by Tessa | Personal Development
I didn’t get my March Summary goals post up. The second half of March consisted or a round robin of a yucky cold virus. It hit each member of our family, even Baby Bear, and made for a not-so-fun few weeks. April has felt like a new start. A new season. A new day. Baby Bear is the first of my children who is not high need and he still has a really consistent routine. The biggest perk: I’m rested. I make sure to go to bed on time and we still deal with multiple night wakings but it’s amazing how a content and peace-filled family can show each other love during the day. If your family doesn’t enjoy each other’s company, there is no quick fix but I can say that slowing down and resting more will get you further in life that running around and hardly allowing yourselves to breath.
Goal updates:
Faith:
Read the Bible in one year: I got very far behind in March but am almost caught up. Doubling up the reading on some days and getting back into the habit of listening daily. I’m currently in 1 Kings for OT and making my way through the Book of John for my NT readings.
In depth book study: Oh, right. I was supposed to be reading Ephesians…. I’m going to be caught up soon on my yearly plan so I’ll stick this back into the rotation.
Focused Daily prayer time: I’ve been more sporadically praying for people and events as I think of them instead of taking a specific time each day. Trying to think of when I could add this in. Last month I mentioned a prayer prompter. Still haven’t made it. Putting it on my To Do list right now though… Scheduled for my Sunday afternoon planning session.
Wife:
Monthly “out” date with Adam: No dates. We did errands together without the bigger boys. But they took too long and we didn’t actually sit down to focus on each other. I just mentioned this fact to my husband and C has already figured out he’s going to call a friend to watch him and his brother. I’m glad that even my son sees the value in it… friend texted and May’s date is scheduled.
Shared interest “doing something” time: He totally out paced me in the game that we were playing and I have been left in the dust. This month’s “doing something” involves a garden and a plan for yard work. I want it done and he actually enjoy most yard work.
Kiss Adam daily: So simple and yet, with all the sickness we had in March, we completely got out of the habit. I didn’t review my goals at the end of March either so we really have some work to make this a priority again.
Mother:
Play: Can I just say that my kids are awesome? They truly are fun to be with and, even though I don’t usually get down on the floor with them to push cars around, I love spending time with them. With the weather having (finally) warmed up, we have been taking a lot of walks and doing story time outside and we have been making good use of the swingset. Baby Bear isn’t to sure about swinging but he sure does love participating with the big boys.
Their faith: We did pretty good with out daily family Bible readings for a while but then slacked again. I’m trying to figure out how to make this a firmer habit. Do you have any suggestions? Perhaps a visual chart by our dinner table that we can add stickers to each day we read. Kids love stickers!
Homemaker:
Cleaning: I feel like I’m getting the hang of this whole housekeeping-with-3-kids thing. Baby Bear is about 5.5 months so that’s quicker than I adjusted with the first two. My house certainly isn’t perfect but I’m also not overwhelmed anymore. It’s like a breath of fresh air to not feel like I’m always running behind.
Food: Freezer cooking? Baking? Yogurt? What’s that? I have been making kombucha so that’s a benefit to out health. I also have my tomatoes, peppers, and broccoli started and we will plant the rest of the garden in a couple of weeks.
Project: March’s project was to plan my garden and I still need to do that. April’s project was to clean my bay window so I could start my seeds and put them there. May’s project is to plant everything that can be planted in May. I didn’t plant a lot of things on time last year so my harvest was rather pitiful. This year will be different!
Hobbies/Blog/Personal:
Reading: Two non-fiction books in April were The Essential Oiler’s Handbook. I have used essential oils for the last few years but we had a real breakthrough with Biscuit and his emotional issues during sleep (perhaps I’ll write about that in more detail one day) so I started doing a ton of research. I read about 6 ebooks on essential oils and that was the best. Another one I really liked was The Aromatherapy Bible: The Definitive Guide to Using Essential Oils. It is not a Christian book and there are a few things that I don’t agree with in it but it has great tips for recipes and how to use oils. My favorite part of the book is the section that is dedicated to an overview of a ton of different oils. 
My fiction selection was The Swiss Courier by Tricia Goyer. The kindle version is cheaper than I could have driven to the library and back. I have read another couple of books by Tricia and read her blog regularly and just love her writing. This book was no exception. It was a WW II book and I haven’t been able to read a WW II book for a number of years because I found that they affected me too much. I took a chance on this book, however, and I’m so glad I did. Fantastic story that left me on the edge of my seat and had me applauding by the end of it. I rate this book 5 out of 5 stars.
Writing: I have been pretty consistently writing daily. Not always something for my blog but I journal and have even done something that I hadn’t done for probably 15 years: I wrote a song. Or rather, a part of a song. It isn’t quite complete. It has been great to get back at the piano and have the mental capacity and the joy in my heart to be able to write music again.
