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