January Goals I Completed

At the beginning of the year I made a post of the goals I plan to achieve this year. It was a busy month, but I'm happy to say that I did accomplish some of the goals for myself. I hope to get better and better with each new month.

Marriage Goals: Brent and I finally had a date together! Granted it was at home, and Train Lover was still awake, but it was a date nonetheless. Thanks to a sale from Hy-Vee, we both got a lot of Chinese food for less than $7. We love their Chinese food - who knew a grocery store could make good food? After we ate dinner we had a YouTube Karaoke night! Using my hairbrush as a microphone we took turns singing songs. We've done this date before and had a great time doing it and we got to enjoy it again.

I also read a marriage book this month entitled Becoming One: Intimacy in Marriage. It's a good read for all LDS people that are dating, close to getting married, and even those who have been married for awhile. It explains the differences between men and women, intimacy issues and concerns, and answers general questions most members of the church have before getting married. I read it shortly after we were married 3 years ago and enjoyed reading it again.

Personal Goals: I started two other books this month and will finish in the first week of February (I was close to finishing this month!)

Stand for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes was the book club book for the month. It is written by late prophet Gordon B. Hinckley. He writes about 10 virtues he feels have been neglected and put aside in our modern world and society, and what we can do to bring them back into our lives. I've enjoyed it so far and have learned a lot from it.

29 Gifts: How a Month of Giving Can Change your Life is a book I cannot put down. I started a few days ago and love it. It is about a woman diagnosed with MS and how she takes the advice of a spiritual leader and friend to give away 29 gifts in 29 days and the impacts it has on her life. I love the book and think it's really inspiring. I'm hoping to start my own 29 Gifts challenge soon. If any of you are feeling down about your life right now, I would encourage you to read this book.

Spiritual Goals: We had FHE every Monday this month! That is such a huge success for us. We have always struggled to have it. It's hard to do when it's just two people, and then you add a toddler and it gets more difficult. But I know it's important; that's why it's one of my goals this year to have FHE every Monday night.

For Christmas I got a planner. I've been using it every day to write down appointments, to do lists, and to keep track of praying and scripture study. I also printed out monthly and weekly FHE charts that I found on Pinterest and just changed the size of the image to fit in my planner. I cannot for the life of me now find where I got them from. I'll try to find them in case you want to use them too. Then I cut out the pages and glued them into the section in the back of my planner labeled 'Notes'. Now it's our year schedule for FHE. Brent and I came up with the following topics to focus on each month:

January - Church
February - Family History
March - Family (since #2 joins us this month)
April - Godhead (to focus on Easter)
May - Service
June - Joseph Smith (because he was martyred in June)
July - Emergency Preparedness
August - Scriptures
September - Prophets (to prepare for General Conference)
October - Prayer
November - Covenants (since we were married that month)
December - Christmas

Anyways, here is a look at our FHE plans for the month of January.

Here is one of the weeks lesson plans we had on Tithing.

I'm so glad I have goals to focus on this year and that I am working towards accomplishing some of them!

Baby prep + Bathroom cleanup

I have a few friends that are pregnant and due around the same time as me, or after. Lately they've been posting a lot on Facebook about getting ready for the baby: baby registries, washing baby clothes, arranging furniture, and so on. I haven't done a single thing for this baby yet. I don't know if it's because it's the second one and I'm not too worried, or because I just haven't thought about what I need to be doing. But I realized that the next 3 months are going to fly by and I do have things to do. Last night while watching Lady and the Tramp with the family I made a list of all the things I want to get done around here before the baby comes.

Bathroom

• clean and organize closet
• make inventory list of items we have

Kitchen

• clean and organize the pantry
• clean and organize the cupboards
• prepare 72 hours kits for all family members

Bedroom

• go through closet and get rid of clothes
• organize paperwork
• create office in walk-in closet
• arrange room for baby

Train lover's bedroom

• arrange room for baby #2
• sanitize all toys
• remove books from bookshelf that aren't age appropriate

Living Room

• sell and donate books/organize bookshelf
• arrange room to become playroom

Van

• wash inside and outside
• clean and empty out the inside
• set up carseat
• prepare emergency supplies and kits

Today I tackled the bathroom closet. Here's what it looked like before (sorry for the bad angles).

Here it is after!

• I labeled all the containers on the outside so we now know what's inside. 
• I also created an inventory list of all the items we have. Now I know I need to buy shampoo and deodorant before our current stuff runs out!

 

• The medicine and first aid supplies are now separated. 

