December recap

Catching up on our busyness of last month:

Fun at a friend's house for a playdate. 

Got a new car, instantly it broke a control arm on the way back home, and has been getting fixed for WEEKS as it was holiday time and needed parts, and the one repair man had pneumonia. Hopefully it will be done soon.

A fun girl's night!

Caught my two sweet girls sharing a bed one night, that prompted the final end of the last baby in the crib.

2 "big girl" beds!

Meanwhile my current car had a pouring of radiator fluid from it while I was in a store. We had to be rescued by Doug, and a new radiator hose put on, much to Doug's frustration of needing the specific make and model part, not just the part you could get at autozone.

Christmas happiness :)

 

2025 Goals

 Bring on 2025!!

I love the inspiration a new year brings. Although, this year I still have a lot of carryovers. Nothing like a good check-list to get me motivated.

Marriage Goals:

- Complete the Love & Respect workbook with Doug. I want to get back into doing this, it should be so easy to do this on the weekday when I work, when I really don't feel like doing much more when I come home after work.

- Date nights 1x a month.

- Do The Husband Project. 

- Pray consistently for Doug and our marriage. 

- Finish reading Cherish together.

Mothering Goals:

- Complete the Parenting from Surviving to Thriving workbook together. 4 more chapters to go!

- Continue "Monday Momming" prayer check-ins with Liz. 

- Be better with menu-planning/grocery shopping to save time & money

- Figure out a way to eek out more one-on-one time with each kiddo

Faith Goals:

- Finish BSF. 

- Read through my Intentional Word Bible. (I got 1/12th through in 2024.)

- Family Service Projects

- Do several mini devotions thru my Bible app, ones I've got saved are: 

Work Goals:

- Finish off my 100 pack of index cards with writing 2 flashcards per shift: 1 drug and 1 disease/condition to study up on. 

- Look into getting involved with the new Nurses Union.

Personal Goals:

- Use the harp lessons from my 40th bday. 

- Sign up for German lessons

- Gratitude lists

- Find a way to bring in some extra income

- Read more of my book pile:

(and maybe re-read a few of my favorite child-raising ones too as we are in a difficult season right now! But that stack is shrinking, so I've made some progress last year!)

Fitness Goals: 

- At least 2 Keto Challenges.

- Maintain weight and BMI under 24.

- Complete a 5k or Fun Run of some sort

- Heal up my diastasis recti, I thought I'd healed it in PT, but seems to be cracking open again

Not resolutions, but hopes: 

- More photos in our photo travel map (aka more trips... we are going to Florida in March, and plan to go to Pennsylvania, and up to the U.P. this summer. So that'd only be one "new photo" place, but still looking forward to them anyway.)

- Rental property/ and/or Move.

I look forward to all 2025 holds, I pray I can grow deeper in my relationship with the Lord, and also grow more in love and caring and (ungriping) service to my husband and family.

Reflections on 2024 Goals

Oh wow, another year behind and all the potential of the new year ahead. 

Taking a look back on the goals I set in January:

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Marriage Goals:

- Complete the Love & Respect workbook with Doug. - Yikes, only read 16 out of 52. 

- Date nights 1x a month (and weekly "date nights/connection time" at home also. - Date nights done in February, May, August, September, and October. Room for improvement!

- Attend a marriage conference. - Yes! Our church hosted a really great marriage conference based on this Cherish book, we also went to another one-night marriage conference hosted by the Christian radio station. 

- Do The Husband Project. - No, but I still want to.

- Pray consistently for Doug and our marriage. - I've been praying thru the Power of a Praying Wife book of prayers, I really love this little book. It covers all the basics. I read thru 1.5 times and plan to just keep praying through it again and again. Of course, there can never been enough prayer and always room for more.

Mothering Goals:

- Complete the Parenting from Surviving to Thriving workbook together. - We made progress! We're up to 8 out of 12 lessons done now.

- Continue "Monday Momming" prayer check-ins with Liz. - Yes! Liz and I have been faithfully emailing on Mondays, sharing our prayer requests, and praying for each other during the week.

- * remember people matter more than a clean house!!! * - Uggg, this one is really hard to "check off", it's been a hard year of trying to prioritize people through the piles of toys and crafts and laundry and dishes... so this definitely needs to be still continued to be on my heart.

