What’s New – November recap

Time for another recap of the last month!! Linking up with Kristen and Gretch today for What’s New with you?

November flew right by, but we really weren’t “super busy” or anything, and when I went to look back on pictures, we didn’t do a ton of super exciting things. BUT that’s okay. I got a lot of our Christmas shopping done – and got the house prepped for the holidays although we didn’t decorate til this past weekend. I also read a lot of good books, Brian and I started a new show, and we had a date night out 🙂 Here are a few random pictures to share from the month:

We spent a fun weekend overnight at our friends’ house, and the girls loved it. We will probably see them again later this month before or after Christmas.

I read a lot of wonderful books that I can’t wait to talk about next week, including this one (Wishtree):

The girls wrote their letters to Santa and mailed them – they received letters back from Santa last week and they were SO excited. 😉

Brian and I went out for supper and saw Murder on the Orient Express, which I actually liked a lot more than the rest of the world, apparently. I agree that the book was better (isn’t it always though?!) but I still liked it, and I’m not even the world’s hugest Kenneth Branagh fan so that’s saying something too. I thought the visual aspects were quite well done.

We set up our Wii in the living room (it has been sitting in the basement unused for a couple of years) and tried to play Wii bowling with the kids – it didn’t end well but I think they are just a bit too young/too competitive. Lucy created her Mii that looks like this (because it is sunny and cold out, so she says)…haha

On Black Friday, we were driving down our street and someone had a HUGE dollhouse on the curb for garbage day. I was completely baffled but we decided to take it home. It’s in almost perfect shape and the girls are loving it – although they aren’t playing with it quite as much as I expected. It has since been moved from that corner but it is a permanent fixture in our living room now….

Honestly, not much else went on in November! We were able to see some of our friends and we have a few groups of friends going through some hard stuff these days so we’ve been trying to be there for all of them as much as possible. December is flying right by, as it always does, and I can’t wait for a wonderful Christmas season (and some time off work!) with our little family. My brother is coming for a visit for a week (CAN’T WAIT), and we will have lots of other family to visit with too. The girls are already pretty wound up and excited constantly, but that’s a children’s Christmas, right? 🙂 We also got to spend a lot of time with my adorable niece:

I’m also reading a lot of Austen retellings/adaptations this month!! I hope to share more about this next week but I was really just craving these types of stories and I’m happy to be spending her birthday month reading (very loosely adapted) stories 🙂

What’s new with you lately??

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 🙂

What’s New: July recap

I feel like I say this every month, but July was a BUSY month!! haha. Really though, summer is always a bit busier than winter for us. We have soccer, Brian has baseball, and more friends want to get together. (I love it!!) Linking up with Kristen and Gretch to talk about what’s new lately!!

In July, we were also super fortunate that my brother and his girlfriend came to visit for a week from Calgary to celebrate my mom’s birthday! It was great to see them, and it was the first time Brian and my girls had met my brother’s girlfriend so that was special. We spent lots of time with them despite them staying at my parent’s house 30 minutes away and working a lot of the week. Another great thing that happened this month was that my sister, brother-in-law, and niece moved to the city! They are only about 10 minutes away from us, so it’s been great to see them more often and for my daughters to nurture their bond with their younger cousin.

Here are a few pictures from our month:

We celebrated Canada Day with some friends and it was great! Didn’t end up seeing any fireworks, but our kids are at a not-so-good age for that anyway. The day off work was certainly appreciated too.

My brother arrived a few days later, and we got some family photos taken while he was here, including this one of my little foursome:

Photo credit: Chantal Davie Photography

I had the opportunity to hear my cousin’s celtic string quartet one lunch hour

And got to spend lots of time with my favourite younger bro:

We spent an afternoon babysitting my niece, in which I realized that I am absolutely 100% satisfied with having 2 children:

The weekend after my brother left, we went camping for the first time with the girls and with some friends. It was wonderful, overall. The campground is 100% geared towards families and it has an outdoor pool, a huge playground, and an inflatable air pillow (pretty crazy). We had a campfire, and some drinks, and got dirty. It was also Water War weekend, so we went on a wagon ride and got totally completely soaked ( hoses, rubbermaid containers of water, and crying children)…it was kind of intense?!?! After we dried off, we were much better off. The girls slept pretty well, Brian and I did not, but we survived our first night in a tent as a family!!!

Here’s a view of the campground with the slip n slide set up and the inflatable pillow in the background:

A couple days after camping, Molly lost her first tooth when she spent the day with Brian’s parents!! It was so exciting for her. She actually somehow lost the tooth WHILE my mother in law was reading a book about the tooth fairy. LOL. It was fate. She was a bit freaked out but mostly excited.