 

• I moved a few things under the sink that belonged there, like hand soap refills. 
• I threw away expired things. 
• I took all the towels out of the closet and moved them to our bedroom closet. We never use those towels because we love our Norwex body towels too much!
• I also got a big pile together of things I know we won't use and posted pictures of the items online to sell. I should get about $50 for all the items I posted! 

Best thing about cleaning the closet was figuring out the things we need and making $50!

I also organized Train Lover's bookshelf. It was jam packed with books before. Now all the books on the shelf are perfect for his age. No more red, black, and white books and no more chapter books. Maybe seeing the books he has will get him more interested in reading :)

All the books I took off his shelf. A lot, right?

I tackled 3 things from my list today and it only took a couple hours to do. Going slow and steady each day for the next 3 months should make my list a piece of cake to achieve!

'Better'-ings for a Better Me

I was inspired by Crystal Paine's blog post "Why I Bombed My 2014 Goals". It made me look at my past goals, just as I did last year (I blogged about it here). I couldn't agree more with what she had to say.

This year is going to be busy in just a couple months when we add Baby #2 to the mix. I know it's going to be a challenge adjusting to two children and I'm going to be frazzled and frumpy for a time. But I want to make it a great year nonetheless!

So here is to me trying to better myself and my life this 2015 year!

Marriage Goals:

• Put Brent and our relationship first
• Go on a date at least once a month
• Read 6 marriage books

Mothering Goals:

• Stop yelling at my child(ren)
• Read 1 book a day with kids
• Monthly one-on-one time with my Train Master (little one #1)

Personal Goals:

• Read 3 books every month
• 10 minutes of Facebook per day TOPS
• Get back to pre-pregnancy weight

Spiritual Goals:

• Be prepared for Sunday School and Relief Society lessons each week
• Visit teach all my sisters each month
• Go to the temple at least 4 times
• FHE every week

I'm excited about these goals. I have a plan of action to accomplish all of these and I really hope believe I can do it. I'm grateful I got a planner for Christmas. I've already stamped in spots to mark of some goals and glued in some monthly and weekly FHE charts. Maybe I'll blog about my planner another time. Right now I need to get to work though! The day is almost through and I still need to do some of these things.

Share some of your goals with me down below!

Messy Solution

With school loans being gone for the summer, Brent and I were left to our own devices to pay rent and bills. It feels great to work and make money and pay for things on our own without help from the government (in the form of loans and debt). I can't wait for school to be over so we can fend for ourselves and live without collecting more debt.

We were both lucky to find jobs with different schedules so one of us is always with the little one. I work at a local cafe, and am enjoying the work there, in the mornings and afternoons a few times a week. Brent works at a call center on campus in the evenings. We also buy and sell things on the side and are doing pretty well on eBay right now. And the plasma center is still enjoying Brent's service there twice a week.

We're both enjoying time with the little one (LO). He is not so little anymore. He's getting big, going down the slides at the playground on his own, working on saying words everyday (today's new word is 'bubble'), and just as happy as ever. Where did my baby go?

Since we've been so busy, the house was getting into disarray often. With Brent's strong encouragement, I came up with a cleaning schedule for us. Here it is:

We've been using it a couple weeks now and it's going pretty well. I love having something to refer to each day. It helps me break down all the mess around me and see what needs to get done that day. There are days that we don't get everything done on the list that we should, but it's still a help to get some done and see our accomplishments.

I thought I would share it with all of you because it might be something you could use yourself (modified) in your own circumstances. Do any of you do something similar? What are your strategies to keeping your home clean?

Soaring with your Goals

Being tall, near-sighted wearing coke bottle glasses, and not having the finest equipment would not make one think of an Olympic ski jumper. But Michael "Eddie the Eagle" Edwards was just that. He was the first (and only) Olympic ski jumper for Great Britain. Nobody believed in him and some thought he was making a mockery of the sport, however, Eddie was living his dream - to compete in the Olympics. He did not care if he won. He knew he wouldn't win a medal. He was last or second to last in each competition but that didn't phase him. He was happy. He was just proud to be an athlete in the Olympics. He had reached his goal.

Many people create goals at the start of the year. Some accomplish their goal, but most people get discouraged and give up very soon after starting. I fall into that category. I used to set goals each New Year Day. But if I missed a day, didn't do my best, or didn't believe I could accomplish it I would soon give up. Goal-setting has never been something I'm good at. But after reading the article about "Eddie the Eagle" in this month's New Era magazine I have decided to try it again.