Faith Goals:

- Finish BSF. - Finished John and now 3 months into the Revelation study.

- Use the "snooze button" time to read my Bible instead. - Total fail. Not only didn't do this, but also so many times of snoozing in instead of getting started with my day.

Work Goals:

- Write 2 flashcards per shift: 1 drug and 1 disease/condition to study up on. - Ok, I started off good on this. Until halfway thru the year the hospital went through a really huge charting change and it took a lot more time to get used to. I have mixed feelings on if I want to continue this goal or not. I for sure can use the refreshers of all the different medicines and so many conditions, but I have also started to use those few minutes here and there during my shift to read through some of my parenting books, and have made some progress with them, so that has also seemed a good use of time also.

Personal Goals:

- Use the harp lessons from my 40th bday. - Fail. 

- Read (some?) of my book pile: 

- I read from my pile (and those added to it):

Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist

The Silver Chair (with August)

Rich Dad, Poor Dad

The Magician's Nephew (with August)

For the Love of Discipline (loved it)

Habits for Godly Women

Don't Make me Count to Three! (loved it)

The Last Battle (with August)

Why Doesn't God Stop Evil?

Love & Logic (and took a 8wk parenting course)

Little House in the Big Woods (with August)

Women, Food and Hormones

Habits of the Household (loved!!)

And I read for bookclub:

The Saints of Swallow Hill

The Women

Just for the Summer (loved it)

The Tattoist of Auswitz

Maybe Next Time

The Unhoneymooners

For a Lifetime

should've been 12, but 1 missed the first 2 trying a new business venture and was too busy, 1 didn't come from the library, and 1 about 7 husbands I didn't want to read.

Fitness Goals: 

- Complete the 10 minute plan. - Finished it. Not my favorite, but some good workouts.

- Complete the Firm 30 series.   - Finished it. And going thru it again now. In it, I found some workout moves that I've never seen before. And I feel really strong doing it.

- I'll add myself to the millions of people who want to lose 10 lbs as a resolution! I've slowly and steadily gained weight since quitting breastfeeding last spring. My body is actually at what I would say the weight it likes to be at, but I like to be about 5-10 lbs lighter. Even that little makes a difference in the looseness of the pants, the effort to run up a flight of stairs, the difference in my face in photos, etc. Just obviously hard to do, especially when one already exercises and eats pretty healthfully, and is now over 40... 😩 - Lost 4-5lbs over the year as a whole, looking back at my January weight. It really helped that I read this great book over the summer, really made me think and get motivated to make some changes. And I'm reading thru this one now too. It's really good, and I'm wanting to do more keto challenges in 2025 as well. 

Not resolutions, but hopes: 

- More photos in our photo travel map. - We went to Nevada/Utah/California over winter break and did some National Parks. We did a family vacation in the Dells in Wisconsin and went up to Minnesota to spend some time with my cousins there too. Then we had a wedding and some time in Chicago. So we got 5 new pictures for our travel map!

- We'd love to get a 2nd rental property, we'll see what happens with the economy this year. - Nope. Didn't even really look with interest rates at 6-7%. 

- We're also looking to move, although I'm not going to move unless it's "the one". I do need to pray that Doug and I will be in unity about a decision- we ended up having some good conversations from what happened with the house we lost out on, but it was hard. We need to have a team approach going forward. - We offered on a house for ourselves, but got outbid, so that was that.  But we didn't fight too much about it, so that was a pro!

- Doug has been wanting to do something volunteer wise with the kids, so we've been thinking about what we could do while still having little ones. - Mostly no, our church has something called "secret service" where pop-up volunteer opportunities arise, with not a big time investment usually, so Doug did one with August once setting up chairs and tables, and I did one with him decorating for Christmas. But room for more.

*    *    *    *    *

It's been a hard year, good overall, room for personal improvement. Lots of joys, lots of hard things, some painful loss, and worry, and stress. But also witnessing God's goodness and faithfulness too.

Making a quilt for my boy

 This was my son's sweet little Jenny Lind bed he used from age 2.5 to 8. It was an antique Craigslist find that I refinished the stain myself. We didn't actually know it was a specialty size, and had to have a mattress custom made at a foam store. (It is in between a crib and twin size). He had 2 quilts handmade for him when I was expecting and they were treasured gifts. This one below was made by my Aunt Judy. 

