I love that we are getting into hiking season and cooler weather here in Phoenix! It is also Powersheets launch day!!! This always fills me with a little bit of hope that life goes on and reassures me that I’ll have a nice little personal retreat to reflect on priorities and what I want for the new year. If you want to go through Powersheets with me next year, you can order them HERE.
(The tending lists in the Powerhseets are more or less what shows up here in my monthly goal/recap posts but the magic of this tool is in the prep work and reflecting on what you want your big picture goals to be and why!)
The sweetest day with my littlest… we’ve missed out on so much 1 on 1 time thanks to the pandemic but we’re making up for it when and however we can…
SEPTEMBER MONTHLY GOALS
*Plan Fall Break:YES! I am so excited to tell you more about this in a post I’m planning for later this month and I’m hoping we all have a healthy happy break and that all the plans we worked on help us have some stress-free family fun
*Celebrate my hubby: Huge bummer that I was sick on his actual birthday, but we made up with some celebrating over Labor Day weekend and got him some fun treats. Hoping he feels loved but REALLY hoping we can have an actual party next year!
*Plan for fall house work: Lots of progress here. We have a “temporary garden” that we anticipate will get us through next spring at least and we continue to work on and change our yard. We also prioritized which projects we are saving for in this season and what we can start on with DIY work. We implemented new chores routines for the kids and, aside from everything going sideways during a mandatory quarantine thanks to school exposure for the kiddos, those are going really well too! Working on closing loops and finding better routines still, but we’ve made a very good start.
*Photo Catch up/organize 2021: I AM SO EXCITED THAT THIS PROJECT IS FINALLY DONE. Hours and hours and hours because I let myself get so behind. Plan to have this be a once a monthly or weekly thing going forward instead of a year and a half long catch up that makes my brain feel like it is melting. The only final step is clearing many pictures off my phone now that they are all backed up and sorted on our portable hard drive!
*Your Special Day x3: This month was the most successful for this goal so far. Maybe the anxiety over school quarantines really helped me focus on wanting to give my kids SOMETHING they could count on, but I really focused in on special times with each of them doing things that make them come to life and fill with extra joy. Trying to get my hubby in on this more so they don’t think this is just a mom thing!
*Create Fall Bucket List: YES! Nothing fills me with a little bit of hope like hearing the kids say the most crazy out there things and the simplest joys during our initial brainstorming and then agreeing as a family on what to look forward to over the next few months. Now to start tackling it…
SEPTEMBER WEEKLY GOALS
*Saint of the Week: Half and half here. The kids not being in school threw off about two weeks of this but we did celebrate Mary during her birthday week and we learned some interesting things about St. Barnabas and Padre Pio.
*Photo Routine/Back Up/Project Life Pages: Yes! It felt so nice to have a reasonable mount of photos to catch up on at the end of the month now that I’m caught up again.
*Family Meeting/Budget Check In: Yes and no… yes we checked in about things… but we had some unexpected shifts (because unexpected and no routine seems to be the name of the game this year…)
*Craft: Also about half and half here. Also really thrown off by the events of the month. The two crafts I did had big payoffs though- I made coasters for us which were needed and also super cute, and I decoupaged my workout bench which is bringing me a lot of joy.
*Visit the Mountains: I missed the first two weeks but made up for it!
SEPTEMBER DAILY GOALS
*Sleep Hygiene: .hahahahahahahah this was rarely accomplished as my anxiety has been sky high and I have had serious trouble sleeping and, I will admit, have fallen pray to doom scrolling when I wake up from bad dreams at 2AM… trying really hard to stop that
*Strength and Steps: ooooof this was extremely hit and miss this month. Exhaustion and depression and anxiety meant that some days I had a stress fueled workout that was way too extreme and then I paid for it for days and other days it was a struggle just to do even the most basic things…
*Daily Delete: Overall this went really well- and even if it didn’t happen daily it remained manageable every few days. This will probably stay on the list one more month until I really feel like it has become a habit.
*Evening Routine: Even my morning routine was a hot mess this month. It was just a really REALLY hard month but I’m hoping to bounce back next month.
*Shakespeare September: This went out the window with my morning routine, but I did stick to the end of the Artist’s way and that was good at least… it is just that my “morning pages” didn’t always happen in the morning.
