The year is halfway over! In my family, it had a tumultuous start with what felt like non stop illness for one member or another from January through March, then the end of school year chaos hit… but it would be disingenuous to say it was all chaos and frustration- we took an incredible spring break trip, I completed two half marathons (including my first out of state race!), we celebrated our 10th anniversary, and we returned to theatre after a very long hiatus. So it has been busy with good stuff as well as challenging stuff. But at this halfway point I wanted to reassess some of my goals and focuses for the year before I dove in to my July tending list. 

After doing my mid-year refresh, my goals have mostly stayed the same, although some have gotten a tad more specific (IE NYC marathon training is now a MAJOR goal for the rest of the year) and some have been simplified (I had a LOT of lofty goals about turning my house into a sanctuary of peace and at this point I’m happy if I can just get some basic routines in place and get rid of broken toys…)

June was a doozy of a month and I have never been more thankful for my month off of blogging. So I’m not even going to recap my June stuff since a lot of it got changed and switched around anyway with the kind of month I had… so here we go July!

JULY MONTHLY GOALS:
*NYC Marathon and Team World Vision Training/Fundraising/Planning: July felt like so far away when I originally signed up to do this crazy adventure, and now it is here and my life is going to be filled with running, recovery, planning, and advocating for vulnerable kids. LOTS more about this in next week’s blog post.
*Summer Bucket List: One of our favorite family traditions is making a bucket list for each summer and winter break. We have already started with some items on their list, but July is really the time to focus in and finish this list because August is basically back to school season and time starts feeling crunched.
*Summer Cleaning: Some people do spring cleaning, but spring is way too beautiful here to waste inside so I always put it off until summer when I don’t want to go outside anyway.
*Family Yearbook Catch up: I have fallen SO behind on our family yearbook. I’ve never been this behind since I started using the project life app to document our family adventures each year, but I know it will only get harder if I wait longer so I am promising myself to start the catch up process this month and hopefully be back to a weekly schedule of maintenance by the time we hit the fall.
*Photo Sort/ New Backup Plan: So my beautiful photo sorting and purging and back up plan that I have established over the last few years has fallen to pieces thanks to our old desktop no longer recognizing any USB drive… we have spent the last few months trying to upgrade programs and drivers and running trouble shooting with tech support but to no avail so we need to use this month to figure out what solution we want to go with to keep our pictures stored and safe and then I have half a year’s worth of pictures to catch up on sorting and purging… that translates to tens of thousands of pictures so once we start work on this solution I have a long way to go…

Enjoying working through some new recipes for weekly meal prep times! Like blueberry lemon cornmeal scones…

JULY WEEKLY GOALS:
*Observe the Sabbath/Rest and Recovery Day: I keep reading that rest is crucial to marathon training… and that component honestly might be as or more intimidating than the long runs I have on my plan… I am pretty bad at actually slowing down and resting, at making the time for foam rolling and elevation and all that good stuff that makes your legs ready to run another week. Hoping this is a really great opportunity to cultivate sabbath in our house, something we’ve been hit and miss on for years (thanks theatre life schedules…)
*Back to Weekly Writing: It was a very necessary month off, but I’m ready to play catch up and get back to writing and clearing my head and sharing in this way.
*Meal Plan and Prep: We always meal plan but we don’t usually meal prep since my husband started working from home and we have enough time most nights to take each dinner as it comes. With my training and how HOT it feels to turn on the oven most days though, we are going back to meal prepping a bit more.
*Family Friday: My favorite summer tradition of movie/game times etc. with the kids.
*Phone Photo Purge: Due to the photo situation above, it is more helpful than ever to take some time once a week to delete random screenshots I don’t need, accidental pictures, and duplicates that I know are blurry or not as good. A little habit that adds up a lot over time!

Some prizes from the Spring Run With Aim season that I’ll be using during training time the next few months…

JULY DAILY GOALS:
*Marathon Training Plan: We are in OFFICIAL marathon training time now. Not every day will include a run, but every day will include SOMETHING on the training plan and I want to do my best to stick with it so I feel prepared as the plan gets more intense in the coming months.
*Hydrate: Summer in AZ means I never feel like I really have enough hydration happening, even going through several water bottles each day… oh, and did I mention that I’m doing “dry July” from July 5th to August 5th? Hoping cutting out alcohol can help me re-set a baseline hydration and wellness feeling as I jump into training.
*Morning Routine: The only notable addition here is that I’m adding some journaling back into my routine, and that this routine is honestly probably not going to start until after my runs on days where I have runs scheduled so… that will be interesting…
*Evening Routine: The only notable addition here is that I’m trying to get off my phone really early so I can hopefully get more rest/get to bed earlier.
*Music Practice/Back to Banjo: I seriously let my banjo practice slip the last 2 months. I honestly am not sure I remember anything but I’m ready to start again and hopefully I’ll pick it all back up faster than I did at the beginning of the year and move forward.
*Yoga: To balance out my training, calm my mind and emotions, and re-establish this practice!

Here’s to the second half of the year. One step at a time.