Keeping Up With...2021 Goals (Weekly Recap 4/12 - 4/18)

We had another super busy week around here, and I loved every minute of it! The boys had school all week which included their first round of AIR testing. While I don't think the tests are necessary, I'm thankful my boys are all good test takers and don't freak out about the tests. We tried to keep bedtime as early as possible all week so everyone was well rested. AJ and Zak also had Scouts this week and both had a lot of fun at their meetings. AJ did some compass and navigation work and Zak worked on his forensics belt loop which included identifying different kitchen staples. Both boys had a great time and are looking forward to their upcoming camping trip together!

Rocky and I also had a very busy week. Since Adrian got his second COVID vaccine on Tuesday, he asked me to take off Tues & Weds from subbing in case he wasn't feeling well. Thankfully, he was fine and was able to work both days. But since I was already off, I got together with a few friends this week. On Tuesday, Rocky and I went to my friend's house to have a play date with their silver lab, Zoey. They had a blast running around the yard and playing in the water. On Wednesday, I met a friend from the Y and we walked at Pine Quarry Park, it was so good to catch up and get some fresh air! Also on Wednesday, Rocky went to daycare and enjoyed playing at Dogwarts all day. She was sorted into Ravenclaw for her house and enjoyed some yummy Harry Potter themed treats. Finally, on Friday I met another friend for lunch at Easton where we enjoyed yummy food and great conversation.

This weekend was super busy as well and unfortunately didn't feel like much of a weekend, at least for me. Friday night we had the boys' friends over for their Dungeons & Dragons game. They were all a little off, but they made it work and had fun. They finished a little before the parents came to pick them up, so they burned off some energy out back in the trampoline. Saturday Zak had one of his last weeks of bowling and after a rough start beat his average for the second two games. I worked all afternoon at the church and was able to drop off the rest of our donations towards the annual rummage sale. We finished the weekend with our normal work day on Sunday, which included Adrian using his brad new lawn mower to mow the backyard (we're still paying our neighbor to do our front yard). Adrian is going to teach the boys how to mow this summer in the back yard and then hopefully they can take over the front yard next summer. We also got lots of sleep Saturday and Sunday morning which we all needed after a busy week!

Here's how I did on my goals this week, once again, they were all pretty good.

Working on Myself:

• Lose 50 20 pounds by exercising 5 days each week and walking at least 400 miles this year -  I walked about 33 miles this week for a total of 194 miles so far this year. I have continued to get at least 10,000 steps each day according to my FitBit. I've taken Rocky on lots of extra walks this week and subbing also helps boost my weekly miles. I only lost 0.2 pounds this week for a total of 4.7 pounds so far this year. I was disappointed to not see a bigger number, but I'll keep focused this week and hopefully see some movement on Saturday.
• Read 15 20 books for fun - I read about 25% of "Gilead" this week. It is really good, but I probably won't get to finish it before it's due back. I'll take a break for a bit and bounce back to it in a few weeks.
• Write Scripture(s) every day this year - I have done this all 108 days so far this year. I'm really enjoying this practice so far this year. For April I picked a plan focused on patience which is always something I struggle with.
• Attend 12 6 Zumba jam sessions to improve my teaching skills - I am registered for my second jam  of the year next weekend!

Working on Family:

• Play all 152 of our board games together (either just Adrian and I or as a family) - We only played 2 games this weekend for a total of 61 games so far this year. We played Flip Ships with Daniel and Zak, and played Forgotten Waters as a couple. I don't really like either game, but Flip Ships is always funny with the boys. It was a slower weekend of games since we were really busy, and this may be the norm for the next few weeks. You can follow along on my thoughts on each game on this webpage.
• Do 10 home improvement/reorganization projects - We took the weekend off from these since we have finished 4 projects already this year.
  
