Creative Thursdays 9/12/13

Reading Wednesdays 9/11/13

Healthy Tuesdays 9/10/13

Family Mondays 9/9/13

Spiritual Sundays 9/8/13

Children Saturdays 9/7/13

Housework Fridays 9/6/13

Creative Thursdays 9/5/13

Reading Wednesdays 9/4/13

Healthy Tuesdays 9/3/13

Family Mondays 9/2/13

Spiritual Sundays 9/1/13

Children Saturdays 8/31/13

Housework Fridays 8/30/13

Creative Thursdays 8/29/13

Reading Wednesdays 8/28/13

Healthy Tuesdays 8/27/13

Family Mondays 8/26/13

Spiritual Sundays 8/25/13

Children Saturdays 8/24/13

We are getting into the habit of having the kids pick up every night before they get ready to go to bed.  I know that sounds like - duh. But it has not always been super consistent in our home so with the new school year we are working on making it a part of daily life.

Housework Fridays 8/23/13

Well, this week housework suffered as well because of my being sick.  But like everything else, I am determined to do better. :)

Creative Thursdays 8/22/13

I did not get as creative this week as I had hoped, but I did put together Lena's new bed and got her bedding for it.  I plan on finishing that project very soon.  

Reading Wednesdays 8/21/13

With not feeling well I had more time to read this week.  I finished the Maze Runner and the Scorch Trials and am reading the Death Cure now.  I love this series.  If you are looking for something fun to read, try it out.

Healthy Tuesdays 8/20/13

I just hate it when I get really excited and committed to doing better as far as health goes; I start a new exercise routine and eating habits and then I GET SICK.  ARG.  So this week health was, well unhealthy.  I'm gonna commit again.

Family Mondays 8/19/13

My husband and I try to take turns teaching our lesson in family home evenings.  Sometimes when it is my turn I just teach a shorter version of my primary lesson that I taught the day before.  Then it is mostly already prepared and it is geared toward kids my age.  I think the primary and nursery manuals are excellent resources for family home evening if you have kids.

Spiritual Sundays 8/18/13

I found out this week that I can listen to the sunday school and relief society lessons on my phone.  Yay!  So that is what I did.  I think I may opt to listen to the relief society lessons, but read the sunday school lessons in the future because there are a lot of scriptures to look up and so forth with the sunday school lessons.  I am so glad that I am trying to do this because it is sad to miss out on it even though I LOVE my calling in primary I am unable to go to the sunday school and relief society classes.  There is so much great stuff to learn.

Children Saturdays 8/17/13

Recently I decided to implement an idea that my parents used to do when I was growing up.  On Saturday mornings before you go off and play or do anything fun you all do thirty minutes of housework.  The kids have actually been really great about it.  They are still so young that they really don't accomplish all that much, I mean not as much as an adult could, but it is a good way to teach them responsibility and working as a family.  

Housework Fridays 8/16/13

So this week we actually did our big housekeeping on Saturday and it was huge.  We rented a carpet cleaning machine and cleaned all the carpets in our house.  So we moved furniture all over and cleared off the floors so we could clean them.  It was so great.  Our carpets are still not that great, but they are so much cleaner!  I've been wanting to clean them for a long time because, let's admit it, kids are hard on carpets!

Creative Thursdays 8/15/13

So I've been wanting to make more throw pillows for my couches for like forever. I've had the pillow forms sitting by  my sewing machine just waiting for me to do it.  Finally I pulled out my fabric and picked some that I liked.  I did a quick pinterest search for diy throw pillows and whipped out six new throw pillows for our couches.  I rather like them and it was fun to do something creative again.

 Click here to see the method I found on pinterest, easy and cute.

Reading Wednesdays 8/14/13

I've actually had a really hard time fitting in reading with our new school year schedule.  There is just so much else to do.  I did read a little bit though.  I started the Scorch Trials by James Dashner.  It is the second book in the Maze Runner series.  I really enjoyed the first book, The Maze Runner, so I was excited to start this one.  Recently I've been reading books for my book club and then a few others here and there.  But our most recent book club (we read the Great Gatsby) has been pushed back and rescheduled and so forth so many times I don't know if we will ever meet.  haha  I enjoy reading and I think it is good for my kids who are learning to read to see their mom reading. 

Click here for a link to the Maze Runner books.

Healthy Tuesdays 8/13/13

So I'm really determined to be healthier this year. I am going to walk 3 miles five mornings a week and alternate running and a jillian michaels workout in the afternoons.  I know that is pretty intense but I really want to change. I also am working on drinking at least eight cups of water a day and sleeping at least eight hours at night.  And, I need to improve my eating habits, this is the most difficult part for me but I am working on it.

So far I've been really good, but that is only two days in.  I am so crazy sore and I hope I can do my workouts tomorrow (not to mention walk).  haha  But I also feel good.  Isn't that crazy how you can be super sore and still feel good?!  My body is adjusting to the earlier bedtime I am establishing now that school has started but in a week or so I bet I will be used to it. The water makes me need to go the bathroom all the time, but I know it is good for me.  And my eating habits have improved.  I am not depriving myself because I know that will just backfire (because it has so many times before) but I am planning my meals the day before and eating the same lunch as my kids and making sure we have fruits and veggies.

I want to track my weight, measurements, etc.  But this is the first week so no change yet, haha.

Family Mondays 8/12/13

For Family Mondays I will take a look at our weekly Family Home Evenings and daily family devotionals. So in the past we have always done daily devotionals where we sing a primary song, have family prayer, and read a scripture mastery scripture.  This year we want to add reading scriptures as a family.  We are just going to start with one page a day because the kids won't sit for more than that.

So far family devotionals are going as well as can be expected.  The kids like the songs, are pretty good for prayers and have a really tough time listening to the scriptures. We don't really blame them though because they don't understand the scriptures yet, so we try to tell them a a little about what it means.

For family home evening we had the missionaries over. I love having them over for family home evening because they give us a spiritual message and have a prayer with us.  The kids like having them over too.

Click here to learn more about my beliefs about families. http://mormon.org/values/family

Spiritual Sundays 8/11/13

So my goals that I will assess on Sundays are my reading the Book of Mormon and the Sunday School and Relief Society lessons.  I've decided to try to tackle it by reading Book of Mormon every day and the lessons on Sundays.  It is a bit tricky to read the Relief Society lessons because I don't always know what they are, so if I don't know I will read Ensign articles.  

This week I read the teachings of Lorenzo Snow chapter 15 and Sunday school lesson 27.  And I've been reading a chapter a day of the Book of Mormon.  

“Knowing our religion to be true we ought to be the most devoted people on the face of the earth to the cause we have embraced.”

Overview

So I have a bunch of goals and I thought I would start by listing them all. Then I will break them up and record my progress on each individually. I will use the labels so that if you want to just follow one goal you can look it up by label.

1. Practice healthy habits

2. Hold meaningful Monday night Family Home Evenings and Friday night Family Game Nights

3. Read the entire Book of Mormon and all the Relief Society and Sunday School lessons

4. Read good books

5. Sew and craft

6. Clean and organize my home

7. Teach my children responsibility

A new year

I know it's not New Year's but it is the beginning of a new school year.  We had a fantastic summer and did all kinds of awesome, fun things.  But now we are getting back to a routine and I have some things that I want to improve in myself.  So I thought this would be a good time to start some new goals.  So I am going to use this blog to record my goals and track my progress as a way of accounting to myself about how I am doing and what I need to do better.  Feel free to follow along if you like.