My awesome hubby and I got to go on a random Tuesday night date out for sushi and to see The Big Sick (which I cannot recommend enough – I laughed so hard at some parts and cried a bit at others). Definitely go see that movie if you can!! It was worth it, in my opinion.

And on the last weekend of July, we went to see the Tall Ships in Halifax and got to hear Natalie MacMaster playing with Symphony Nova Scotia (this was amazing). It was a great atmosphere down on the waterfront despite being EXTREMELY crowded. Such a great way to end off the month. I was pretty tired the next day though 😉

Also read a bunch of awesome books this month which I will talk about next Tuesday and got to spend a bunch of time with friends and family. All in all, an amazing summer month. Gorgeous weather, wonderful people, and August is going to be amazing too. It’s my birthday month and we are taking a 12 day vacation to Toronto Ontario to visit family and see Coldplay and go to the Toronto ZOO. So excited 🙂

What’s new with you lately?!?!?

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!

What’s New and Exciting

I feel like I say this every month, but October was a busy month. BUT it was so good, too!! There was a lot of fun things on the go. I’m going to recap them all in this post & link up with Kristen & Gretch for their monthly What’s New with you link up 🙂 Kristen has some really exciting news this month – I can’t believe how quickly her house sold!!!

I started October off with a bang and went to a concert with one of my favourite Celtic groups, The Barra MacNeils, that we grew up listening to – my whole family (parents, sister, aunts, uncles, grandma + me) went to the concert and it was amazing. The Barra MacNeils performed with Symphony Nova Scotia and it was incredible because the symphony really added a lot to the performance. I will for sure be attending this concert again; I think they do it almost every year but that was my first time there.

We took the kids to a few indoor playgrounds this month because there were some really rainy days & they are at a great age to enjoy this type of thing right now:

I also got a chance to catch up with my old roommate from St. FX and her boyfriend – what a great night. I hadn’t seen her in 2 years so it was great to chat. Ran into another old friend from university the same night out and that was fun too.

Canadian Thanksgiving is in October, and it was a busy weekend for our family. We spent the entire day Sunday with our extended family – at my cousin’s baby’s baptism and with all of my aunts and uncles, and then we had Thanksgiving dinner at my parent’s house which included 39 PEOPLE (Molly made a list of everyone). There were 2 turkeys and a ham, about 15 vegetable dishes, and pie. It was great. Brian took the girls home early & I stayed overnight at my parent’s so I could chat more with my cousins (I always feel sad when I have to leave just as the party is getting started). My niece was also the life of the party 😉

We did some shopping with the kids and I got a start on Christmas shopping, too. Here are some new friends they made at Costco:

I also took my first trip “home” to Calgary since 2013. For those who don’t know, I grew up in Calgary (nestled nearby the Rocky Mountains in western Canada ;)) and lived there until I went to university. With my parents moving out east, we haven’t really had as much motivation to go out to visit with the kids, even though my brother and dad’s family all still live there. When one of my closest cousins got engaged, I decided to head out to Calgary for a visit and to attend the wedding – by myself! Brian stayed with the kids here. This was kind of a big deal for us because I haven’t been away from the kids for that long before (5 days!) and I am more of the primary household-runner in our house, so there was a bit of anxiety leading up the trip, but I’m SO GLAD I went and it was a much-needed break. I’m very grateful too that my in-laws live close by to help Brian out 🙂

The Rocky Mountains near Calgary

Flying out of Halifax

Flying back into Halifax at 6pm

I read about 4 books on the trip (yay long flights!) and spent some quality time with my brother, my dad’s family, and some close family friends. It was wonderful. I was pretty off when I came back (very jetlagged and tired), but we seem to be back in the swing of things now. Molly also seemed to regress a bit while I was gone and has gone back to some crazy tired tantrums, but we’re working on that. She gets so overtired with school and daycare that it can be really hard to get through to her sometimes but it’s coming along slowly.

The wedding, of course, was beautiful too. It was so nice to be there & to see a few of my first cousins I hadn’t seen in about 10 years. Everyone from my family except my sister & her family and Brian and the kids was able to be there, so that was really special. We had a wonderful time dancing and chatting.

Since being back from Calgary, I’ve been doing some more decluttering in our house while listening to audiobooks, and just getting ahead on some things that need to be done before winter comes. We also had a great Halloween. Molly had a Halloween howl night at school which was fun (but so chaotic) – she dressed up in her Belle costume for that, and then the girls went out trick-or-treating as bumblebees. And now I have two huge boxes of candy & chips sitting in the front hall closet and two girls asking for a treat every 5 seconds (don’t worry, I’m going to move the box ASAP). #tempting.