• Pay off all of our outstanding credit card debit and don't incur any additional debt - We paid off our final credit card this month!! So far this goal is met, we just need to get thru the next 8 months without incurring any new debt. We're saving for our vacation now and then will take the large payment we were paying on our credit card and put it towards our car payments to get them paid off early too (our goal for next year!)
• Watch 50 movies together and continue watching TV series together - We watched one movie this week "Might Ducks 3." It was cute, better than the second one. I'm hoping we'll be able to watch the TV series soon now. This brings our total for the year so far to 16 movies. We also kept up with Falcon and the Winter Soldier, started the new Wipeout and made some progress on Green Eggs and Ham and The Hollow. 
• Celebrate a holiday every day this year - This week we celebrated National Grilled Cheese Day, Thomas Jefferson Day, National Dolphin Day, McDonald's Day, National Mushroom Day, National Cheese Ball Day and National Animal Cracker Day. Below are a few picture highlights of our holidays. I'm also chronicling them on Facebook so if we aren't friends there, feel free to add me or follow along at #CelebrateEveryDay
  
  
  

Keeping Up With...Food (Meal Plan 4/18 - 4/24)

We had another great week of following our meal plan, even if we did juggle a few days last week. We made all of the meals, and most of them were really good. The Italian Nachos were a swing and a miss, but at least we used up some of our banana peppers, ha! I was hoping we liked them so we could have it a few times and finish the peppers, but I guess it's back to salads and sandwiches with them. I continue to be in love with my new air fryer, especially since it cooks so well. This week I used it to cook both salmon and potatoes at the same time, one thing on each level. It was a big expense, but I'm so glad we did it! Here are some of the picture highlights of the past week:

Last week was super busy and thankfully this week is a little lighter. We also have a Scout camping trip this weekend so on Friday, Adrian, AJ and Zak will leave for most of the weekend. Not sure if Daniel and I will go out for dinner on Saturday, or just eat what we have here. I'm making fairly simple meals again this week since I'm exhausted most nights after the long school days. We are making a good dent in our frozen breakfasts and lunches as well, we got rid of two bags this week which is awesome. I'll continue to focus on planning meals around those items until they are gone. I'm still trying to not grocery shop either, this week there is nothing on my list so we'll just eat what we have. It should be a pretty great week food wise!

Here's what we're eating this week:
Sunday - Grilled Steak and Butternut Squash Risotto
Monday - Tik Tok Pasta with shrimp added for the adults
Tuesday - Burgers and/or hot dogs with cheese fries (for the holiday)
Wednesday - Leftovers or freezer meals
Thursday - Tacos for the boys and frozen burrito casserole for the adults
Friday - Quinoa Chicken Chili
Saturday - Camping for some, leftovers or out for the others

Water Flavor - Orange again. I forgot to add mint to my list last week like I said I would so it's straight orange again. I just added it to the list for next time (probably next week) so hopefully I'll spice it up a bit then. We haven't been getting oranges, only apples, so I'm hoping once this group is gone, I'll be able to pick different things again.

Baking - Once again, I'm going to take this week off from baking. We finished a whole bag of breakfasts last week by doing this and I'm hoping to get thru another one this week. We also have a ton of cereal in the garage so I had that one day this past week and may try to do that from time to time as well. It is banana day on Wednesday and I considered making banana bread, but the kids don't like that so I decided to make it easy on myself and just have bananas with dinner that night.

Keeping Up With...2021 Goals (Weekly Recap 4/5 - 4/11)

This week was fairly calm which was exactly what we needed after the past two weeks of excitement. We got back on our regular schedule with everyone in school and working. It was an exhausting week as well, these days are very long! I'm thankful we only have to do this for seven more weeks, although I'm not sure next year will be any better. We were supposed to go to my brother's house this weekend but a few of us are coughing and sneezing so we cancelled. It's probably just allergies, but we figured better safe than sorry. We spent most of the weekend relaxing, catching up on stuff around the house and playing board games. I am thankful for a week to catch my breath!

Here's how I did on my goals this week, they were all pretty good.

