July Goals Re-Cap

Since it's August 1st, it's time to update you all on my July goals. (You can read the original post here.) Some of them I feel like I hit out of the park and as for others of them... well let's just say, I don't know if I won the overall game. But we did go to three different baseball games in three different cities (and in one province and two states) in three weeks this month so at least I accomplished something :)

1) Tackle my TBR pile. I'm so happy with how my TBR pile is currently looking. I'm hoping to get another few books off this pile in August, but it's just much less likely to fall over now. Ha!

my (non-library) TBR (To Be Read) in June and last night. Yay, it's shrinking :)

2) Start, and finish, our Kenya trip photo book. Ummm... I have pictures picked from our first full day in Kenya and I've got three pages of the book done. I really need to get moving on this one.

3) Menu plan for the rest of the month and eat out less. I feel like this is one of the goals I hit out of the park. Except for one lunch out the day we had to take Dave to Urgent Care (he eventually was diagnosed with sciatica), and our whole schedule was thrown off, we've been doing really well at sticking to our menu plan. I haven't even been to Starbucks in three whole weeks so I'm pretty proud of myself. Of course, we might have to break that streak this weekend :)

And thank you to the people who gave me menu ideas. I'm definitely incorporating them into our menu plans.

4) Deal with stuff... The following are pictures of all the "stuff" I dealt with this past month...

 

Sam and Rachel's boxes of school work before (left) and after (right). I was really sneaky and dealt with these early one morning, put the extra papers in recycling immediately, and the truck came and picked it up before the kids were even awake. Yay!!!

I went through the kids' rooms with them last week and we organized, got rid of, and generally cleaned. Sam's shelves look significantly cleaner now and a) he now has an "office space" for all his papers (third shelf) and b) he is definitely a chapter book kid, as shown in the picture on the right. I knew this in my head but somehow the reality of removing a lot of the picture books from his bookshelf hit me hard.

In Rachel's room we cleaned off her shelf and went through her baskets and the reading reality for her is that she is done with board books. Again, I knew this in my head, but we passed on a huge stack to her cousin a couple of days ago and I was sad to see them go. Also she has a "secret office" set up on her shelf behind her dance picture which everyone but me is allowed to know about! Ha!

The exciting organizational project in Rachel's room was figuring out her necklace situation. The child has no less than five (yes, I said FIVE) jewellery boxes but her necklaces kept being a tangled mess. I did a quick Pinterest search and came up with the hanger in the picture on the right. Rachel loves it and her necklaces are no longer tangled which is a win.

5) Make a "summer bucket list" and a "summer schedule" with the kids and do some things on it. We made our "List of Summer Fun" a few weeks ago and have crossed off a few things. I'll write more about some of those soon. And just yesterday we got into the bulk of our summer. The kids have tennis and swimming lessons every morning for the next four weeks so we made our summer schedule. After one day, I can say it's going well! Hahahaha!!! Seriously though, the kids kept running to see what was next which was pretty awesome! 

6) Make a new summer wreath. I'm actually sad about this goal. I've scoured Pinterest and can't find a new summer wreath I love. And I haven't put the old one up so, according to our front door, it's spring. Sadness. Do you have a summer wreath on your door? What does it look like? Send me a picture. I need inspiration.

7) Start working on my sermon. I did not do this. However I worship led on Sunday so I did get that done. Sadly it doesn't count towards my sermon prep. Only nineteen days left to prepare. Yeeeks.

So that's my July goals update. I can't believe it's already August. This summer is flying by.