desk, but I’m not committed to that idea yet.

9) Organize and set up a great system for the girls’ entertainment during the days I’m home: craft supplies, puzzles, etc.

10) Send out homemade Christmas cards to all of our loved ones

11) Finish a travel scrapbook with Molly about our trip to Toronto this summer

12) Actively participate in my new French course (starts next week, 3 hours/week for 8 weeks) and move on to the next level in 2018. So excited to get back into learning French.

13) Soak up all the fall things in our beautiful province (apple picking, hiking, soup-making, corn-mazing).

14) Create a clear chore chart for the girls and work on cleaning up after ourselves.

15) Finish Erin’s challenge. I have 4 books left: Beach Music, Dark Matter, and Young Jane Young (which I am almost halfway through), and Flowers for Algernon.

16) Make a dent in my Netgalley shelf.

17) Create some great playlists to enjoy at home for the kids and for myself. We have Google Play music (Spotify’s best friend/biggest competitor? haha) and I don’t use it nearly enough.

18) Back up all of the files from my 2008 MacBook (which has seen better days) and sort photos

I love fall! We’ve still had pretty summery weather here, and I’m not complaining, but this time of year brings so much joy to all of us and I am especially looking forward to this change in my work-life balance.

Here’s to ending 2017 with a bang!!

Happy weekend, everyone 🙂

A few Summer Goals & Plans

Life has been BUSY lately. I’m not entirely sure why – but I know it has to do with the end of the school year, a change in our routine due to my husband’s work schedule, and preparing for him to travel a bit for work in the coming weeks. We also have summer soccer two nights a week and birthday parties and family coming to town, etc. However…we’ve had gorgeous weather, we’ve already been to the beach once (it was cold but the girls didn’t care!), and my summer reading is at an all-time high. So life is good!!!

Since our girls are at amazing ages right now (no one naps anymore so our weekends are pretty free), we have a lot of fun plans for the summer. Here are a few of our family plans/goals/ideas:

1) Go on a few weekend camping trips. We were supposed to go over the long weekend but with work travel, that got postponed a bit. We have most of the equipment though and we are so excited to give this a go this year!

2) Discover 3 new beaches. I’m not exaggerating when I say that we live 10 minutes away from the Atlantic ocean. You can see the beach from our deck. I think we went maybe (MAYBE) 5 times last summer. This summer, I want to do a few beach road trips and discover some of the additional beautiful coastline this province has to offer.

3) Tone down the competition between siblings. I re-skimmed Siblings without Rivalry a few weeks ago because the rivalry between our girls is UNBELIEVABLE. We’re talking fighting over who gets to open the front door when we get home, fighting over who washes their hands first before dinner, fighting over who gets out of the bath first, etc. etc. etc. I am continually telling them that life is *not* a race to be first. To be fair, my husband and I are both competitive people but I don’t think we really introduce that a lot into our everyday activities so I’m not sure where this is coming from but I want everyone to feel validated for doing things PERIOD and not doing it first or fastest.

4) Help the girls with their summer reading club. Our library, like many, hosts a kid’s summer reading club (they also just started hosting an ADULT reading club with prizes so of COURSE I signed up for that :D). Molly set a goal of reading 50 books this summer. We’re going to make our way through a few chapter books and audiobooks and she’ll read a lot on her own too. We have plans to do at least a few French books a week since she’s come so far in Immersion and we want to keep that up over the summer. Lucy is starting to “read” a bit on her own so I want to get her a few books to encourage that even more. I’ll share some books on our list next week!!

5) Prepare to transition to part-time work in September. I am so looking forward to what will be our new normal in September: I’ll be working 3 days a week and Lucy will be starting preschool 2 days a week. I just need to sort out a few of the logistics but the position is already all settled. So excited for some extra time with my girls.

6) Have 2 date nights with Brian. We really need to make this more of a priority and we both agreed to do so after having an amazing weekend away for our anniversary

7) Participate in the Wizarding World Book Club. Talk about Harry Potter all summer long on Twitter and Pottermore? SIGN ME UP. Today is the day it’s launching!!!

8) Go to the farmer’s market, the museum of natural history, and some summer festivals. Because there’s no reason not to! The kids love this kind of thing these days.

9) Run my next 10K race in under an hour. I used to be able to do this, but I haven’t broken an hour since having the girls. I really need to train harder this summer in order to succeed at this in September.

10) Complete 30 days of yoga. I take an amazing yoga class with my wonderful teacher every Monday September-June but she doesn’t teach at the same location in the summer months so I often let it go a bit. Not this year!!!

What are your plans for the summer? Linking up with Steph and Sara for their final seasonal goals!

Looking Ahead to 2017

After reading Better than Before towards the end of last year, I am still a bit torn as to my tendency. I would say overall that I am an Obliger, though. For this reason, I don’t find that New Year’s resolutions always work great for me unless I have external accountability. For instance – I never miss my weekly yoga class. I’ve paid for it, it’s a small class so my teacher is aware if I’m not there, and I enjoy the commitment I’ve made to it. I almost NEVER do yoga at home though, even though I would like to. Last year, I signed up for a 5-race package and ran four of those five races (I missed one because I was across the country for my cousin’s wedding). Had I not signed up for this, I might not have signed up for any races or done nearly as much running.