Working on Myself:

• Lose 50 20 pounds by exercising 5 days each week and walking at least 400 miles this year -  I walked about 25 miles this week for a total of 161 miles so far this year. I decided to get a Fitbit to track my steps and see if that helps keep me moving and losing weight. I started wearing it on Wednesday and so far I've gotten at least 10,000 steps each day. I've taken Rocky on extra walks this week and subbing also helps boost my weekly miles. I also lost 1.5 pounds this week for a total of 4.5 pounds so far this year.
• Read 15 20 books for fun - I finished "The Lies that Bind" by Emily Giffin this week and it was great! I really enjoyed it, she's one of my favorite authors. I've read 8 books so far this year, and have my ninth one "Gilead" ready to go.
• Write Scripture(s) every day this year - I have done this all 101 days so far this year. I'm really enjoying this practice so far this year. For April I picked a plan focused on patience which is always something I struggle with.
• Attend 12 6 Zumba jam sessions to improve my teaching skills - I am registered for my second jam  of the year later this month.

Working on Family:

• Play all 152 of our board games together (either just Adrian and I or as a family) - We played 3 games this weekend for a total of 59 games so far this year. We played Fury of Dracula with AJ, and played Funkoverses: Golden Girls and Gizmos as a couple. We also played a game we borrowed from CABS, Century Spice Road which we really liked. It was a slower weekend of games since Fury of Dracula took us over 3 hours to play. You can follow along on my thoughts on each game on this webpage.
• Do 10 home improvement/reorganization projects - We made more progress here this week!! We finished organizing our garage and have completed 4 projects for this year. We got rid of a ton more stuff and really like how the garage looks now. We can fit a car in there easily, but probably won't until the weather gets colder again. Here are the before and after pictures:
  
  
• Pay off all of our outstanding credit card debit and don't incur any additional debt - We paid off our final credit card this month!! So far this goal is met, we just need to get thru the next 8 months without incurring any new debt. We're saving for our vacation now and then will take the large payment we were paying on our credit card and put it towards our car payments to get them paid off early too (our goal for next year!)
• Watch 50 movies together and continue watching TV series together - We watched one movie this week "Might Ducks 2." It was cute and we're excited for the third one now. Glad the boys enjoyed this series! This brings our total for the year so far to 15 movies. We also kept up with Falcon and the Winter Soldier, started the new Wipeout and finished this season of Who Wants to be a Millionaire.
• Celebrate a holiday every day this year - This week we celebrated 8 holidays again since we celebrated two on Saturday. We celebrated National Sweet Potato Day, National Twinkie Day, National Beer Day, National Empanada Day, National Unicorn Day, National Siblings Day, National Hug Your Dog Day and National Cheese Fondue Day. Below are a few picture highlights of our holidays. I'm also chronicling them on Facebook so if we aren't friends there, feel free to add me or follow along at #CelebrateEveryDay
  
  
  
  
  

Keeping Up With...Food (Meal Plan 4/11 - 4/17)

We did pretty well getting back on track with our healthy eating last week, although it was pretty easy since I didn't work much last week. We made everything that was on our meal plan, the only thing that was different is we needed to cancel our plans with my brother on Saturday so we had some leftovers and air fried wings for dinner that night. This week looks to be busier since I'm already booked to work a few days, Adrian gets his 2nd COVID vaccine and we have something going on just about every night this week. We are committed to eating well though so hopefully we'll stick with that at least 6 days each week. Here are a few of our picture highlights from this past week:

This week we are again doing a lot of easy meals and trying to use what we have. I have some produce from Costco that we'll be using this week as well as continuing to use up the meals in the freezer from the school. I'm trying not to go to the grocery store much at all for the next few months. I can't wait for our CSA to start in about a month, that will really help with the grocery trips because most of what I need is produce. I really need them to go with the school lunches that are in the freezer since the servings are small, we need to bulk them up with veggies to make a full meal. They also help for healthy snacks!