He'd been asking for awhile for a bunk bed, or bigger bed, so we decided to surprise him with one for his birthday. But that meant that he would also need a new quilt as the other ones were more crib sized. 

This winter break we had gone to Utah and the airbnb we stayed at happened to be owned by the quilt stop owner that was under the airbnb apartment. This woman had furnished the bedrooms with all kinds of national park and nature-type quilts and pillows and I just loved it. His bedroom has always been kind of an outdoorsy theme so it was perfect. In her quilt shop she sold quilts, but she also sold the National Park insert sheet, so I just purchased that and kept it in my fabric tote for the future.

October came, with his birthday at the end of it and the plan to get the bigger bed, and I had to get to work!

That top piece with the National Park pictures was what I had purchased from the quilt shop. And it's laying on the batting in the middle, and at the bottom is a big piece of fabric for the backing. A lot of times I just use an old flat sheet for the back, but I wanted something with a pattern, and this year I learned that JoAnns sells a fabric 108" wide, so I wouldn't have to piece it together.

The forest green backing.

I got this blue fabric for the sides, but then decided to add a bit more color blocking. So back to JoAnns!

I got some orange fabric and started measuring and cutting to make a border.

Honestly, I kind of wish I did a yellow instead of the orange. But the yellow at JoAnns had tiny flowers on it, I thought he wouldn't like. I was enjoying texting my Aunt Judy with my quilt's progress and troubleshooting along the way, and she assured me she liked the orange :) and after it's sewn in, it's really too late anyway!

Hours of sewing. 

That big insert piece saved hours though, and I did a lot of long strips, so that made it go a lot faster than a traditional pieced quilt. And when I did the quilting, I just did alternating National Park squares, I didn't do every single one.

The binding is always my least favorite part. But it went pretty well actually. I used a zigzag stitch and didn't seem to miss any of the layers. Although somehow I always mis-measure, and it was back to JoAnns for one more package of bias tape!

Finished!

This surprisingly also took awhile to hand-stitch.

The new loft bed!

Twin-sized still seemed pretty big. A lot of the National Park squares actually are just tucked in. Maybe on a non-loft bed it would just hang off the sides.

Anyway, he loved his new bed. And when I told him that I made the quilt he was very sweet and seemed to really appreciate it. He especially loved seeing his name on it and from mama <3

He was more interested in whatever he was building at the moment than being surprised by his new bed, lol. But he loves it!

September & October catch up

 I've actually been wanting to blog for awhile now. So many things have been on my mind. Buuuutttt, then life happens, and time goes by, and it's not useful to blog about something from 2 months ago. Which is why so many of my posts are just 'Life Latelys". I don't know what to say, other than, "oh well!"

So here is what we've been up to.

September:

The annual bookclub girls' weekend getaway! Wonderful, relaxing, over-too-soon.

Baby girl turned 3.

We went to the apple orchard and randomly saw my sister and her baby there, that was fun!

Picked apples, ate donuts and cider, came home and made 2 pies. 

My garden harvest.

Zoo date with these 2 and a girlfriend and her son.

Went to a 'touch a truck' event in the community. This one was awesome, the lines were either so short or no line at all- and lots of opportunities to talk to people about their jobs and stuff like that (ie policeman, city sweeper truck, zamboni driver)

I also read this book, and it was SO good. I lost 7# and learned a lot about how the body uses food for energy- and even as someone who is a RN, exerciser for the last 25 years, I learned a lot. 

October:

I completed this quilt for August. He'd been begging for a "big boy bed" (he's been in an antique Jenny Lind's child's bed that's in between a crib/twin mattress size) and so we got him a loft bed for his birthday. He had 2 so sweet, precious quilts that were gifts I received when he was a baby and they only fit the small bed. So I wanted to make him a new quilt to go with it. 

My first baby turned 8!

Immediately followed by Halloween.

Pumpkin carving.

Trick or treating, and I think the nicest Halloween weather we've ever had!

His old bed

The new loft bed. 

One more trip to the apple orchard before it closed for the season.

The other big thing for October was Doug & I celebrated (a week early) with 5 days in the Dominican Republic! It was such a wonderful time to getaway, relax, eat food I didn't make/clean up after, walk on the beach, sightsee, sleep in, and enjoy each other. 

We were so thankful for the chance to get away, and so thankful on how much God has blessed us these past 10 years.