Brian carving his pumpkin with a dremel drill & knife attachment

I’m really looking forward to November, because I love the holiday season and it’s coming up so soon! Our girls are going to be so fun at Christmas this year. I’m going to share some other things I’m looking forward to tomorrow 🙂 I’ll also share what I’ve been reading next week!!!

What’s new with you lately?!?!

Thursday Thoughts

It’s been a really busy week here on the family side of things. Molly started school last week and turned 5 years old on Monday. It has definitely been a transition going from full-time daycare in someone’s home to a before/after school daycare centre + school all day. Not only is there the transition of two different daycare drop offs/pick ups (Lucy is still at the in-home daycare), I have to be much more organized with what Molly brings with her every day. Her school lunch requires a bit more thought (but I think I’m figuring it out!). We get handouts and important notices from her teacher every day that need to be read, signed, processed, and put in a safe place. We hear about her day, for which I am grateful, but we don’t hear about all of it (that’s life!). It has been an exciting, emotional time, but it has been wonderful too and I’m so happy that she is doing well and loving school.

That’s the main “news” in our lives – Brian has also had an extremely busy week at work and we had a super busy weekend, so I’m playing catch-up this week. That being said, I am also taking a lot of downtime to read more and do yoga at home. My weekly yoga class with my amazing instructor didn’t have a summer session but it started back up again on Monday and IT FELT FANTASTIC to be back in that room.

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At Beauty and the Beast at Neptune Theatre

I also took a longer lunch break yesterday to swim laps for the first time in a LONG time. It was tough!! I swam in a competitive club from age 11-16 and in my last year, I was swimming 6-7 times/week and for at least an hour (usually 2) each session. Yesterday, 15 years later, I swam for a half hour and it felt tiring and not good. Obviously my body is a different shape than it was then, and my endurance is nowhere near where it used to be, but I would like to get back into this and feel more comfortable in the pool again. It still felt very natural, but I am excited to get better at it and develop more endurance in the pool. I also have a bit of a cold and my lung capacity is a bit off this week, which didn’t help my breathing while swimming (#excuses) ;). You could say I was a bit inspired by the Olympics to get back in the pool.

It’s feeling a little bit like fall in Halifax. Even though it has still been mostly warm, the humidity has gone down and it reminded me that this is my favourite season for running. I have a 5K next weekend and I can’t wait for it – apparently the route is gorgeous. We’re also spending our Saturday doing one of my favourite fall activities: apple picking in the valley with my sister and her family. The girls LOVE it because we get to see some farm animals, go on a wagon ride, and eat apples all day. haha.

Speaking of fall, I made a delicious AND healthier broccoli + cheese + vegetable soup yesterday modified from this recipe. It was SO good that Brian (and Lucy) had second helpings last night and I can’t WAIT for lunch time to enjoy some more of it at work. I’m hoping it also freezes well. I modified it by adding greek yogurt instead of milk, and greek yogurt cream cheese + 1 cup of extra old cheddar instead of the 2 cups of cheddar. I also added extra veggies, because they were all getting pureed anyway!

This month had a busy start, but halfway through it now, I am loving it. This is always my favourite month (+ October) in Halifax. Growing up, I never thought much of fall. In Calgary, the leaves just don’t change colour like they do here on the east coast. There is something really special about this season here, and I’m excited to embrace it this year before we are buried under 6 feet of snow in January. 🙂

Linking up with Kristin for Stuff & Things and Amanda @ Running with Spoons for Thinking out Loud.

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!!

Life lately (Link up!)

(Linking up belatedly with Kristen & Gretch to recap the last month!)

June was a busy month for our family, and I think it will be from now until our kids finish school. The beautiful weather gets us outside and socializing more. Summer sports and activities begin, and school finishes with all of the excitement that comes with that. This year, our babysitter was on vacation for the last two weeks of June and so we had some grandparents help with childcare & took time off ourselves too. It was wonderful because the weather was pleasant and the kids were happy. It also eased my transition back into full-time work from my previous 6 months of part-time, although I am finding that I do miss the extra time with the kids already.

Here are some highlights from the last month-ish:

Celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary by going out for supper & going to a board game cafe (what an AMAZING date night). We tried 4 new games and had a wonderful time. The kids had a great sleepover with my parents 🙂

Ran a 10K race in EXTREME heat/humidity after slacking on a few weeks of training. Not my best time, but was happy to finish it nonetheless and proud of pushing myself. Next race probably in August 🙂

Finished my third 12 week yoga session with my amazing teacher. She takes the summer off teaching near me, but I will probably take a few of her classes downtown because I know I’ll miss it. Back at it in September because it has changed my life!!