Here's what we're eating this week:
Sunday - Cheese Fondue and Spinach Salads
Monday - Broccoli Cheddar Soup with deer sausage and Grilled Cheese
Tuesday - Tacos for the boys and Frozen Fiestadas for the adults with a big salad
Wednesday - Air Fried Salmon with Cauliflower and Zuchini
Thursday - McDonalds for the boys and Leftovers for the adults
Friday - Garlic Soy Pork with rice and mushrooms
Saturday - Italian Nachos for the adults and either Nachos or Leftovers for the kids

Water Flavor - Orange again. I am still working thru all of the oranges from the school lunches over the past few months. We're still getting lunches, but not nearly as many and we didn't get oranges the past 3 weeks so I'm starting to catch up some. I may get some mint the next time I get groceries just to spice it up a little bit.

Baking - I'm not actually planning any baking this week right now, but that may change. We do have a lot of frozen breakfasts from the school so we'll probably try to focus on eating those this week and then maybe I'll bake something for next week.

Keeping Up With...2021 Goals (Weekly Recap 3/29 - 4/4)

This was another great week for us!! The boys were on spring break this week, because clearly after going to school for one week you need a week off, ha! We didn't really do a whole lot because everyone just wanted to chill around the house. We caught up on a few school assignments, did a few projects left over from all of our time at home and had our regular pediatrician and haircut appointments. I was also able to sneak out to get a pedicure and do a restocking trip to Costco. Adrian took Thursday and Friday off and his boss gave him Monday off too so he had a nice long weekend. Rocky went to daycare and spent the night Thursday so we could have some time to refresh our kitchen. It was not a typical week around here but it was a great week none the less!!

As I mentioned already, the highlight of the week was probably refreshing the kitchen. We took the room apart Wednesday night and got started painting right away Thursday morning. The boys helped for a while, but we soon realized painting that room was way harder than the living room because of all the small spaces. But they tried their best and we appreciate the help! Adrian and I ran out after the first coat was done and picked out our new table, which they were able to deliver on Saturday! After a quick dinner, we finished the second coat on paint Thursday night and then collapsed into bed. Friday morning Adrian got up early and did all the trim and then we spent the rest of the day putting the room back together and getting rid of a ton of stuff that we aren't using. The table got here Saturday and we finished up some decorating touches and the room is basically done. We love the new look and feel, it's almost like a brand new room!! Here are the before and after pictures:

Before

After

The other highlight of the weekend was Easter, although it was a low key celebration for us. We colored eggs early in the week and then I did some prep work on Saturday. We all slept in (it's weird having older kids!) and then the kids did their super hard egg hunt. We found all but one egg, thankfully it's one of the plastic ones that's missing. We had our traditional Polish breakfast of kielbasa, farmer cheese, rye bread, hard boiled eggs and bobka before watching church online since we were super slow moving. We spent the rest of the day relaxing around the house, playing board games and video games, getting a few things done to get ready for school tomorrow and eating candy. We had a nice pasta dinner together and then had sundaes for dessert while watching the next episode of Falcon and the Winter Soldier. It was a pretty great day! We headed to bed early since we all go back to school tomorrow!

Here's how I did on my goals this week and a few thoughts on how I think the first 3 months went since we're one quarter of the way thru this year.

Working on Myself:

• Lose 50 20 pounds by exercising 5 days each week and walking at least 400 miles this year -  I walked about 4.5 miles this week for a total of 136 miles so far this year. I have gained weight over the past two weeks of not eating very well which is not surprising. I am down 3 pounds total for the year so that's better than an overall gain. I am doing great on my mileage goal, I feel like I'll hit that no problem. The weight loss goal has taken a bit of a hit because of my health issues and upcoming surgery. I'm lowering the goal to 20 pounds for this year and will work really hard, especially the second half of the year, to hit this goal.
• Read 15 20 books for fun - I started "The Lies that Bind" by Emily Giffin this week and read about half of it. It is really good, she is one of my favorite authors! I probably would have finished the book this week if I didn't have so much else on my plate. I'm at 7.5 books finished so far this year so this goal is looking like it will easily be accomplished. I'm increasing my goal to 20 books for the year.
• Write Scripture(s) every day this year - I have done this all 94 days so far this year. I'm really enjoying this practice so far this year. For April I picked a plan focused on patience which is always something I struggle with.
• Attend 12 6 Zumba jam sessions to improve my teaching skills - I attended 1 jam in January and am registered for one in April. I am leaving my Zumba classes paused until August so I adjusted this goal down to only 6 jams this year. I will do the one in April and then wait until I am back to teaching classes to attend any more. There are also starting to be some in person jams so I may save my money and try to get to one of those in the fall!

