Things To Do In August

First of all, I need to do a shout out to the two blogs I've read so far this morning because they've both done the list-y kinds of posts I love so much :) Thanks Bekah and Allena! To continue with the trend, here's my list of goals for August.

1) Finish blogging about Kenya. I really thought I'd be done all the Kenya posts by now but there are still some lingering ones. And then I want to write about other things going on in our life. And although it isn't clear from the blog, we do stay home the majority of the time (July was a BIG exception), so I want to record some of the every day memories.

2) Buy school supplies. The teachers sent home school supply lists at the end of the school year (the first time this has happened), so I want to get the school supply shopping done early so I'm not rushing around Labour Day weekend trying to finish it off.

3) Get more books off my TBR. I did really well at reducing this pile in July and I'd love to shrink it further this month.

I think I could easily reduce this pile by another seven books.

4) Drink less caffeine; drink more water. I've been over the top exhausted lately and Dave and I talked about it the other day and agreed that I should drink less caffeine and try and drink more water. If you've been around here for any length of time, you know this is one of my big struggles. I was so proud of the fact that yesterday I only had two cups of coffee-hot chocolate and NO Coke. Whoo hoo! Now I just need to keep moving forward on this one.

We got these new water bottles on our safari and I really like them so that's been helping with my water intake. Why does having a good water bottle matter so much?!?!?

5) Stick to our summer schedule. We're now two days into it and it's been going fairly well. I feel like having clear expectations works well for Sam and Rachel and so this schedule just lays it all out for them, which is awesome. (Since clear expectations is what works for me too, I totally get where they are coming from!)

6) Get to the pool outside of swimming lessons -- ideally two - three times a week. We are a part of a neighbourhood pool (which isn't actually in our neighbourhood!), and so the kids are in tennis and swimming lessons every morning for the next four weeks. I was talking to one of the other moms yesterday because I'd LOVE for the kids to get out of Level 1 this summer -- Sam has been in it for FOUR YEARS now. She said that really, we just need to come to the pool outside of swimming lessons and let the kids play around in the water.

We did try to get to the pool last night but just as we arrived, it started thundering and they closed the pool. We were totally bummed but we'll try again...

So these are my August goals. Come back in September to see how I did this month. Or stop in at any point to encourage me to reach for water instead of Coke. Ha!