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!

A wonderful weekend

We’ve definitely had a lot of busy weekends this summer, especially because I transitioned from 4-day weekends (working part time) to the usual 2 day weekend around the end of June. However, I said before that our kids are at great ages to just get out and go, so we’re absolutely enjoying that. I was REALLY looking forward to this weekend last Thursday and Friday, and it didn’t disappoint!!

Started off with some delicious sushi for lunch on Friday afternoon with two co-workers. It was amazing and it had been too long since I’d had sushi.

On Friday night, Brian had softball so I played outside with the kiddos, did some yoga, and read my book. It was relaxing and wonderful.

Saturday felt like a go-go-go day, especially since it started at 5 am (thank you toddler :D)…did a LOT of cleaning, a lot of purging and organizing, and a lot of stickers with the kids. We played outside again and then headed out to my parents’ house in the afternoon to visit with them and my sister, brother-in-law and niece.

We had a GREAT time with my adorable baby niece. We hadn’t seen them in a month (they live about an hour away) and she has grown sooo much. My mom had some extended family over in the evening and we played board games, watched a bit of the Olympics and then watched the final Tragically Hip concert, which was amazing and emotional.

If you haven’t heard of The Tragically Hip, they are a Canadian band from Kingston, Ontario (where my sister and her husband did their Med & law degrees!) They have 14 albums out and have been a band since 1983. I love a lot of their music and have been privileged enough to see them live twice here in Halifax. In May, the band announced that their lead singer, Gord Downie, had been diagnosed with incurable terminal brain cancer. So they did this final tour and it is expected that it might be their last. Many Canadians have been pretty emotional about this news, and the final concert was broadcast live commercial-free on Saturday night. I couldn’t’ believe the energy of the group at this concert (which we watched on TV). It was incredible. And they played one of my favourite songs:

There is also a great article about The Tragically Hip here.

Sunday, we hung out at my parent’s house for a little bit before coming home and visiting with one of Brian’s friends. It was amazing and relaxing to come home to such a clean house. I am loving all of the purging and reorganizing because I truly feel that less stuff in the house means less cleaning and a happier Heather. I now have a dedicated work-out area set up in the basement (a whole corner to myself! haha!) and a yoga space set up in our bedroom with no distractions and I feel wonderful about this. Yesterday afternoon, I just embraced spending time with the kids. We have all had a bit of a stomach bug (but not TOO sick) for a week, so went to bed early and woke up feeling pretty refreshed this morning and ready to take on the week.

What a great weekend – some relaxing, some socializing, some nice weather, some sleep, and back at it today.

I also mentioned on Instagram last night that my aunt wrote and published a novel this year. You can check it out here on Amazon (kindle edition) for free today!!!

By the Numbers

I’ve seen posts in this format around from time to time, and it seemed like a good way to share some of what I’ve been up to and thinking about lately 🙂 If you know where it originated, please let me know so that I can give credit to the creator!

1 – Number of dead teeth Lucy has after a fall a couple of weeks ago. Her front baby tooth is turning grey and might have to be removed eventually 😦 We’re keeping an eye on it.

1 – Number of books left for me to finish in the Semi-charmed summer book challenge before the end of August. The end is near!! I just finished The Grand Sophy this morning. LOVED it.

2 – Number of months until I fly “home” to Calgary to watch one of my favourite cousins get married. I can’t wait to catch up with some old friends and see my brother & meet his new girlfriend. Brian can’t wait to spend the weekend with the girls at home alone (haha).

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3 – Number of days until I get to see my sister, brother in law and favourite baby niece to belatedly celebrate my birthday.

4 – Number of White Collar episodes left for us to watch. We’ll get to it sometime before September, I’m sure.

7 – Number of days in Bad Yogi’s challenge that I started last night. It’s only 15 minutes a day and I have desperately missed yoga this summer!

8 – Number of boxes of old clothes and toys getting donated to Goodwill this weekend from our house.

10 – Number of kilometers in my next race on Sept. 26. I am also thinking of adding in a 5K earlier in September and a second 10K in October.

11 – Number of months left at my current job covering someone’s maternity leave. I am hopeful that I’ll have found something else by the time I finish here if not shortly afterwards.

12 – Number of books on my Netgalley shelf. Gotta get on that after I finish these book challenges.

22 – Number of days until Molly starts kindergarten. I can’t think about it without tearing up. I swear I never used to cry until I had kids & mommy hormones.

31 – Number of years old I turned this past Sunday. It was a pretty low-key birthday but I like taking some time to embrace the year ahead.

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45 – Number of minutes I spent swimming laps this morning. I used to swim competitively and I’ve really missed laps in the pool. The Olympics have inspired me to get back out there, so I started today!

47 – Number of times I’ve listened to “Making Due” by the Arkells since first hearing it off their new album. SUCH a catchy song for me. Reminds me a lot of Bruce Springsteen for some reason.

68 – number of books I’ve read so far this year – well on my way to achieving my Goodreads goal without even realizing it.

Hope everyone is having a great week. We are finally getting some much-needed rain in Halifax and I am finally getting some more energy to clean and organize in the evenings, so I’m a happy camper!!