Working on Family:

• Play all 152 of our board games together (either just Adrian and I or as a family) - We had another great weekend of playing games, especially since Adrian had a 5 day weekend off from work and the boys and I were on spring break. We played 7 games this weekend for a total of 56 games so far this year. We played Forbidden Island with Daniel, Dino World with Zak and Dead of Winter with AJ. Then played Fiji, Funkoverses: DC Comics, Forbidden Dessert (twice & we lost both times!) and Farkle as a couple. We also played two of our recent favorite new games Isle of Cats and Dinosaur Island. It was another great weekend of gaming, all great games (except Fiji) and lots of fun and relaxing. You can follow along on my thoughts on each game on this webpage.
• Do 10 home improvement/reorganization projects - We made a ton of progress here this week!! We finished our first two projects of refreshing and decluttering the kitchen! We have one small thing left to do in there, just have a few cabinets rehung, but I'll find someone to do that for us in the next few weeks. We also finishing cleaning and organizing the play room, other than the pictures on the wall. I have to do that so that will probably be a project for just me over the summer so I'm considering this one done too. And we made some progress in the garage, which is our focus for the rest of April! If we finish that, we will have 4 things crossed off our list after 4 months, perfect!
• Pay off all of our outstanding credit card debit and don't incur any additional debt - We decided to take money out of savings in April and pay off our last credit card bill. We also didn't have to incur any debt to buy our kitchen table or do any of the work in the kitchen. We will be putting our extra money each month towards our vacation fund for now and then reevaluate in August if we want to start on paying off our cars early (our next financial goal)
• Watch 50 movies together and continue watching TV series together - We watched two movies this week since we were on spring break, "Karate Kid 2" and "Haunted Mansion." Both were very cute, better than we all expected. This brings our total for the year so far to 14 movies. This goal is gonna be tough since we'll pretty much have to watch one movie per week to make it, but we're still going to try for it. I'll reevaluate after the summer and see if we want to lower it to 40 movies. We also kept up with Falcon and the Winter Soldier, started the new Wipeout and made a huge dent in our backlog of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. We may need to find another show to binge soon!
• Celebrate a holiday every day this year - This week we celebrated National Lemon Chiffon Cake Day, National Take a Walk in the Park Day, National Doctor Day, National Crayon Day, National Burrito Day, National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day, Pony Express Day and Easter Sunday. Below are a few picture highlights of our holidays. I'm also chronicling them on Facebook so if we aren't friends there, feel free to add me or follow along at #CelebrateEveryDay

Keeping Up With...2021 Goals (Weekly Recap 3/22 - 3/28)

This was a big and exciting week around here! I was thinking about doing separate blog posts for at least one of these events, but I fell behind on weekly blogging and a few other things around the house so I decided to just do one blog. My apologies in advance if it gets long and picture overloaded. The first big excitement was that the boys are back in school full time starting this week!! They will go to school four days each week with the fifth day being a virtual day so the school can better manage transportation and deep cleaning schedules. Unfortunately for us, each boy has a different virtual day so we have a bit of a rough schedule for the next 9 weeks. But we don't care, we will make it work! Everyone was so excited to be back in school and they all had a fantastic first week back!! There are some things that are different than they are used to, but overall they doing great adjusting to school as it is right now. This also means that I can go back to subbing, and I subbed 2.5 days already this week, yay! I love being back in the classroom!

