Goals-week of March 3-9th

I guess I'm a very goal oriented person....though I don't really do well with New Year's resolutions....but I'm thinking...if I just take things a week at a time....now that's doable.

I'm coming down to 12 weeks left until my due date, and I'm still feeling a little overwhelmed with all I need/want to do. The last couple of weeks have been a bit hit or miss with getting things done...Some days I did above and beyond what I hoped to do, while other days, I fell flat, and got nothing done.

I worked a lot this last week on some homeschool changes that I've been wanting to make, and hope to blog about soon, so that took up a lot of my time, getting stuff organized and such....So now that I've got our homeschool stuff organized, I feel more balanced and I think I will be able to get some much needed stuff done in the coming weeks.

We are still working on making a habit of following our daily routines that I've discussed in past blog posts. I'm happy with our progress with that. But I'd like a bit more focused direction during each day in some of the bigger things I'd like to accomplish on each day. So with that said...here are some of my goals for the upcoming week.

Spiritual Goals-

I'm super excited about this, because I got something new to aide me in my study of God's Word.....a Journible! Have you seen these? It's basically copying down God's Word, word for word.  Of course you don't need the special journal to do so...a regular notebook would work just as well, but I was excited to get to indulge a little and get something nice to start off on this new adventure. I always get so much more out of what I'm reading if I physically write it down for myself, so I think this will be very helpful! My goal, in addition to making sure I'm spending time reading and studying my Bible daily, and spending time in prayer, and hopefully doing that multiple times daily, is to copy one whole chapter starting in the book of Galatians.

Family-

I want to make sure I'm being more intentional with my time around my family. When I started this new year, I said that 'intentional' was going to be my word for the year...and I started off strong, but haven't been doing very well. Ways I would like to do this include doing more with them and for them. I have a tendency to get into a funk, and have trouble doing little more than surviving the day to day. Some things I would like to do to are....call my kids in to help me more in the kitchen...I catch myself just trying to hurry up and get done in there and don't stop and include someone. I want to make sure we're spending more time outside...I took the children out for about a half an hour today, and just watched them play and ride their scooters up and down the sidewalk, and they had a blast. I want to do more projects-craft, science, etc-type projects, like teaching my girls crocheting, or help my son to do more hands on type activities like whittling on some wood or something. And for my husband, I want to make sure I'm doing more than just the things I feel I should do to be his help meet, as God says, I want to enjoy doing those things, and be thankful for the oppurtunity to help him as he works hard to take care of our family.

School-

This will be the first week putting into action some of the new things we will be doing. So my goal for this area is to make sure we're getting school done each day, and try to stick to a good routine for getting it done.

Home-

I plan on continuing work on following our weekly routines that I shared a couple weeks ago, and on each day, I'm hoping to make extra efforts in each area of my home, in addition to regular chores, as follows:

Monday-Laundry day-Continue to declutter in the laundry room. I'm actually hoping to get quite a bit cleared out of there, because there is a lot of stuff that just needs to be moved to another storage area like our outside storage building, and the weather is going to be nice this week, so I'll be able to do that easily. There are three doors in our laundry room, one that leads into the house, one that leads to the backyard, and one to the front yard....the door to the front yard is actually blocked, so I hope to get it cleared out, so we can use that door more often.

Tuesday-Kitchen day- I'm going to take a section of my kitchen, and I'm going to take all the stuff out of just one section, declutter what I don't need, clean all the surfaces, and organize the stuff that needs to go back. I'm *hoping* that my honey will also take the time this week to remove my no longer working dishwasher out, so that I can have that space for more storage.

Wednesday-Desk day-A couple weeks ago, I finally went through and sorted through all my paper clutter, and I organized it into three piles....trash, shred, and action. So now, I've got one large bag of trash gone, a big box of stuff needing to be shredded, and a few boxes of stuff that needs to be sorted and/or filed. Even if I only get one box sorted through, I'll be happy :o) My homeschool cabinets also really need to be organized, although I got all of our school stuff ready, I didn't take the time to organize the cabinets that holds all of our stuff, so I hope to work on that also.

Thursday-Errand day-Not much time for anything extra, but I think the weather will be nice and give me a chance for some intentional nature study/picnic/playtime with my kids while we're out.

Friday-Cleaning day-I'm going to work on one area that really needs some attention, or what's bothering me the most.....we have a pass through hallway, so basically you can make a full circle around our house, in other words, my kids have what they usually use for a race track :P But a while back I started piling some extra clutter in our hallway, and there is no longer a pass through because our hallway is pile high with stuff. I want to get that cleared out this week.

Saturday-Family day-The weather, as I said, will be nice, and I have a lot of work to do out in the garden to prepare it for the coming growing season. I've got seedlings started, and will be ready to plant in the next few weeks. My goal is to get the beds ready, and covered to keep the neighborhood cats out. I also need to get my tomato seeds started. And hopefully some 'intentional' time spent with my family playing some games and enjoying our time together.

Health-

Eat more spinach salad and spend more time outdoors. I just got some lab results and both my iron and vitamin d are very low...I'll be taking supplements to help, but any extra will be good too. Going to work on walking each afternoon for about 15-30 minutes as well.

Other Goals-

A few other miscellaneous goals that I can think of.....

-Take a load of stuff to the church for our upcoming camp fundraiser.

-Don't eat out this week...I've fallen back into a bad habit of eating out too much lately. It's not healthy, and it's just too expensive, even the little quick trips to Sonic for happy hour drinks....not good for us :o)

-Take inventory of baby stuff that I have, so I can answer everybody when they ask me what we need for our new little one.

-Finish the wool soaker that I'm nearly finished with, and get the one for my friend's baby started.

-Sew a few squares of N's quilt.

-This is a biggy...for me anyways....I want to get up earlier. I'm going to be shooting for 8am every morning....maybe 8:30 :o)

I know there were some other things, but that's all I can think of for now, and really it's plenty. I'll check in later this week or the first of next week to share how I did.

Blessings,
sara