Goals!

I love making goals. I love when I accomplish them even more! :)

First off, overview of 2010 goals:

January: Be consistent in establishing some type of workout routine and make it a habit

Check

February: Study a topic in the scriptures each week and really become familiar with it.
Check

March: Read! See how many books I can read in this month.
Check

April: Give all attention to getting our square foot garden prepared and planted!
Check

May: Learn to crochet and make at least one thing.
Check

June: Give even more time to my kids
Check

July: Learn how to swim.
Check...ish. Let's see if I can even go near a pool again though.

August: Set up an Etsy shop and sell stuff.
UNcheck

September: Get more serious about my writing. Have at least one or two stories done.
check?...uncheck? I don't know.

October: Learn how to do Family History.
UNcheck

November: Memorize Morse code....could come in very handy.
UNcheck- although this wasn't really an important goal anyways...Instead I did a tree for Mikkie, I think that was an even better goal.

December: Serve more.
UNcheck

Although most of those goals were good, in retrospect I think there were more important things to focus on. I think of good, better and best. That last goal leads me into my goals/focus for the year 2011, which is:

SERVICE!

I have picked out a different thing to do each month and will write my experiences/progress on Mikkie's blog, since this was my promise I made to her on her birthday.

Ready, Set, Achieve! :)

Monthly Goal Review for August

Goal: Learn how to do Family History.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ 2 stars

I did a switcheroo for this month, it was setting up an etsy shop, but I didn't want to do that anymore. I can change, as long as I have a goal, right!

I would've put zero stars since I really didn't do anything. But I rated at least a little. I had big plans to get the help of so many knowledgeable people from our families to help me out. I wanted to wait until after vacation. Who woulda known I'd be doing my own daughter's.

I imagined her coming over when I was old and wrinkly and recording my life history, not me doing her life history of a whole 21 months.

I'm going to get back on track for next month....which is tomorrow! I sound like a broken record when I say time flies so fast!!

Monthly Goal Review for July

Goal for July: Faith and I learn how to swim.

Rating: ★★★★☆ 4 stars

let's pretend I was aiming for a silhouette picture, ok. :)

I finally made it a point to get my rear in gear and learn how to swim. It was easier than I thought. Maybe cuz I didn't have to be in the dreaded deep end; but anyways, can I get a round of applause?! ;) Big feat for this scaredy chikin me.

My aunt was kind enough to show me and Faith the ropes and had us swimming in no time. Well, me at least, Faith is working on it. She did so great though, I was so proud of her! When we first went to a pool this summer, she sat on the benches the whole time, she was pretty nervous. Night and day difference to last week- she wasn't clinging all over me and went down the kiddie slide all by herself.....a couple million times. :)

Monthly Goal Review for June

Goal: Give even more time to my kids; study and find better ways to teach them and have Faith memorize the alphabet.

Rating: ★★★☆☆ 3.5 stars

Even though Faith already had her alphabet memorized, I don't feel like I did too well with this month, oh well. Here's a list of things I tried with the girls:

* Playdough-FAIL (fun to play with, NOT fun to get off floor)

* Bubbles- WIN (although they dump it out more than blowing the bubbles :S)

* Sprinkler toy hooked up to our hose- FAIL. My girls do NOT like water in their face, mostly Faith, but let me tell you it did not sound like a good time when I turned that "fun" sprinkler on.

* Dyed pasta shells to put on string- FAIL. Maybe I didn't do it right, but the food coloring wasn't sticking to the pasta and BIG MISTAKE...I left it on the counter. That + turning my head for a few minutes= MESS.

* Helping mom cook- WIN. Faith LOVES to help, she is a great helper! I just have to watch her carefully cuz she's pretty speedy to grab that egg and crunch it all in the bowl. ;)

* Zoo- WIN! They both loved the zoo! The baby elephant was our favorite. That, the long white-tailed monkeys and the gorilla were the most entertaining, everything else might as well have been dead. Did you know they're building a big Polar Bear exhibit that'll open in 2012? That is when I will get a season pass, I can't get enough of their cute fuzzy faces!!! :)

There's still so much more to do with them, so really this goal is not over and will never be over, I love spending time with my little girls! They are sweet as can be and so fun to be with, they make me laugh and smile all the time!

If any of you have some fun ideas you like to do with your kids, I'd love to hear them! It gets tiring for my brain sometimes trying to come up with things to do. :)

Monthly Goal Review for May

I just barely posted the review for last month....craziness!!

Goal for May: Learn to crochet (hey, that rhymes :)

Rating: ★★★★★ 5 stars

I'm SO glad I finally took the time to learn to crochet. I actually learned a while ago, back in the day, but obviously didn't pay close attention. It's one of my new favorite hobbies!

I started learning how to make flowers first cuz A) it's simple enough and B) I wanted to make some little hair clippies for the girls. It took a few attempts before I got it down, even then it took about a week before I actually could say it looked good.