Website: March’s goal of making a disclosure page is going to be completed in May. I want to give a little more information on how and why I decided to monetize my blog and how those kinds of things affect my writing and how they affect you, as a reader.
Blog: My regular readers will know that March was a tough month for posting but I’m getting things organized again and I am enjoying posting regularly again. The thing with a blog is that it’s never just writing. If all I had to do was write, I could post daily. The truth is, as any blogger will tell you, the photos and links and formatting and marketing all take up more time than the actual writing does. I put a lot of time, effort, and heart into my final project so if a post really resonates with you, please share it!
Planning Session: I missed a few of these due to sick kids and Sunday’s spent away from home. I had to do some very quick and sporadic planning on Sunday evenings or Monday mornings and the hurried planning showed. I really love my planning session because it helps me organize my thoughts on all the areas of my life. I can accomplish so much more when I have a game plan.
Quiet time: I love warmer weather. I skip out of the house a bit when my husband comes in to make lunch. I get to take a walk alone or, occasionally, with a sleeping baby on my back. The boys play outside a lot so all the noise is out there. I can put Baby Bear in his little chair on the deck and he sleeps or watches his brothers and I can relax. Feeling much more refreshed with the amount of quiet I’ve been experiencing.
Health: Drinking water: It is much easier to keep my fluids up when the weather is nice. A cool glass of water on a hot day is perfect. I would say that I’ve got this “drinking water daily” habit in the bag. Eating fruit: Fruit and summer go hand-in-hand. And my boys have started asking for fruit at snack time so I prepare their snack and make an extra plate for myself at the same time. Strengthening my back: My back injury was over 3 years ago now and it still gives me grief. It makes me a little sad to think it but, at the same time, it has improved drastically. I am starting to find a routine of essential oils, back stretching exercises and remembering to massage daily (my chiropractor recommended the Professional Body Massager 
and I love it). My back still pops out daily and gets tired easily but it doesn’t usually hurt. I’m so glad that pain is minimized! Reviewing goals regularly helps keep you headed in the right direction.
Do you have a regular time to review your goals? If you have written a blog post on your goals, we would love to have you link up and share your goals with us. You could grab the button and put it on your post to help spread the word that we are writing these posts. Or leave a comment with a summary of how your life plan for 2014 is coming along.
*This post may contain affiliate links. If you follow the link and choose to make a purchase, I may receive a small referral commission, at no extra cost to you.*
Subscribe for weekly encouragement for your mothering journey! [mc4wp-form]
by Tessa | Personal Development
Two months into my Life Plan: 2014. It has been a cold winter and the months seems to be dragging on. I’m looking forward to spring when I won’t have to be battling the winter blues on a daily basis. My littlest man is three months old already and I spend much of my day holding him while he sleeps or playing with him while trying to get him to giggle. Such a precious sound! I’ve also been enjoying a lot of story time with my older two boys who have learned that, if they come sit by the rocking chair, I’m usually willing to read. I also have a skill when it comes to stories: I don’t mind reading the same book 10 times in a row. Most of the time anyway.
Goal updates:
Faith:
Read the Bible in one year: Mostly doing alright. I have missed a day or two but have been able to catch up by doing double reading the next day. I’m currently reading Numbers and Mark.
In depth book study: I have been taking my weekly “catch-up day” in my Bible reading plan to read Ephesians. I’ve read it in NIV a couple of times and, in March, I plan to read it in The Message translation.
Focused Daily prayer time: In January I had my prayer time in the morning. In February, however, Baby Bear shifted his schedule on me and is now sleeping until 5:30am and goes for a nap at 7:30am. This leaves me enough time for my Bible reading but not my prayer time. So I have been taking my prayer time around 9pm before I head to bed instead. I still need to make a prayer prompter to have more focus for this.
Wife:
Monthly “out” date with Adam: Oh my. We totally forgot to do this. We have been taking most Thursday evenings to focus on doing something together but I’ve added “plan out date” to my Sunday afternoon planning session.
Shared interest “doing something” time: We have really been enjoying playing an online card game called Hearthstone. He told me I would like it and I told him it was stupid. Turns out that he was right. I love that it involves some thinking and strategy. I also love that it is a video game that I actually can stand a chance at winning. Sort of. His card decks are all still better than mine because he plays much more but, once in a while, I get some really good cards and get to whomp him.
Kiss Adam daily: If I don’t remember this then he does. So this happens most of the time. It may sound kind of silly that this needs to be a habit we create but it is so easy for us to get caught up in the day-to-day routine and completely forget to show each other love in this simple way.
