intentional living, little by little
The boys have been talking about going to the pumpkin patch for weeks now. We went on Columbus Day with my mom’s homeshooling group. The hayride and pumpkins were fun, but I think the highlight of the day was the ginormous dirt pile. M was covered head to toe by the time we left!
And what a bad Mamma photographer I am…baby J didn’t go on the hayride with us (he stayed with my mom), so I have no “Baby’s First Pumpkin” pictures. Shucks…such is the life of the third baby, no? 🙂
Today marks the beginning of my 27th year! 26 was a great year for me and I really feel like I hit my stride as far as a mother and wife. I’m looking forward to seeing what 27 has to offer too. To help me be more intentional with my year, I made a list of 27 Goals for my 27th Year. (If you know anything about me, you know that there aren’t many things I love more than lists and goals…and the satisfaction of crossing them off too, of course!)
So without further ado, here’s my list for my next year of life:
1. Get in shape. I’m stopping the excuses and getting off my ‘duff. Healthy is my goal. I used to be an athlete and I want to get back there again.
2. Read 15 books.
3. Travel to two places I’ve never been before. We have one place in mind for next spring, but the second is yet to be determined. Fun, family-friendly destination ideas on the East coast are welcome!
4. Make bread from scratch. I’ve gotten half credit for making it with the bread machine, but I still want to learn to do it 100% myself.
5. Write down all of the boys’ birth stories. I need to do this sooner than later…my mind is going to forget all of those important details!
6. Send 5 “just because” gifts to family and friends. I may or may not be the most exited about this one.
7. Re-decorate my bedroom. Our bedroom has become kids toy central (I still don’t understand how they get in there!) and somewhat of a storage area (Christmas, birthdays, etc etc). I am ready to make a plan and create the “calm oasis” that everybody says a master bedroom should be!
8. Write more about my feelings about motherhood.
9. Find a way to earn a little extra without compromising my time with my family.
10. Donate my hair to Locks of Love. I haven’t had really long hair since the 4th grade, so this should be a fun experience and end with a great cause.
11. Read two books from my Classics List.
12. Make pasta from scratch.
13. Have silhouettes made of each of my boys.
14. Win a contest of giveaway. Blogs always have giveaways and I have yet to win one! 15. Run a race with my Dad. This is my year, Dad. It may be a 5K, but we’re running something!
16. Surprise my husband with an awesome 30th birthday.
17. Plan monthly at-home date nights.
18. Eat only local foods for a month. Challenge: do not step inside the mega grocery store. Only eat from local farmers and businesses. We totally could do this!
19. Start a gratitude journal.
20. See a movie in theaters. It’s only been oh…5 years since I’ve seen my last movie in theaters! I think I may finagle a way to surprise my husband with this…he’d be ecstatic!
21. Finally visit of the local “sights” around our hometown. We have so many interesting sights around us and haven’t explored anything! Time for a little staycation adventure this summer.
22. Attend a homeschooling conference.
23. Catch up on my previous scrapbooks.
24. Make cake pops. I’m so behind on this trend, but it is definitely something I would love to learn to do.
25. Pull off special birthday parties for both of my parents. They both have big birthdays coming up next year and I’ve got some great plans.
26. Install hardwood floors. I desperately want to get rid of our old carpet and put in new hardwood floors. The question is: put it in ourselves or pay the pros?
27. Tell the ones I care about how much I love and appreciate them. No brainer, but I need the reminder to this more often.
Now the question remains…what do I do first? 🙂
Well, what a weekend. If I could, I’d have you over for coffee (or in my case, a Diet Coke or two!) and share with you all the emotions of the past few days.
See, my sweet 91-year-old grandmother just arrived this week to spend the winter at my parents’ home. It is a far cry from her quaint little apartment in New England and the transition period has been a little hard.
I haven’t seen my Memere (pronounced “Mem-ay” for all you non-Frenchies) in about a year and she has definitely aged since then. It breaks my heart to see her in so much pain.
But I have to say…I feel like this weekend, I’ve been in a sacred place. So many people lose loved ones suddenly, without any notice or time to say goodbye. So I feel so blessed…and so honored to be able to spend this time with her now. I love being able to serve her, to see her needs and be just one step ahead. That way she won’t have to ask for help, which I know is so hard for her. I love the opportunity to teach service to my boys in a personal way. I love that they adore her and warmed up almost immediately. I am just savoring every moment, because I know that when she does go one day, I will treasure this time forever.
So that was my weekend. If you were here, I’d thank you for listening and offer you a refill… and maybe a slice of the banana chocolate chip bread I made this weekend (it was yummy!). And then I’d stop rambling and ask you: How was YOUR weekend?
Another country traveled and two more weeks under our belt. While I had high hopes for our Italy unit, well…I guess it was a good lesson in rolling with the punches. Nothing seemed to go as planned: I didn’t get a book I wanted to read in time, I discovered that I was out of a critical ingredient for a project, the boys didn’t listen to directions and totally ruined the science experiment…sigh! But life’s too short to get all bent out of shape about trivial things like those. So I kept rollin’ and I think the boys still learned a lot.
The books we used were:
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| Our Art Gallery for Papa Piccolo |
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| Not really related to any of our themes, but the boys LOVED this I Spy sheet I found online. |
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| ROY G BIV puppets – M and D totally didn’t get ROY G BIV and insisted they call him “Rainbow Hair Man”. |
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| Learning about mixing colors |
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| Pete the Cat puppets. I saw this book mentioned on many teacher blogs, so bought it blindly. But it’s so great! The message is that no matter what happens, “just keep walking along and singing your song, because it’s all good.” It’s the perfect book for a kid like M, who tends to freak out unexpectedly. |
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| Making gondolas out of Legos. What? You can’t tell that’s a gondola? haha Me neither…another one of the “roll with it” episodes. |
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| This was supposed to be a really cool experiment. You have a pie plate of milk and add a few drops of food coloring. Then after dipping a Q-Tip in dishsoap, you are supposed to insert into the milk and hold it there. Key word: hold. The colors are supposed to swirl away from the soap, making a really cool effect. Instead, in casa “I don’t listen to Mamma’s directions”, he started in on making his own swirl, making everything brown and just…gross. Oh well, it’s only PreK right? |

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| A peek into our lapbook… |