I googled how to crochet and found THIS cool site that gives a video tute on how to do almost every type of stitch. If you understand how to do the stitches, it's pretty easy to make stuff! If I can do it, anyone can do it. :)

Here's what I came up with:

These are how I started out.. take a look at that first red one....what was going on with that petal?? most of them have funky mess ups, but hey I learned by all that trial and error. :)

More flower clippies plus some from ribbon I got.

Baby hats and two adult ones. I like the purple one!

The tutes I used for the flowers are here and here and here.

Tute for pink hat I found here.

The rest I bought the patterns on etsy. There's some CUTE stuff out there!
Then these are my favorite- little fairy tale finger puppets! Aren't they just too cute?! Ya got a Knight in crocheted armor, his noble steed, dragon and damsel. Found the free tute over here. They're very easy and now the girls can have fun playing with them (maybe me too ;)

If anyone else knows of some fun crocheting projects out there, lemme know!

Monthly Goal Review for April

Goal for April: Get garden planted and established/ yard work as well

Rating: ★★★★★

Five stars

I'm glad we got in our yard work couple weeks ago when Spring came (and went immediately after.) I actually love doing yard work, maybe because of my fetish with seeing messy things clean and orderly afterwards.

Along with getting our yard lookin' good, we decided it was high time to get a fence. So, we went for it and I am SO excited! Our awesome neighbor installed it for us and did a great job! It's going to be nice to send the girls out to the back to play when I don't feel like watching them every minute and chasing them down the road. ;) And of course, keep them safe from the busy road behind us so they don't get smashed flat like the neighbor's cats.

The main goal was to get our garden finished, even though the fence was a big accomplishment also. Our garden started out looking like this, for a year, growing some nice weeds and grass in it. :)

Sad looking, eh.

Finally, we conquered it, doesn't it look tonz better? I'm SO excited about both!

Now we are just hoping that the fence keeps the stupid cats outta our garden and that we can harvest at least ONE thing! It's our first crack at a garden so...wish us luck! :)

Monthly goal review

Goal for March: See how many books I can read.

Rating:★★★★★

10 books, I'd have to say that's pretty dang awesome. It's more like 14 books cuz some of them were BIG, especially Undaunted-talk about massive(but incredible) book! I'm serious when I say that's more I've read than the whole last year and maybe the year before that combined. I have a love-hate relationship with books. (among other things) I don't read much and I remembered why when I started this month. I can't stop!! I really get into my books. I loved every one that I read and recommend them all. It was not a waste of my time, but...wow! haha

Three of them had quotable lines and thoughts that stuck out to me and I wanted to share a few of them. I'll list them under their titles below.

The Last Song- Loved it and am so excited to go see the movie with my friend on Wed!

Man's Search for Meaning- Excellent, made me think and I agree with the points he makes.

• “Don’t aim for success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it."
• “No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same."
• “Everything can be taken from man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms- to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way."
• “What matters most, is to make the best of any given situation."
• “A human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to be happy."

Hunger Games- Great series! I'm hating the wait til August for the last book to come out!

Catching Fire-" "

Leadership & Self-Deception- Excellent as well! loved their other book Anatomy of Peace also! I love how they write in story format, it helps me able to grasp the concept so much easier.

• “We can tell how other people FEEL about us and it’s to THAT that we respond."
• "No matter what we’re doing on the outside, people respond primarily to how we’re feeling about them on the inside."
• " Sometimes we focus on and inflate other’s faults to feel justified for our own. We inflate other’s faults while minimizing our own."
• "The behavior we complain about is the very behavior that justifies us."

Undaunted- Fantastic! I loved reading the true story about the pioneers-what amazing, courageous, faithful people!

City of Bones- Another great series! I'm thinking I like this one better than Twilight series.

City of Ashes-" "

City of Glass-" "

Glimpses- So great. I love this lady and admire her so much, what an incredible woman!

• Do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, with a cheerful heart.
• Appreciation unexpressed is not appreciation.
• It is our trials that make us humble and strong.
• Everything you do now is preparing you for something else.
• "The only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry, I prefer to laugh, crying gives me a headache."
• Let us be kind to one another, for most of us are fighting a hard battle.
• It is the artful duty of a woman to adjust.

I have so many other books on my list to read and am continually looking for great recommendations. So if ya have any, let me know! =)

Monthly goal review

Another month- gone! I'm getting way anxious for Spring!

Goal for February: Study a topic in the scriptures each week and really become familiar with it.

Rating: ★★★★★

Surprisingly I only missed 2 days out of the whole month. That's pretty darn good, so I'm going to give myself a little credit and rate me a five. I really tried hard to make it a habit to study every morning before I do anything else (or it most likely won't get done). I really enjoyed these study sessions; I got a lot more out of them rather than just reading straight through the scriptures.

Preach My Gospel is what I studied. It had some great study and application ideas. My cousin mentioned she read it and I thought it sounded like a good idea!

Monthly goal review

Is the longest month of the year really over?! When I have a goal to focus on, it kinda goes by a little faster.