Here are some things I am really looking forward to in 2017, in no particular order:

1) Taking a trip to Toronto in August to see COLDPLAY live in concert (we will likely take the girls, drive out, and make it a family trip – Brian’s sister lives near Toronto and so do my aunt and uncle). I am BEYOND excited for this.

2) Seeing Beauty & The Beast in theatres in March (the trailer looks amazing, I can’t wait)

3) Running 5 MEC races starting with a 5K this weekend

4) Continuing to work on yoga with my wonderful teacher

5) Reading at least 100 books again, including a great start with my choices for Erin’s book challenge 6.0. Focusing on quality over quantity but continuing to prioritize reading in my daily life. Work on better book tracking in my bullet journal & on Goodreads.

6) Lucy turning 3 and Molly turning 6 – Lucy might even get to start preschool in the fall

7) My sister, brother-in-law, and niece moving closer to us in June/July (right now they are an hour away but they’re moving to the city!)

8) Finding/starting a new job (my current position ends at the end of June) – I have mixed feelings about this, but I always knew it was coming and I am so fortunate to have had this experience in my position

9) My 10-year Homecoming Reunion at St. FX in October (I hope a lot of my classmates make the trip!)

10) My sister-in-law and her fiance’s wedding in May – this will be a fantastic family event, and I’m so excited for them. Her fiance has been “part of the family” for longer than I have, so it will be nice to celebrate it officially 🙂 The girls are both going to be flower girls too.

On another note, here are some of my goals and aspirations for 2017:

Go on (at least) a weekend getaway with Brian and also focus on one date night a month
Continue to work on being a calmer and more kind parent, wife, and friend
Continue to declutter our home
Work on my posture with yoga, stretching, monthly massages, and my new posture corrector band that I got for Christmas 🙂
Find a fulfilling and exciting new job to feel passionate about
Continue to nurture my friendships with the women in my life
Continue to pursue health and happiness by finding time to relax, eating healthy food, and exercising
Attempt to publish blog posts at least twice a week including sharing more parenting thoughts, random writing, recipes, and more in-depth book reviews

Bring on 2017! It’s going to be a great year.

In case you’re interested, here are my goals from last year – overall, I did pretty well! 🙂

What I learned in November // December goals

Well…the busiest month of the year is nearly upon us, and although I am trying to keep things a *bit* more low-key around Christmas this year, our lives inevitably fill up with a lot of wonderful things, and I love it. Our girls are at a great age to celebrate the holidays this year and Molly is already SO excited about everything that the season brings. Lucy isn’t as audibly excited, but she’s going to love the Christmas tree and all of the stories and songs that come with Christmastime. 🙂

We had a pretty busy weekend with Brian’s work Christmas party on Saturday night and a baby shower for my cousin yesterday. The girls slept over at my parents’ house and did GREAT, so that was a relief!! I am going to be playing catch up tonight and tomorrow night to get our house back in order and clean in time to get our decorations up this coming weekend.

November was a good month in many ways, although I have to say, we didn’t get as much rest and rejuvenation as I had hoped for. We had a sick toddler (ear infection = a lot of tears and no sleep), a moody 4 year old (at times), but we also had a lot of fun. We still haven’t had our “first snow” of the season yet, but it’s coming because it is definitely getting chillier out there.

That being said, here are some things I’m reflecting on at the end of the month:

Book hangovers are real. I flew through Winter and it took me a couple of weeks to even be interested in reading another book. I still haven’t picked up the books I was reading before Winter. I finally decided to re-read Mockingjay in anticipation of seeing the final movie next week and now I think I’m back on track with wanting to read. Which is good, because I have about 12 books out from the library to read in the next 3 weeks. Oops.

The dishes can wait. I have admittedly let some housework slip a bit this month in favour of getting down on the floor and playing with the kids or reading to them as much as possible every night, and I have to say that I haven’t (totally) regretted that extra time interacting with them.

It’s OK to say no. There are a couple of things this month that we just couldn’t fit in, and although I really didn’t want to miss anything, we also really needed that downtime.

Meals don’t have to be gourmet to be healthy and enjoyed. Case in point: tonight we are having breakfast food for supper, which is my girls’ favourite thing ever. Scrambled eggs, toast, and fruit. All the food groups and easy to prepare in a few minutes. #winning Sometimes I get ahead of myself a bit with cooking elaborate meals, but weeknights don’t really allow for that.

And here are some personal goals for December:

1) Get some form of exercise 5/7 days a week. Whether it’s a workout video, a walk, some yoga at home or at my class, or a run outside, I just want to get back into the habit of moving my body as much as I can. It’s SO good for the mind and I need to make time for it.

2) Go through all of our toys and really consider their worth. We got rid of 8 books of clothes, books and unused toys this past month, but we still have an overabundance of stuff and I want my kids to feel a bit less overwhelmed by toys.

3) Ensure that I am eating the recommended 5-10 fruits/veggies per day. I usually do well with this, but I’d like to fill up on veggies as much as possible at this frantic and treat-filled time of year 😉

4) Enjoy the special moments to come. I am going to be an aunt in a few weeks! My brother is visiting us for Christmas! My sister in law and her partner will be home for the first time in 4 months, too. I can’t wait to spend time with all of my family and friends this month.

I have another post coming today with my update on the Winter Reading Challenge 🙂