My top 100 things to do before I die… May 8, 2008

I’m going to make a list. A list of things that I want to do before I die. 100 things at least. I am *not* going to finish this list tonight. But my comment last night about Cirque Du Soliel and posts by her and her and probably a few others that I read made me decide that I should make my own list. I’m not sure how far I’ll get tonight, but there is no time to start by the present.

1. Finish this list!
2. See Cirque Du Soleil live.
3. Visit NYC.
4. Take my kids on a real vacation that doesn’t involve visiting family.
5. Go to Disney World.
6. Write a book.
7. Go on a safari in Africa.
8. Visit Australia and New Zealand.
9. Visit all of the MLB ballparks
10. Visit all 50 United States.
11. Eat authentic Italian food - in Italy!
12. Go to The Masters.
13. Have a book that I write published.
14. Shower in a waterfall.
15. Drive across America.
16. Spend Christmas somewhere tropical.
17. Lose 40 pounds.
18. Go for a hike in the woods.
19. Go geocaching.
20. Plant a tree.
21. Golf with my husband.
22. See a tornado (but hopefully not up close).
23. Fly a kite.
24. Reach 500 readers on my blog in one day.
25. Send a card to someone for no reason at all.
26. Make something new for dinner that we’ve never had before and is a bit outside the box.
27. Get my own domain name for my blog.
28. Host my own blog (more from wordpress.com to wordpress.org)
29. Learn to knit.
30. Have a regular date night with my husband - even if it’s at home after the kids are in bed.
31. Start a regular family night before my kids are too old to appreciate it.
32. Have an article or short story published.
33. Buy a GREAT pair of shoes. (this is harder than most people think).
34. Blog for 100 days straight.

Ok, I’m a third of the way done. That’s the easy part. The part that I can just jot off without thinking about too hard. The rest of it isn’t going to be quite so easy.

Almost done… March 14, 2008

Well, it was Elijah’s turn last night. He’ll spend today on the couch and I’ll pray really, really hard that Chip and I will be spared! This is a monster of a sickness and blows through so fast. I think it comes and goes in about 12 hours. Noah was just downright angry with me yesterday afternoon because I wouldn’t let him go outside and play with his friends. So glad we’re almost done with this.

I’m also almost done with the second chapter of my book. Which puts me on track, I guess. I didn’t get much time to write this past week or I probably could have finished that chapter this week.

And yesterday was a RECORD-SHATTERING day here at Mundane Musings as I blew past the 100 unique visitor mark for the first time ever. I have about 40 who read regularly via my blog, another 10 or so via Bloglines and then another 13 by email. So, while I can usually claim that my blog is read by 10’s of people, for the first time ever I can say that my blog was ready by “hundred of people”! Thanks readers!

Quiet mornings… March 11, 2008

Since I’ve started babysitting fulltime, I’m getting up earlier. The last couple weeks have been easy because I’d been waking up at 7:30 on my own without an alarm. I was looking forward to the time change because that meant that getting up at 8am after the time change should be easy, right?

WRONG!!!  It is now day 2 of getting up at 8am and I’m DYING!!!  Ok, I know all of you who get up at 6am everyday are laughing at me, but I homeschool my kids and school doesn’t start until 10am-ish. So getting up at 8am is completely realistic in our house. My kids are just now getting up today and it’s 9:30! Because when the alarm goes off at 8am, my body still says it’s 7am and well, it does NOT like 7am. I’m whining. I know.

However, because I’m up every morning, I’m usually up before my kids. Which means I get up, make the coffee, do the doggie dance and get them let out and then plop myself in the recliner to spend some quiet time with God before the craziness of the day begins. It’s a glorious way to start my day! Sometimes, they really sleep in - like today - and I even have time to start a blog entry before they get up.

I’m still not a morning person. Probably never will be. But I am learning to appreciate them.

 (And I DID get that savings account opened yesterday! GOAL for March - MET!)

I’ll be back tonight with some “almost live” blogging about American Idol. Which means that I’ll watch it on the DVR as soon as we can get our kiddos into bed. And then I’ll blog about it.

GOOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLL…. March 7, 2008

Ok, I’m not much of a soccer fan. Enough to know that it’s not a goalie, it’s a keeper. But the extent of my soccer knowledge is that you’re not supposed to let the ball past the keeper into the goal.

Those aren’t the types of goals I’m talking about anyway. I’m talking about the goals that I set for the year. For the month of February even. I’m going to try and keep updates going monthly. Guess I could add that to the list of goals, eh? Right now I’m three for three so we’ll see how I do on that one.

1. I’m doing fairly well at not feeding my husband and kids a bunch of processed foods, but I could do much better. I’m working on it. It’s a goal for *next* month though. My goal for this month is to have a plan in place and to work out the kinks before April starts.

2. We still don’t have a budget, but we do have a better idea of where our money is going. Which is a step in the right direction.

3. I’m opening a savings account on Monday. I didn’t get it done in February, but it will be done on Monday. Chip and I are going to have to discuss how much to put into it though. And whether it should be a real savings account or an interest bearing checking account that would give us easier access to it.

4. Not only do I have the start to one book, but I’ve started 2. I started working on it when inspiration hit me and I couldn’t get past it. So, I started the other one. The thing is, I think I like the idea for the second one better than the first. They say that the book you end up with isn’t the book you start with. I’m barely started and that is already ringing true!