January goal: be consistent in establishing some type of workout routine and make it a habit.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Review: I started off small by just doing some stretches and a few exercises. The next day I would be sore (man am I a wuss!) so I didn't feel like doing anything. I kept trying though, when I wasn't sick or feeling blah I'd get right back to my exercises. I didn't exercise every day of the month (that wasn't the goal) but I'm pretty much warmed up now, so I can start doing more serious workouts! Needless to say, I won't be completely dead when we go dancing for Valentines! That's a good thing.

Things I like to do for exercise that are fun to me:

* Punching bag

* Step Aerobics (I use my stairs. go up and down my long staircase, sometimes skipping a step to make it "harder")

* DDR! boo ya gramma! This is how I lost weight before I got married....quite the workout.

* Bike riding (come on spring! You want an even better biking workout? hook up a trailer to it and put your kids in it! whew)

* walking (the uphill walk to our park is more than a good workout.)

* Basketball (I really miss having a hoop to play on!)

* Rollerblading (does anyone do that anymore?!)

* Weights (Thanks to Tim's bro, we have a bench now!)

* Dancing (it's more of a workout than you think!)

Know what I like best? Dancing! Yup, I'm one of those people who dance their soul out in the family room with music pumped up. I've pretty much been dancing my whole life...it all started in my toddler years when my dad would turn on some classical marching music and have me march in circles (while videotaping the WHOLE thing haha). I tease my dad that still to this day I have nightmares of marching and circles. ;)

The girls even join me in my rockin out, it's too cute! Faith likes to copy what I do while Mikkie does her bum dance and stomp her feet (could this be the marching showing through?!) The other day Tim came home and saw us dancing and claimed he's never seen me dance before... huh? "We never go clubbing or anything, so I only see you ballroom dance with me." hah wow, after 4 years of marriage, who knew!

New Years Goals

I love the start of a new year; you have a clean slate once again to start over fresh. I'm adamant about making each year better than the previous. I love goals and getting that sense of accomplishment and feel I'm making progress, it's a GREAT feeling! One of the things that brings me great satisfaction is to be organized. I feel so much more in control and so much more peace when I have things planned out.

Let's check my goals for 2009 and see how well I did:

NEW YEARS GOALS 2009

learn sign language

☑ lose weight -(not fit like I want to, but at least I lost most my baby fat from Mikkie!)

attend temple monthly(We were so close on this one..just missed 2 months.) =(

be more positive- focus on good things

do more service-something nice for someone each week (Tim thinks I did lots of service...I guess we're our own worse critics, eh)

☑☑be more organized-prepare cards/gifts ahead of time so they're done by special occasion.

do more writing

?? read book of mormon again-with study journal-- (I didn't do the study journal, but I did read the whole Doctrine & Covenants two times! I think that counts..) =)

VT every month(boy did I fail miserably at this! I didn't even go once!)

☑☑potty train faith!

☑☑improve design skills

Not bad, but not my best either. I can do SO much better. This year for my New Year's resolutions, instead of just making a list of what I want to get done, I'm doing Three things:

First I get organized by making a list of everything that's going on in the year 2010 (i.e. birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, other special occasions) and list them in the month before it happens so I can plan/prepare for it a month in advance. I did this for last year and found it to be VERY helpful and effective. I had everything written down so I wouldn't forget and would know each month what I needed to be focusing/working on.

Second, make goals. I just thought of a way to do this better for this year, instead of making a list of goals like I stated earlier, I made a goal for each month. On my "organized list" if you will, at the bottom of each month's list, I assigned a goal to focus on for that whole month. I'm very excited and hope it will return good results.

Third, I'm going to return and report...right here to you guys. =) maybe it will help me be more motivated knowing I have to report to you. At the end of each month, I will record my progress on here and hopefully get some encouraging remarks to help me keep going. ;)

Here's my collage I made of my goals that I'm putting as my desktop background on my computer to be a constant reminder!

January: Be consistent in establishing some type of workout routine and make it a habit (with a whole month just dedicated to this, I have high hopes I can pull it off =)

February: Study a topic in the scriptures each week and really become familiar with it.

March: Read! See how many books I can read in this month.

April: Give all attention to getting our square foot garden prepared and planted!

May: Learn to crochet and make at least one thing.

June: Give even more time to my kids (not like I won't spend more time with them in any other month); study and find better ways to teach them and have Faith memorize the alphabet.

July: Learn how to swim. Yes, I'm FINALLY going to get the guts to do this. I'm going to have Faith take lessons with me. =) So, I guess a double goal here.

August: Set up an Etsy shop and sell stuff.

September: Get more serious about my writing. Have at least one or two stories done.

October: Learn how to do Family History. I've not one clue of how to research my ancestors...and I know just the person to go to for help....my Grandpa! =)

November: Memorize Morse code....could come in very handy. Tim and I learned to do it a while ago, but I need a refresher and be able to have it down pat.

December: Serve more. Instead of waiting for an opportunity to come to me, I'm going to go looking myself and find ways to serve, even if it be something small.

I'm VERY excited and pumped to get started on a new year learning new things and bettering myself. I have a feeling it's going to be a great year! Happy New Year to you and may you be blessed to set some goals for yourself and have the motivation to achieve them!