September Goals

Now that it's a week into September, I thought it might be good to share my September goals with you. Ha! I wanted to finish blogging about Kenya first though, so I wouldn't have to add that to my goal list :) Although really I should do one more wrap up post so I guess I'm not quite done.

1) Reduce TBR list. I had this as a July goal and did fairly well. I even discovered a new series I enjoy. I also had it as an August goal and didn't touch a single book on this pile. Well, now it's moving to a September goal. I am determined to reduce this pile this month. I may even discover some more hidden gems :)

Are you sick of this picture yet? Because I am!

2) Go through the kitchen to get rid of things. We're pretty good at going through the rest of the house but the kitchen, for some reason, gets ignored. If you check out our kitchen cupboards, they are a little scary looking right now.

3) Find a good work routine. I "only" need to work about fifteen to twenty hours a week but you guys, I have been finding this so hard. Dave and I have had some conversations about how I can get into a more consistent work routine and it looks like I'll be doing the early morning wake up thing again. The great thing about it is that I'll get six hours of my work done (about a third of it!) before anyone else is awake. Score! That will make up for lack of sleep, right?!?! :)

4) Find more chores for the kids to do. Dave had sciatica this summer which meant, for awhile, he couldn't bend below his knees. And he couldn't walk. Which meant I was doing a lot of extra work around the house. One night I freaked out on the kids when one of them wouldn't pick something up because "I didn't put it there." Let's just say, they might have gotten a small earful about how much stuff I deal with that "I didn't mess up" and it was like a switch flipped. They started taking out the garbage and recycling, cleaning up without asking, and helping with yard work without grumbling. I realized they could start helping to do dishes and now they fight over who gets to do them! Did you all get that -- they WANT to do dishes.

We don't have a dishwasher and it's taken a huge amount of work off my and Dave's plates -- literally :) Although we don't let them do anything breakable or anything sharp yet. But the amount they get done, even with those two stipulations, is huge. So I need to find more chores for them to fight about do.

5) Get Rachel's map pictures printed. For those of you who are long time readers, you may recognize this goal from a few years ago. Except this time I have place to go and we have pictures chosen. So it's really a matter of getting the pictures to the place. I should be able to do that at some point this month, right?!?!? (You can read more about Rachel's map here and here. And if you're curious the last link is to my list of goals from October of last year. Some of them are eerily similar. Argh.)

6) Have a regular family games night. These next few months our weekends are a little insane, so if we want some quality family time together, we're going to need to do it during the week. This goal kills two birds with one stone -- we get some quality family time and we get to figure out which games our family has grown out of and get rid of them. Whoo hoo!!!

Let's see what this shelf looks like come October.
And this isn't even all of our games. Yikes.

7) Figure out the kids' Hallowe'en costumes. See above "insane weekends" and just know how much I value my sanity. If we can figure out the kids' costumes this month, then we can get them ready the weekend before Hallowe'en early next month. At least, that is the hope :)