Mother:
Play: The last couple of weeks my boys have been playing so well with each other that they rarely ask me to play. There have even been times that I’ve grabbed a book and asked them if they wanted a story (they always say yes). So I haven’t been playing a lot with my older boys. I’ve been playing a ton with Baby Bear though. I need to take some of my own advice and make a stronger effort to simply enjoy my children.
Their faith: Hanging my head in shame right now. I can’t remember the last time we read the Bible at dinner. We’ve read from their Jesus Storybook Bible
but not the The Narrated Bible
. We rearranged our office/dining room a few weeks ago and, as I sit here typing this out, I have noticed that the Bible got moved onto the piano. Going to put it back on the dinner table as soon as I get up for bed.
Homemaker:
Cleaning: I have been mostly focusing on completing my Monday tasks, which mostly consists of laundry. I have been really good at washing everything but folding and tidying usually takes me the whole week. This week has been great though. Monday: Laundry. Tuesday: Baking. Wednesday: Bathroom. Thursday: Office. Four in a row! I hold Baby Bear during most of his naps so I make good use of my ring sling to get my spurts of housework done.
Food: I did not do any freezer cooking last month. I also did not make yogurt or bread. I’ll try again this month I guess!
Project: February’s goal of digital organization was mostly a success. I have most of my email inboxes cleared out and my digital calendar has been very helpful to me. I am mostly using the method described in Paperless Home Organization
. I don’t use my to do list app a lot though. Partially because it doesn’t sync well between my devices and partially because I just don’t have that many to dos. March’s project is to plan my square foot garden.
Hobbies/Blog/Personal:
Reading: My two non-fiction books for the month were You Can’t Make Me (But I Can Be Persuaded)
by Cynthia Ulrich Tobias (highly recommend if you have a strong willed child) and Your Retreat: A guide to giving yourself a personal planning day, a free ebook by Erin Odom from The Humbled Homemaker (great book but it didn’t really apply as I already had my plans in place. I’m keeping it in mind for my end of year planning session though). My fiction choice was a novel called The Language of Sparrows
by Rachel Phifer (a truly beautiful book about surviving hard times and opening yourself up to being who you were made to be. This book really spoke to me!)
Writing: My daily writing habit is still sitting at about 2-3 times per week. I think I need to revise my strategy a bit on how/when I am writing. Schedule a specific time is tough with our loose family rhythm but I think that I should find a natural lull in our days. A moment when my kids don’t really need me and, instead of reading, take 30 minutes to write instead. Perhaps after lunch when Baby Bear takes his nap and before snack time.
Website: I updated my header in February but I believe I’m going to change it again as I don’t really like it (if you have any suggestions, I’m totally open to hearing them!). My tweak for March will be to add a specific disclosure page. I’ve started doing a few affiliate links and want to explain my referral and affiliate policy in a little more detail to you.
Blog: Continue guest posting at TOTS Family and consistently post once per week. My TOTS post last month was about breastfeeding as a third time mom and I posted each Monday with an extra post thrown in for Valentine’s Day about Free and Simple Ways to Show Love. I typically write and schedule my posts a couple days before they are published. It would be great to get a bit further ahead with scheduling but, for now, this method seems to be working.
Planning Session: I take an hour on Sunday afternoon to sit on my bed, with the door shut, with my laptop, smartphone, and tablet. (Yes, I’m a gadget person!) I plan meals, activities with the kids (playdough, painting, special coloring sheets), housework, office work, and blogging activities. It has been helping a lot but my mind is rather fuzzy lately and I have been working hard on beating the winter blues. I hope and pray that the sunshine and warmer days will come soon so I can get rid of the cloud that hangs over me lately.
Quiet time: I still haven’t made quiet time part of my daily routine. And it shows. I’m going to refocus and keep working on this one.
Health: Drinking water: I have been drinking more tea with the cold weather so my fluids are definitely up. Eating fruit: smoothies help and I have been buying a wider variety of fruit so I don’t get bored with eating just apples and oranges. Strengthening my back: I need to go to the chiropractor and still need to find exercises to strengthen my back so it stops popping out of place.
Reviewing goals regularly helps keep you headed in the right direction. Do you have a regular time to review your goals? If you have written a blog post on your goals, we would love to have you link up and share your goals with us. You could grab the button and put it on your post to help spread the word that we are writing these posts. Or leave a comment with a summary of how your life plan for 2014 is coming along.
*This post may contain affiliate links. If you follow the link and choose to make a purchase, I may receive a small referral commission, at no extra cost to you.*
Make sure you don’t miss any posts by subscribing to my weekly blog newsletter!
[mc4wp-form]
by Tessa | Motherhood
It isn’t hard to make play dough. It uses very few ingredients and takes only about 10 minutes from start to finish and provides countless hours of fun for my kids. So why do I make such a big deal over it?
