Here we are… in November of 2021. The year has been a strange roller coaster but we’ve made it to the holidays which means if you blink it will be 2022 and I’ll be starting on a whole new set of themes and re-evaluating my goals with the 2022 Powersheets. But I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself so in the meantime, here is my October Re-cap and November Tending List…
OCTOBER MONTHLY GOALS
*Enjoy and Document Fall Break: YES! You can see some of the beautiful pictures from our trip up north in THIS post. I also took advantage of the project life anniversary sale to print off our most recent family yearbook pages that included this break so they will be in our yearbook as soon as they finish processing and shipping. WOOHOO!!
Zoo Lights— these three besties have gone together almost every year since they were babies and we’re hoping to return this year after our pandemic hiatus last year…
*Create Holiday Bucket Lists:Yes. Everyone selected their top 2 “must do” activities for advent/Christmas and we are looking forward to checking some things off the list!
*Solidify Race Training Plans & Start Training Season:Yes. It took until the very last day of the month but I made some changes and some plans and I jumped into training and all its mental challenges and rewards even before I really knew what I was doing… which is a HUGE mindset shift for me and I’m proud of it.
*Your Special Day: This is becoming habit and the kids are loving it. I’m so thankful we’ve started implementing this special one on one time once a month.
*Recipe Transfer from Pinterest: Nope. not a single recipe was transferred this month. You can’t do it all and this is what I didn’t do.
OCTOBER WEEEKLY GOALS
*Fall Flavors/Make Memories in the Kitchen: This happened all but one week where I was focused on other crafting/costume making/etc. and we loved all the apple and caramel and pumpkin sweet and savory deliciousness. The kids especially loved making an autumnal soup over our fall break on a cozy rainy day.
*Long Run: Yes. Followed through on this every week even when I really hated most of it (and luckily that was only truly one time. the rest it was challenging but actually easier than my spadework nights…)
*Hike!:Yes! Sometimes with kids. Sometimes with the whole family. Sometimes solo. Always lovely.
*Saint of the Week: This happened all but one week. We learned about St. Catherine, St. Pope JPII, and Saint Francis.
*Craft/Write/Creativity: LOTS of crafting as we get more into the holidays. Not as much writing as I originally hoped, but lots of ideas percolating and I at least got my blog posts up.
OCTOBER DAILY GOALS
*Sips & Steps: Steps- yes. Sips- not nearly enough to catch up with how dehydrated I’m getting from all the running so… work in progress.
*Connect: Some days yes, some days no… definite improvement.
*Tend the garden: Our garden is a bit anemic to be honest… we do have some sprouts but our new garden gets so much less sunshine than our old one so… not sure how well things will actually grow while we re-do the backyard/until we find a more permanent spot that might suit the gardening goals a bit better.
*Yoga: Almost every day… but often very VERY short sessions. Want to step up some practices that support core work as well as plenty of restorative stretching.
*Morning Routine/ Evening Routine: Hit and miss here but doing the best I can. Lots of improvement in my evening routine but morning routine is still chaos with the ever changing school schedules.
NOVEMBER MONTHLY GOALS
*Finalize Holiday Plans: We got a great start on this last month and we are ready to make plans for the craziest time of year.
*Celebrate Thanksgiving/Opt Outside Day: Obviously a big piece of this month is Thanksgiving. We don’t really observe Black Friday, but we do have an opt outside day the day after halloween.
*Date Night: Looking forward to getting back to some intentional date nights- hopefully some of them outside our home after a very very long pregnancy/post-partum/pandemic time…
*Outline New Alphabet Shakespeare Show: We probably won’t start writing until December, but we want to start structuring our newest lunch time theater show this month!
*Holidays and Hygge in our Home: Yeah, I went hard on the letter of the year there… but it is the time of year for coziness, holiday cheer, and decking the halls.
*Gallery Wall: Our front room is one of the last rooms to get unpacked and set up- including the pictures we’ve had placed aside to make a gallery wall to compliment our upstairs adventure wall… hoping to get it done late this month or early next month.
NOVEMBER WEEKLY GOALS
*Budget Check In/ Family Meeting: We kind of fell off the family meeting wagon after fall break and it showed so… back on the tending list it goes! Also looking forward to using more of my intentional parenting cards during these weekly occurrences to add a little more random fun into this busier time.
*Project Life/My Modern Story Pages: I got on a roll with finally writing more of my own stories and wisdom I want to pass down to my kids, I’m hoping to use that momentum and keep going with one page a week instead of doing a bunch at once. And of course I want to stay caught up with our family yearbook.
*Craft/Write: This creative outlet is even more important now that I’m doing so much physical work every week. It balances out my brain in a different way and fuels a different side of me.
*Backyard Work: When we bought our house we knew that the backyard was a bit of a hot mess but had a ton of potential. While it will be a long work in progress we are starting with clearing out all the broken bits in time for bulk trash and doing a ton of weeding/cleaning before we figure out our next steps and now that it is cooled off this is a huge focus in turning our house into a home.
*Hike: It’s the most wonderful time to live in Arizona. I don’t want to take it for granted and miss hiking season just because I’m in training too.
NOVEMBER DAILY GOALS
*Get After Grateful: Tis the season! Gratitude journaling time.
*Morning Routine: Hopefully this goes better than last month…
*Evening Routine: Hopefully this goes better than last month…
*Training- Farther Together: The end of October I decided to once again join Team World Vision. So now training season means a daily commitment to crossing that finish line AND helping kids get clean water! Little by little steps every day…
*Readalouds and snuggles: It has been such an INSANE school year so far we have lost a bit of our read aloud routine and I’m ready to get that back… and also snuggles because we want allll the cozy in the house.
Alphabet Resolutions 