To shop any of these beautiful items in the 2022 collection just click on the picture!
To be honest, I am really proud of anything and everything I accomplished in September because my mental space was not good at all. I am hoping that fall break gives us a good re-set going into the next season and it was REALLY helpful to have a goals refresh before filling out October’s tending list. (These refreshes are one of my favorite parts of Powersheets!) There are a few goals I’m not putting on this blog post but that I can hopefully re-cap for my November post, but in the meantime…
OCTOBER MONTHLY GOALS
*Enjoy and Document Fall Break: Already in progress and can’t wait to share more about it. Excited to document it and get some pictures printed.
*Create Holiday Bucket Lists: The holidays come fast and furious once we enter October. So much is still in flux, but the kids feel much more excited and empowered ever since we started doing seasonal bucket lists!
*Solidify Race Training Plans & Start Training Season: It has been hard to make a training plan because I keep second guessing myself about some races I’ve already signed up for and also debating if there are any additional races I might sign up for. Some major plans have changed and so much still feels so up in the air that I’m on the struggle bus, but I know if I just solidify some decisions about what kind of training plan I want to embrace and what my basic and reach goals are for each event then I’ll have a much easier time just doing the hard runs required for whatever paths I pick. One thing I know I’ll be doing is catching up on some virtual races I signed up for over the summer and also earning my Pat Tillman #42in40 medal.
*Your Special Day: Truly such a wonderful bonding experience with the kids and something I want to keep up even as we enter the crazy holiday seasons and even as our schedule still remains in so much flux. I’m super excited to try out the intentional parenting action card deck and implement those into our “your special day” traditions as well as randomly on other days!
*Recipe Transfer from Pinterest: Swinging back around to this goal that I had back in the spring- I am getting more and more frustrated with Pinterest and a lot of sites that had some of my favorite recipes are not necessarily renewing their domains anymore now that social media has taken over the content world so I want to make sure our favorite recipes make it into physical form somewhere and therefore- recipe box.
OCTOBER WEEEKLY GOALS
*Fall Flavors/Make Memories in the Kitchen: One of my favorite aspects of fall is all the yummy tastes. Not just pumpkinpalooza, but also apple, cinnamon, cloves, chai, butternut squash- all the cozy things that bring me a simple bit of joy in a crazy world. Combining this weekly goal with a desire to get my kids back in the kitchen more- something we put a bit of a hold on while we settled into the new house.
*Long Run: Tied to my training goal above- I do not know the details of how many miles I need to do each week, but I do know that after fall break I’m going to need to buckle down with training and get in some long runs once a week.
*Hike!: I have missed the mountains so much. it is still pretty hot as we enter October BUT it has been pretty nice early in the mornings so I think I make once a week happen even with upping my running mileage! Plus, we are starting October with Fall Break which is I am referring to this year as Hike-A-Palooza!
*Saint of the Week: I really enjoyed the weeks this happened last month and think it can become a fun family tradition. So we’re trying it again this month.
*Craft/Write/Creativity: Really need to stretch that creative muscle and keep it going now that I completed The Artists Way. I have a long list of projects and I just need to choose a few and give myself the time and space for them once a week.
OCTOBER DAILY GOALS
*Sips & Steps: AKA hydrate and up my step count back to what it was before the summer hit. I find it helps to have a strong baseline of steps as I add on all that running!
*Connect: I have had a ROUGH couple of months with my mental health and I know one of the things that helped me through that in the past is staying connected when all I want to do is stay in bed and not talk to anyone or think about anything so…. baby steps…
*Tend the garden: We didn’t buy any new seeds for the garden this year and we barely got it planted last month so I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how much will grow this season, but just the act of tending and waiting and watering everything makes my kids so happy that it is already worth it. Hopefully we’ll have some yummy winter harvest as a bonus!
*Yoga: With all the extra stress and all the extra other physical activity, I know I need to get back to my daily practice instead of only doing it a few times a week.
*Morning Routine: Everything is chaos and I need to re-tool my morning routine to work even when we suddenly get quarantine notices ten minutes before we’re supposed to leave for school.
*Evening Routine: I know this is key to getting better sleep. Parts of this are clicking and others were totally thrown by the last 6 weeks of chaos. Hoping for an easier time in October!
Alphabet Resolutions 
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