I asked myself these questions last week as I watched my boys try to stick together play dough that was half dried out and kept falling apart.
My list of excuses:
I’m so tired today.
I’ll make some later today.
l doubt I have the right ingredients.
They will want to help and I’ll have a big mess to clean up.
They are still enjoying the crumbly stuff.
The truth:
I’m tired everyday.
I most likely wouldn’t get around to it later.
I probably do have ingredients and the least I could do is check.
So? There is going to be mess made today anyway If not in the kitchen, then in other areas of the house.
It would make them so happy to have new playdough that is easier for them to build things with.
As I had that inner dialogue and shot down each of my own excuses, I prayed. I asked God for the energy and oomph to to get out of the rocking chair, lay down my sleeping baby (and be okay with the fact that he would likely wake up sooner than if I was holding him) and go to my kitchen. I don’t always listen to God’s prompting but then I was reminded by a still, small Voice that, last month, I made a commitment to pursue the hearts of my children.
So I did it.
I’m sure there was just as much cheering in Heaven as there was in my house when the boys discovered what I was doing. Cheering for their happiness as well as cheering for my small triumph. God even blessed me with Baby Bear sleeping in his seat for awhile so I resisted the temptation to check a few things off of my to do list so I could play with my bigger boys. After I had rocked Baby Bear back to sleep, I had the entertainment of 2 little boys and their creative imaginations:
There were 10 invisible puppies involved who lived in the wall and got a ride to town for ice cream in Bumblebee
and Heatwave
(affiliate link to a couple of my kids’ favorite gifts from this past Christmas). Biscuit even asked the puppies to help him put the playdough away at tidy time. He held the bag open for them to put the playdough in. It was great in theory but then the puppies jumped in the bag instead. They only came out to jump on Papa Bear’s head and eat ice cream. The puppies have visited every day since then and continue to be a great source of imaginative play, even without the playdough.
Another benefit of making playdough that day is the renewed motivation it gave me to spend purposeful time with my children, in their world. They have asked me more often these last days to play with them. And I’ve been saying “yes” more often (though I did have to draw the line at digging in the giant snow pile because it just doesn’t seem safe to do that with Baby Bear in the sling).
I’m pursuing the hearts of my children by having a daily focus time, joining them in whatever they are playing. And you know what? I’m relearning how to play and it’s kind of fun!
What kind of play have you joined your children in lately?
by Tessa | Personal Development
The best goal setting book I have ever read is The Power of Focus: What the World’s Greatest Achievers Know about The Secret to Financial Freedom & Success
, by Les Hewitt, Mark Victor Hanson, and Jack Canfield. I have been using the outline in that book for my business and life plan, on and off, since about 2005. I love how it organizes goals into 7 main target areas: financial, business/career, fun time, health/fitness, relationships, personal, contribution/spiritual. I have tried to keep all these areas in mind as I set my goals and figure out my priorities for 2014. I have also tried to keep in mind the different roles that I fill: child of God, wife, mother, homemaker, entrepreneur.
I’m going to admit that I don’t have a personal (or family) vision or mission statement. I’m sure that goal setting would be a lot simpler if I had one. One day I’ll write one up. For now, I’m borrowing an idea that I saw on a blog just over a year ago: a one word yearly theme. 2013 was Peace. My family desperately needed peace and we sought it and managed to maintain it, in spite of the move and new farm set up (and more recently a new baby). We praise the Lord for that!
One word for 2014: Pursue.
Definition: To follow in an effort to overtake or capture.
I have felt called to pursue God in a way that I never have in the past. I also want to teach my children to pursue Him. I want to pursue my husband. I want to pursue my children’s hearts. And I want to pursue my God-given dreams.
My goals will revolve around this theme and be broken down into monthly habits/routines that I want to instigate. I am working on making a plan to apply this in the 7 main target areas of my life and the 5 major roles that I have.
I have been spending a lot of time in prayer about where I’m currently spending my time and effort. Some things I have figured out and other things I am still waiting for guidance on. I’m planning to talk to some mentors in my life (including my husband) to ask their advice in certain areas. Only time and the Lord know how the next year will play out, but I’m excited to enter into it with a clear picture of where my focus will be.
I’m also excited to be sharing this journey of Personal Priorities: 2014 Edition and want to say a big THANK YOU to Tammy from Creative K Kids for organizing this wonderful way to stay accountable to these goals and priorities. Make sure you hop on over to the other blogs participating in the 2014 edition of Personal Priorities.
Grab the button from the sidebar and join me on this journey. Link up the LAST Friday of the month at any of the participating blogs and let’s help each other stay accountable to have an unstoppable 2014!
*This post contains affiliate links. If you follow the link and choose to make a purchase, I may receive a small referral commission, at no extra cost to you.*