March recap (What’s New With you? Link up)

I read something great lately (I can’t for the life of me remember where) about perceptions of being busy. These days, when someone asks “what’s new” or what I’ve been up to lately, my default response is to say that we’ve been busy. And yes, in some ways that’s true. I’ve been busy filling up sippy cups and cleaning up spills and doing laundry and cuddling with a sick toddler and trying to maintain a life for myself and spend time with my husband and see friends and family. But that’s just life right now. It’s not necessarily busy. 90% of weekday evenings I have nothing planned besides cleaning up, reading, working out or watching TV with Brian, and an early bedtime. I am blessed to have tons of quality time with a lot of the people I love and value the most. I’m really trying to shift my thinking to realize that yes, there are moments when life feels VERY busy (i.e. getting home from work and trying to get supper on the table 10 minutes ago and chopping vegetables while two little people pull on my legs), but I don’t want BUSY to be my default answer. I am finding that by saying no to some things, I am able to say yes to things that I love to do.

Anyway, that might not have made sense, but there it is. I’m linking up today with Kristen and Gretchen for What’s New With You? and I’m sharing a brief recap of the month of March in the life of Heather 🙂

March was a great month, and I feel great heading into April…in some ways.

Here are some highlights (in random order):

Lucy turned 2 on March 31 and we celebrated last week on April 1 with family. She is doing great at chattering more now that she has the tubes in her ears (I think) and she is getting along reasonably OK with her big sister. She really enjoyed her birthday and although she hasn’t had a chance to try it yet, she seems to like the balance bike we bought her.

I had 2 half-days and one FULL DAY home during the week on my own because I had extra vacation time to use up before the end of March and we have to pay our childcare provider whether the kids are there or not. I got some house stuff done, got a massage, napped, read, etc. It was amazing. Definitely some much needed “me time”.

Brian and I finished Love on Netflix and House of Cards season 4 (MUCH better than Season 3). We just started White Collar and I am loving that so far. What’s not to love?!

The kids had a ton of trips to the playground and lots of play dates and time with grandparents. We read lots of kid books, made a lot of crafts, and had a lot of fun as a family. We got to spend a lot of time with my adorable baby niece and sister.

Daddy even came with us one time!!

Fun with our umbrellas

Easter was a fantastic weekend full of friends, family, and chocolate. The girls were a great age for egg hunts this year.

Literally the best picture of the two of them out of about 10 choices

I had an awesome reading month which I’ll be talking about next week for the Show Us Your Books link up. I really prioritized audiobooks this month and got through a few of them. I also only have one book left (The Nightingale) in my Book Challenge by Erin list. I am really proud of myself for reading some books lately that I might not have otherwise sought out or that have been on my TBR list for a long time. That’s what I love about book challenges 😉

I didn’t run as much as I would have liked to, but I did make it out a few times at 7 pm because it is light out now at that time! I love it. I am easing back into morning workouts a few times a week, and I’m still really, really loving yoga class once a week but it’s obviously not enough.

Here’s to another great month in April 🙂

Wanna know what’s new with some other bloggers? Head over to Kristen or Gretchen’s blog to check out the link up today!!

Life Lately & Links

I can’t necessarily say that life lately has been busy, although at moments it has been, but I have been prioritizing my down-time and unfortunately haven’t found the time to blog. BUT I have found more time to do yoga, read, and run, so it’s not all bad! 🙂

We had a lovely Easter weekend with friends and both sides of the family. The girls loved hunting for eggs, and Molly has been re-hiding them for the past couple of days. Brian was super happy because the Easter bunny wife (aka me) hid an egg in a hole in one of our sound system speakers and now it won’t come out (he’s SO happy about that – silly Easter bunny #oops). We got in some good playground time, and of course, enjoyed a few extra sweets and adult beverages. I felt like both Friday (a holiday here so Brian was home – I’m always home on Fridays these days) and Saturday were good “down-time” days for me. I had plenty of things that I had to do – laundry, cleaning, etc. but I just let them go and took some time to spend with Brian, read in bed (during the day!!), nap, and do some yoga. It was really relaxing to just take that time. (By the way, this was for about 2 hours while Lucy was napping and Molly was at my in-law’s house, in case you were wondering about how someone manages to do that with 2 small kids running around, haha).

I’ve still been keeping up (as best I can!) with some of my favourite bloggers, and I’m still pretty tuned into Goodreads to see what others are reading and update my progress. I’ve also read some really interesting articles and blog posts lately, and I wanted to share a few of them here:

Modern Mrs. Darcy’s favourite bookstagram accounts to follow (some great suggestions in the comments, too!)

Jenn’s review of What are you Hungry For really stood out to me and I’m keen to read parts of the book now.

Gretchen Rubin’s blog turns 10 today and I found this post of hers from awhile ago, which I love. I am partway through The Happiness Project and Better than Before and they are both AWESOME but it takes me awhile to digest non-fiction 🙂 This post about abstainers vs. moderators on Julie’s blog was interesting today as well!

10 energizing meditation songs – some of these are fantastic because I love listening to music at work, but I can’t always listen to lyrics while I’m typing 🙂 Another great post is this one which talks about the benefits of meditation.

This isn’t recent, but I love reading stories about how people met / real-life love stories and some of these are really sweet.

I haven’t tried this one yet, but apparently this one sentence has an amazing ability to calm an upset child (in certain circumstances). Here’s another post with a great round up of podcasts for parents, too!

As an avid Harry Potter fan and an avid reader in general, I found this article interesting.

I love Kenzie’s blog, and this post entitled “Dear Discouraged One” found me on the right day.

MuscleWiki is a neat site for targeting certain muscle groups when working out.

I’ll be back later this week with some other thoughts that have been swirling around in my head 😉