Eek! It’s finally March! Spring is on the horizon!
As I shared in Monday’s post, we have two birthday boys to celebrate this in March! Noah turned TEN yesterday and at the end of the month, Ryan turns… 🧐
We had our traditional family birthday breakfast for Noah, before the big kids went off to school.
On our way to school, we picked up donuts to share with his class and Noah wanted to treat his teacher to her favorite coffee. So sweet!
I picked Noah up early from school and we headed to our outlet mall and grabbed an Auntie Anne pretzel and had a research date for a Kindle Paperwhite to possibly share between the two of us. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, this is a boy after my own heart!
He wouldn’t stop long enough for me to take a picture…😂
Fun fact about Noah…
I went into labor on February 29th with him. That’s right, a leap year baby. By late evening, I made the decision to get an epidural. My midwife warned me that if I chose to forego the epidural, I would have this baby within the hour (it was almost 11pm). But if I chose to get the epidural, it could delay my labor until the following early morning. I chose the epidural, mostly because I wanted the pain to subside, but there was also a twinge of “I really don’t want to have to choose a “fake” day to celebrate him every year”. Would it be February 28 or March 1? Would I decide which date or would Noah want to decide? I have a hard time when things aren’t in their proper place. I am a very spatially-oriented person. Thankfully, I missed having a leap year baby by a few hours. March 1 it is!
Today, I’m sharing my March goals. Before doing so, let’s look back at February’s goals and recap how it went…
1. Sign kids up for activities that support their 2022 goal. So far, we’ve made plans for our girls in this department. Still brainstorming for the boys. Naiya has started taking weekly piano and voice lessons (with Josiah’s piano teacher – we just love her!). She is currently learning a Broadway song and enjoying it so much! Alexia will fly out with Ryan in a couple weeks to Aiken, South Carolina to meet up with her trainer (who spends a few months there every year), as well as to look at new horses. She is pumped!
2. Schedule a few winter activities from our Winter Activities list. We just didn’t make it to any of these this past month. However, we did beef up our movie night routine (see below)!
3. Clean out our master closet and linen closet. Didn’t quite make it to this one either. 😏 I made headway on purging my closet and getting it pared down, but will need to roll this goal over to next month. Such is life.
4. Implement monthly movie night. Last month, I created a monthly movie night schedule to combat the long drawn out process of selecting a movie between all of the kids’ varying preferences. This has been such a game-changer! The kids have enjoyed anticipating the movie for the month, we are able to start it in a timely manner, and there is far less arguing and complaining! This month was exceptionally cold outside, so we squeezed in three movies! Sing 2 was planned, Encanto and Clifford the Big Red Dog were added to the lineup. We really enjoyed all three!
5. Keep up with IF. As much as I can, I keep up with this goal. It makes it easier to remember and implement since Ryan is initiating this lifestyle. I’m not super strict by any means, rather I enjoy the focus and mental clarity it brings and it’s also a good reset for when we’ve indulged the day before.
6. Move my body each day. I love working out, it’s always been an outlet for me and a routine that I know sets me up for success in my every day life. I have struggled with carving out an hour for it though. I realized from listening to Atomic Habits on audible, that in order to develop a habit that I don’t have to think about, I needed to lower my expectations. Instead of setting my workout time to be an hour, or even half an hour, I need to set out to workout for 2 minutes. Wait, what? I almost laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of that. The trick however, is to just get myself to show up to the workout. That is what I’m trying to develop…the habit of showing up to the thing. I can do two minutes. Inevitably, studies show that once you physically show up, and then do the 2 minutes, most likely you will be in the mood to do way more than the set 2 minutes. The hurdle of working out every day was I couldn’t fit an hour into my morning routine, so I just would forego working out entirely! I’m going to switch this up this month. We’ll see how my 2 minute workouts go! 😂
I’m keeping March goals simple…
1. Make a plan with Ryan for our garden.
2. Two minute workout every morning. JUST SHOW UP.
3. Clean out and organize master closet and linen closet.
This morning we are hosting our last gathering while our friends are here visiting from the Philippines. It’s been a busy three days, but we wouldn’t trade it for the world. We are so grateful to be partnering with our friends from Consider the Lily, an organization (but really, a family) that is on a mission to rescue and redeem girls from sexual abuse. These girls are then brought into the family, where they are given a hope for the future and empowerment to chase big dreams. There is so much more to what Josie and Consider the Lily is doing, but I’ll have to save that for a post of its own.
That’s it for today! I’m off to do my 2 minute workout! See you back here on Friday. xoxo