Since this was their first week back and I didn't have a lot of subbing assignments, I was able to take each boy out for a one on one lunch with me. Daniel was confused at first but then picked Red Robin and we had a great lunch together on Monday. AJ didn't really want to go but picked IHOP for Thursday's lunch and was super happy once we got there and started talking. Zak was really excited to have my undivided attention and also picked Red Robin to close out our week on Friday. I didn't want to leave Adrian out, so he and I had a date on Friday night for dinner, wine tasting and some kitchen table shopping. It was a great week with one on one time with all of my favorite guys and some delicious food!!

The other big thing this week was that we celebrated my 45th birthday! We didn't do anything super big this year but it was a much better COVID style birthday than last year. I started my day with coffee and breakfast with my girlfriends and then came home to spend the day with the guys. We played board games, opened my presents, relaxed and enjoyed a delicious ice cream cake from Coldstone! The celebration continued on Sunday when it was more of the same including homemade (by Adrian) pizza for dinner and the newest episode of Falcon and the Winter Soldier. I got tons of texts, phone calls and messages from friends and family all weekend and I truly had an amazing time. I also was able to get my first COVID vaccine on Friday and didn't have any big side effects that dampened the celebration. All in all this was a really great week and we all had a fantastic time!!

Here's how I did on my goals this week, some of them were awesome and others were largely ignored in favor of celebrating, haha!

Working on Myself:

• Lose 50 pounds by exercising 5 days each week and walking at least 400 miles this year -  I walked about 17.5 miles this week for a total of 125 miles so far this year. I did not weigh in this week since my eating has not been great. It's OK, birthday calories don't count!
• Read 15 books for fun - I finished "How to Fight a Dragon's Fury" the final book in the How to Train Your Dragon series. It was really good, I enjoyed the whole series! And this was a great ending to the whole story. This was my 7th book of the year so I am just about halfway to my goal. I'll wait and see how the next few months go, but I may increase this to 20 books for the year.
• Write Scripture(s) every day this year - I have done this all 87 days so far this year. I'm really enjoying this practice so far this year. For March I picked a plan focused on perseverance which feels appropriate for the season of life I'm in. 
• Attend 12 6 Zumba jam sessions to improve my teaching skills - I attended 1 jam in January and was registered for one in March however we had something else come up that day so I postponed it until April. I am leaving my Zumba classes paused until August so I adjusted this goal down to only 6 jams this year. I will do the one in April and then wait until I am back to teaching classes to attend any more.

Working on Family:

• Play all 152 of our board games together (either just Adrian and I or as a family) - We played 4 games this weekend for a total of 50 games so far this year. We played Even Stevens Odd with the boys and then played First Martians, Fort and Five Tribes as a couple. We also played all of my favorite games, including my newest one, for my birthday celebration. We played Viticulture, Isle of Cats, Castles of Burgundy, Takenoko and Quacks of Quinlinburg. It was a great weekend of gaming, all great games (except First Martians) and lots of fun and relaxing. You can follow along on my thoughts on each game on this webpage.
• Do 10 home improvement/reorganization projects - We didn't really have time to work on any of these projects this weekend. The only thing we did was plan for our big project for next week, refreshing our kitchen. We made sure to have everything ready to get that done next weekend.
• Pay off all of our outstanding credit card debit and don't incur any additional debt - We shifted our big payment to our only remaining credit card balance this month. If everything goes according to plan, we will pay this off this year and be done with all of our credit card debt!
• Watch 50 movies together and continue watching TV series together - We didn't watch any movies this week since there was so much else going on. We'll have to go down to only one movie each week for the next 2 months since the boys are in school again. We will continue to focus on our TV series together though. This week we made progress on Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Who Wants to be a Millionaire and watched a few more episodes of The Hollow.
• Celebrate a holiday every day this year - This week we celebrated National Goof Off Day, Puppy Day, National Chips & Dip Day, National Cheesesteak Day, National Waffle Day, National Spinach Day, National Paella Day and Palm Sunday. Below are a few picture highlights of our holidays. I'm also chronicling them on Facebook so if we aren't friends there, feel free to add me or follow along at #CelebrateEveryDay