One of the things I like about setting goals in many different areas of my life is that it allows me some room to struggle and grow while still feeling some success. Although the fitness portion of my goals has been abysmal at best and our house isn’t as clean as I had intended, I am meeting or exceeding my goals in several other areas; my little blog is finally seeing some action, I’ve been reading up a storm, and we have actually had a date night! Additionally, I knocked out some Thank You notes for Christmas gifts; I made them my “project” for the week and didn’t do any work on my other hobbies until they were all in the mail. What a great item to check off on my to-do list the first week of the year! Below is a breakdown of how all of my goals progressed (or didn’t) in January. I am already looking forward to making improvements in February!
If you are just here for pictures, please scroll to the bottom for your weekly dose of Dierschke Baby eye candy.
Personal Goals
1) Photography:
I have set aside time at lunch and a few evenings to do some photo culling and editing, and as a result have fairly well gone through photographs from October 2011 to January 2012. Making this task a priority really helps me buckle down and get it done. Although it will take some time to go back through previous years back to 2009, I am confident I can catch up with editing by the end of 2012 at my current pace!
2) Sewing:
At my husband’s prompting, I lugged the sewing machine down from the closet, blew the dust off of it, and put it to use. I am almost (but not quite) done with project # 1, which I actually started sometime last fall. I will save all of the details for a future “Sewing Update” post, but suffice it to say that I am making positive progress on my sewing goal.
3) Physical Fitness:
Fitness has taken a backseat so far in 2012. I started out GREAT with a good Saturday run and I had lots of plans to hit the gym and attend a weekly yoga class, but one thing or another stood in my way (read: excuses) and I just haven’t been able to get going. I knew going into this year that my goals in sum were a bit ambitious time wise, but I know I can get at least SOME fitness in my schedule. I am looking forward to working on this particular goal more in February.
4) Blogging:
Plain and simple, I have accomplished this goal and THEN some this month. As my faithful readers are well aware, I have posted at least once per week in addition to a backlog of “Letters to Ellen” that I had previously composed. I believe the key to my success here was deciding what I wanted to post about each week in advance and making a calendar to keep myself focused and on track. As I progress this year, I can see how I might decide to post more than once per week or start to tweak my planned posts, but just having the calendar with posts already decided has really helped me to get over that overwhelmed “what do I write” feeling
5) Reading:
My thirst for mediocre novels can apparently not be quenched. I am on track to blow my original goal out of the water thanks to my new Kindle Fire and the trial period of Amazon Prime. In mid-January, I searched for and downloaded as many free books as I could while our Prime membership was still in effect. My criteria for choosing the books pretty much stopped at “free” and “mildly interesting.” Honestly, I didn’t even read very many reviews. Here’s a fun fact: many of the free books on Amazon are self-published! And often (though not always) poorly edited. Below are quick reviews on the seven books I read in January. You should know that I truly have NO SHAME by sharing the fact that I read them with you… if you ever read them yourself you will see why. In general I recommend all of these if you want fast, mindless reading entertainment.
· Confessions of a Call Center Gal - a little weak, but fun, light reading. I liked the story in general but the last sentence was really stupid.
· Waiting on Hope - a decent, though sad, story, but it was completely predictable with obvious metaphors and foreshadowing. In addition to a few glaring grammatical errors, I found an inexplicable use of "anecdote" in place of "antidote" TWICE. This is the only one I wouldn’t recommend this month.
· A Previous Engagement – a typical romantic comedy with a predictable ending, but I enjoyed the characters and the pace of the story. An additional bonus (especially after Waiting on Hope) was only one noticeable typo!
· Fresh Powder - a Sophie Kinsella-esque novel that was actually pretty good, although some of the relationships weren't 100% believable.
· Ferris' Bluff - an interesting story about a man coming to a small town and unraveling some mystery/suspicious events… I would actually recommend this one!
· Son of Eden - a "paranormal young adult romance." In some ways similar to the Twilight series, though I actually found the main relationship to be a bit less eye roll inducing. The book was free, but I enjoyed it enough to spend a couple of dollars on the sequel.
· Daughter of Earth – sequel to Son of Eden. There is going to be a third book released sometime in 2012 (looking forward to that!), but honestly all three could probably be combined into one volume as none of the stories are really quite stand alone. A quick but enjoyable read, and I will be glad to see how the story ends!
Team Dierschke Goals
1) House Cleaning:
We started the year with a good cleaning once the Christmas tree and other decorations were boxed and put away, but we haven’t remained faithful to our “cleaning once per week” goal. However, the swift derailment of this goal can be heavily attributed to Brandon’s transition to working on second shift. We’ve survived two weeks so far, and for the next month or so, Brandon will be working from 6 pm to 6 am. Since each of us has a 30-45 minute commute, this schedule essentially limits our face to face interaction to 30 (or fewer) minutes each weekday morning. Ian is coping surprisingly well, and really I am doing fine too, although the evenings do seem rather endless. My house elf (Brandon) is able to do some general clean up around the house after the kids and I leave in the morning, and sometimes dinner is ready via the slow cooker or prepped for me to cook really quickly (i.e. veggies chopped and ready to be steamed). My evening routine has essentially consisted of: pick up kidsàfix dinneràeat dinneràclean up dinneràbathe childrenàput Ellen to bedàread 1000 booksàput Ian to bedàwash essential dishesàfix lunches/bottles for following dayàcollapse into bed
2) Monthly Date Night:
Mission accomplished in January! My wonderful parents are always willing to help us out in the babysitting department, so we drove up to Allen on a Saturday afternoon and dropped off the kiddos before hitting up the nearby mall for a movie. We intended to see Sherlock Holmes 2, but it was unfortunately (and surprisingly) sold out! After considering the many alternatives, we opted to see “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol” in an attempt to maximize our "chase and blow 'em up" theater experience. Afterwards we went to Japon, a hibachi grill/sushi restaurant. The food was DELICIOUS and Brandon actually liked the sushi even though it had (GASP) CUCUMBER in it. (He claims to despise even the SMELL of cucumber). Due to the style of cooking, we ended up sitting at a big table with 2 families that were there together and were required to face our fear of forced small talk with strangers. I am here to say we survived, and it wasn’t that bad.
3) Monthly Time with Others:
We were able to squeeze in several social activities with others this month. Even though it was “just” family, it was still nice to set aside time to spend with others.
· BIL Birthday Dinner: One weekend while my husband was hanging out with some friends, I spent the afternoon with my parents and the kids. I helped some (and probably mostly distracted) while my parents worked to install an elfa system in their pantry. Later that evening, we met with all of my immediate family at the Twisted Root Burger Company to celebrate my brother-in-law’s (32nd) birthday. Overall it was very low key, but it was nice to get out of the house for the day.
· Cousin Pizza Party: Ian and Ellen’s Lewicki cousins came to our house to make their own pizzas and cookies… stay tuned for a future post for additional details and pictures!
Dierschke Babies in January
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