Thinking about past goals I've set I know why I fail so quickly. I am not setting goals properly. Here is a list of ways to achieve your goals:

1) Set realistic goals. All the goals I have set are unrealistic. Two I have set in the past were: 1) climb Mt. Everest and, 2) visit every temple in the world. These goals are attainable, but they are not for me anymore. I do not have the time, or diligence, to train to climb Mt. Everest. I have big responsibilities now of being a wife and mother and I would rather invest that time and energy into my family. However, I can set similar realistic goals. I can set a goal to do 5 hikes of different lengths and difficulties during the summer. Or I can climb a different mountain and reach it's peak, like I did a few years ago when I hiked up to Ben Lomand's peak in Utah. Though the mountain dwarfs in comparison (9,712 feet compared to Mt. Everest's 29,029 feet) is was still a huge accomplishment for me and an experience I will never forget.

I know I won't be able to visit every temple in the world because I don't have that kind of money to travel and they are being built quickly. But I can still have a goal to visit as many temples as I can. I have done work in 16 temples and visited/seen another 7. I still plan to go to many more temples and am anxiously awaiting the Paris, France temple to be built.

Billings, Montana

Idaho Falls, Idaho

Salt Lake City, Utah

2) Be flexible. Life happens. Tragedies occur that prevent us from reaching our goals. Circumstances change and we find that we can't achieve them anymore. In the past I would just give up on my goals. My view was that whatever I had written down as being my goal was concrete and could not be altered. But now I am realizing that I may have missed out on some things that would have been great had I stuck to my goals. Goals are not set in stone. They are just an ideal we are trying to reach. If something happens, don't give up on your goal! Examine your goal and what you want to achieve, think of changes that will need to happen to achieve that goal or the altered goal, and go toward it. Don't throw in the towel because you missed a day or didn't lose that extra pound. Keep going.

3) Write down your goals. I never realized how important of a step that was until I did it myself. I would just envision what my goal was, and guess what? I would forget it. When you write down your goals you see them. They are no longer a thought drifting around in your head. They are now in concrete written form. There are different ways to do it - write it in your day planner, set a daily alarm on your phone, put it on a sticky note, use a chart, or write it on a list. Choose one or all of them, whatever will help you see and remember your goal. I'm an avid list maker, and I love visual aids, so I use a chart and list to track my goals. Here are my morning goals that I have taped to our bathroom mirror.

4) Breakdown your goals. While I was in school, long essay assignments scared me and I didn't know how to write a 9 page paper. I would wait until the last minute, throw something together, and not get the grade I wanted. Had I broken down the assignment to make an outline, choose a thesis, and find supporting evidence, I would have done much better. The task would not have been as daunting. We need to do that with our big goals as well. Here is what I am using in order to breakdown my goals. I also have one for scripture study, going to bed by 11pm, waking up at 7am, and FHE.

http://www.sugardoodle.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3487

5) Share your goals with others. Letting someone know your goal is another important step. So often in my own life I will tell myself I will do something - use Facebook less, eat more fruits and veggies, floss daily, etc. - but never do it. I'm human and I have weaknesses. It's hard to change lifelong habits even if the changes are better for you. Telling someone your goal will help you stay accountable to it. I am fortunate to have a wonderful husband that is good at reminding me of my goals when I forget or am starting to slip and lose willpower. Though I do not always like it, once he reminds me it is harder for me to ignore my goal because then my hubby knows and I hate looking weak.

6) Don't compare yourself with others. As any other woman, I find that I do this a lot. It never gets me anywhere except for feeling depressed and insufficient. When setting goals for yourself remember that they are for you. Who cares if your neighbor is working toward a marathon and you are working toward walking around the block daily? Nobody but yourself. People have their own worries to worry about and they won't bother thinking about yours when they don't have to. I really liked this quote from President Uchtdorf in the article:

     We spend so much time and energy comparing ourselves to others - usually comparing our weaknesses to their strengths. This drives us to create expectations for ourselves that are impossible to meet. As a result, we never celebrate our good efforts because they seem to be less than what someone else does.

This leads me to my last way to achieve goals.

7) Be happy with your accomplishments. If you didn't do your goal perfectly for 7 days, be happy with the 4 days you did do it. That's 4 more days you worked on your goal than you did the week before! I used to feel like a failure if I didn't do my goal perfectly. I'm a perfectionist. Now I realize that life happens and I'm not perfect. So I am happy with what I do accomplish. Working toward your goal is much better than not working toward it.

Good luck on your goals!