Read a few good books but not as many as I’d hoped…and also started a big Harry Potter re-read 🙂 Come back tomorrow to see my reviews for Show us your Books!

Went to our first of several 2016 weddings, Brian’s cousin Laura and her new husband. This was the first wedding I’d been to which included a POEM that the groom wrote for his bride AKA I could not hold back the tears. It was a gorgeous event.

Celebrated Canada Day with friends and had a wonderful time! Went to the playground and had a picnic, swam in an outdoor pool, drank some adult beverages 🙂

Got a new cell phone (LG G4) after dropping mine and shattering the screen – loving the new one so far & our contract was up so it was free (aka the best time possible to break my other one :P)

Spent some time with friends and family including an awesome outdoor birthday party with a beach volleyball court AKA a “huge sandbox” for my kids

Took in some awesome music with a wonderful friend at a fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity called Raise a little Hellp. Really, really enjoyed this night out.

Watched our older daughter “graduate” from preschool and tried not to cry 🙂 She is going to love school in the fall – she will be in French Immersion and we are all quite excited to see her grow!

Took a week off with Brian and the kids leading up to Canada Day and went to Upper Clements Park amusement park (2 1/2 hour drive away)…the kids LOVED it.

And a couple more pics from the last month ish:

Sorry to be late to the link up; it’s been a busy few days!!! I have a few fun posts in the works for later this week and next week after taking a bit of a blogging break (I’ve probably averaged 2-3 posts a month lately…oops!!!)

What’s new with you lately?!?

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 😉

“What’s New With You?” link up with Kristen & Gretchen

When one of your favourite bloggers announces a fun link up idea, there is really no question about whether you’re going to join in or not! Kristen and Gretchen just started this link up to chat about anything you’d like. They are following the idea that when you run into someone you haven’t seen for awhile in person, you usually ask “so, what’s new with you?” but these kinds of posts don’t always happen frequently in the blog world. I wanted to link up today with some things I’m currently enjoying or thinking about 🙂 Go over here to check out some other bloggers’ posts…I know I’ll be snooping through the link up!!

I’m CURRENTLY….

GRATEFUL for the fact that Brian was able to find the diamond from my engagement ring after it fell out of the ring setting last week. I had a panicky, anxious day looking everywhere in the house for it and when he came back from work, he unscrewed the trap from the kitchen sink and it was in there. PSA: If you have a warranty on jewelry like this, DO THE INSPECTIONS. Part of why I felt so bad was that if I had kept up with the bi-annual inspections, they would have replaced the diamond for free if we hadn’t found it. I will absolutely be doing this from now on (also, it might have never fallen out in the first place…)

READING Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah…it’s my first book by her and I’m reading it for Erin’s Book Challenge 4.0. My plan is to read The Nightingale by her too.

LISTENING TO: The Arkells, all the time. Their concert here 2 weeks ago was AMAZING and I can’t get their songs out of my head. My top three are Michigan Left, Book Club, and 11:11 right now.

DRINKING: Water, water, water, water and water. Plus 2 coffees and a decaf tea per day (on average). It’s Roll up the Rim season here in Canada, so a Tim Horton’s coffee isn’t a bad thing occasionally too 😉

EATING: As many vegetables as possible. And a lot of protein too. Still loosely following IIFYM and trying to pick healthy choices whenever I can.

LOVING: Working part-time. It’s been a bit of an adjustment, but I love the extra time at home to a) love on the girls, b) read millions of kid books every day and c) clean/meal prep/exercise/run errands during the daytime. I am also LOVING yoga once a week, but that is a whole separate post. It has been AMAZING for my mental and physical health.

ANTICIPATING a fun get-together with friends this weekend, spending more time with my baby niece this month, and a possible local weekend getaway with Brian in March

RECOMMENDING Modern Mrs. Darcy’s podcast…I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s just so good! We also just started Season 2 of Serial.

WORKING TOWARDS completing Erin’s book challenge by the end of April. So many books that I requested ages ago at the library are available now, so I’m balancing reading those with challenge books, but I have a few categories completed and hoping for a few more by the end of Feb!!

CRAVING just a little bit more sleep, or an extra hour in the day 🙂 Preferably an extra hour of daylight so that I can get a run in before bed 🙂

IMPRESSED WITH MEC’s organization of their race series. My 5K run this past Sunday was a trail run on snowy, icy, trails, but it was fun, it was extremely well organized, and the ice obviously didn’t bother me, because I ran the same time (35 mins) as I did 2.5 years ago at my last 5k. I am SO excited about all these races I have going on this year and feeling very motivated to keep running.

So, what’s new with you lately???