5. I’m doing MUCH better at keeping the house clean. It helps that my body is starting to recover and it doesn’t hurt to do everything anymore. I am reading more “organizational” blogs though, does that count? I read somewhere that there is a blogger roundup to clean out our offices next Tuesday. Maybe I’ll join in? If I can find where I read that at! ROFL

 So, all in all, baby steps are seeing me on the road that I want to be on. I’m on track to meet all of these goals by the end of the year.

I’ve started… February 26, 2008

I finally figured out the start to my book today. And I’ve decided that it’s going to revolve around a remodel of a kitchen. Something I’ve never done before, but dreamt of many, many times. I’ve had quite a few “mishaps” in the kitchen - the time I sneezed and knocked myself out when I hit my head on the back of a chair, the time I was using a knife to open a bag of chocolate chips and sliced through not only the bag, but also my finger, the time I put a rubber band around the sprayer so that when the kids or Chip turned the water on it would spray then only I forgot and got myself instead…. Ah the memories! And they say truth is stranger than fiction, so I figure why not weave the two together.

If you want to help and be a proofreader (I’ve already sent the opening story to a few people), let me know. I’m going to try and write daily, and I’m going to be fairly picky about whom I let read it before it’s published (because it will be - I’m hilarious! ROFL!). I’m not sure where this story will go exactly, I just knew that it would have to center around the kitchen. Maybe a journey into learning healthy eating habits? Maybe a story about learning to be served instead of always being the one doing the serving. I’m just going to write. I figure if I get going, the story will write itself, right?

Updates… February 9, 2008

My friend Jodi inspired me to post an update on how my financial goals are going for the year. While I’m not quite ready to post all of our debt online like she has and we’re not really making any progress, we had made some small changes.

I made a disastrous mistake in our bank account at the beginning of the year. It led to a lot of tears, a lot of worry and a lot of repenting on my part. I had to not only ask God’s forgiveness, but also my husbands. It was a very low place for me. But January is done and we are finally back on track. It was a long, long month. It will be nice to have my entire grocery budget for this week to do our shopping with.

My goal for this month is to get a savings account open by the end of the month of February. Even if it only has $25 in it, I want it open by the end of the month. I’ve been doing some little things online and should get paid about $50 for it - I figure that’s a good place to start to open the account.

 On other news - Chip is going to KILL my cat this morning. It’s partially his fault for not putting his leather coat away and leaving it hanging on the back of the chair, but she SHREDDED the back of his leather coat. Thankfully he already needed a new one - but well, that’s not exactly in the cards right now. Yep - he’s going to kill the cat.

So, I’ve set a few goals… January 15, 2008

Not just for 2008, but for as long as it takes for me to accomplish it. And because there is nothing quite like accountability, I figure why not put it out there for all of blogdom to see…

•  I’m going to stop feeding my husband and kids so many processed foods. I don’t do a lot of that now, but I’ve realized lately that we don’t have leftovers for lunches anymore. The kids are getting older and they are eating more. I’m going to have to readust the budget so that I can make bigger meals, which will give them healthier lunches instead of depending on processed foods like mac & cheese and hot dogs.
• Which leads me to number 2 - I want to put together a working budget. And I want to work it with my husband. I’m not very good with money. There - I said it! I don’t need a lot, but pastors don’t make a lot. And we’ve lived without a budget for so long that it’s pretty much killing us by this point. When unexpected things come up, like spending $150 more than I’d planned for to register our car, it throws us into a spiral that takes us time to catch up on. We’re in an upward swing, but the important thing that came out of this was that I realized that unless my husband and I work together to get control of this thing, it’s never going to happen. And the only reason it hadn’t happened before now was that I was stubborn and didn’t want to. I had to ask God’s forgiveness and then had to ask my husbands. That was humbling.
• I want to start a savings account. My plan is to open an ING Direct savings account sometime in February and build up some savings. We have none. I don’t like having things come up that throw us off. It’s the first thing we need to remedy. My goal is to have $1000 in savings by the end of the year (thank you Dave Ramsey). We’ll see how that goes.
• I want to get my book out of my head and down on paper. I’m still not quite sure which direction I want it to take. I need to discipline myself to just start writing and see what happens. I love to write, so I don’t know why this is so hard for me. I’ve got a couple ideas for “themes” for the book - maybe I need to run them by someone. Or maybe y’all could tell me what story you’d like me to tell?
• I want to organize my house. I’ve got a whole post coming on this one very soon - maybe even later today. So I won’t bore you with those details now.

Ok, so that’s enough for now. I’ll try and keep y’all updated as the year goes on. This week I’m doing well so far for dinner. Sundays I dont’ cook, but we did have leftovers for lunch (turkey stroganoff). The kids had cereal and Chip and I had popcorn for dinner.  Yesterday we had chicken, garlic rice italiano and corn. Tonight we’re having spaghetti.  And tomorrow night we’re having ribs and potatoes. I’m starting to find my rhythm again and I’m enjoying it. I just wish my kitchen was laid out a little better.

So, there you go my faithful blog readers. I’ve set some goals - don’t be afraid to check in from time to time to see how I’m doing on them…