Wednesday Update

I meant to write a bit more throughout the week to work through my process here a bit more, but...I didn't.   I don't have an excuse other than laziness and putting it off, but I'm also working on it.  :) Maybe next week will be more detailed, and I DO have some time still left in this week after all!

Let's see, so far I've kept up with my wake up times, prayer time, exercise and laundry (well, up until today...just realized that I didn't fold up Nathan's stuff and he's already in bed, so my goal of having it all put away before the end of the day won't happen...opps).

I've also set up a list of activities for the kids, and we've actually been doing them!  I feel so much better just knowing that I've done something special and semi-out-of-the-ordinary with them.  :) And it makes them so happy.  I do have a few activities planned that take some prior set up, so the challenge for me with be to actually set things up before hand for these.  But so far, I've done well.

I got some reading and crocheting done yesterday, but if you've got a good memory you know that means I still have quite a few things left on my list for the week.  I may have been a little over zealous when planning this out on Sunday, so next week I'll try for a few less.  I'll keep working until I find the balance, because I'm convinced this blog-accountability will be good for me.

Focus Areas

I've broken down the things that are important to me (or important that I do) into 6 areas.  I have personal, marriage, mothering, home management, ministry (which for me includes my extended family), and fun.  I got these basically verbatim from Money Saving Mom, if you're interested in what she has said about them.  She also has a printable you can use if you're into that sort of thing :).

To break them down a bit more, here's what they entail:

Personal: spiritual disciplines, my relationship with God, exercise (I consider it not only vital to my health, but also my mood and outlook tend to be much better when I've gotten some exercise in)

Marriage: Don't expect to see too much posted on this as it is a bit private.  I do plan on restarting my goal of weekly at home dates.

Mothering:  Basically anything I can think of to help me be a better mother, anything from activities to Bible verses to help me through my day.

Home Management: Another self-explanitory category.  Will include cleaning, decorating, finances, anything to do with running my house.

Ministry:  I want this one to be ways that I can specifically get myself to find ways to minister to those around me each week.  Too often we are guilty of thinking about doing something and then never getting around to it.  Ideally, this will rid me of that excuse.

Fun: A way for me to still dabble in projects but hopefully get me to finish them at the same time.  I have some serious trouble when it comes to finishing what I start, so maybe that will keep me on track.

As I said, I'm still working on the goals within these categories.  I'll post them in a few days, but first up (hopefully tomorrow) I want to focus on things that are NOT on my list of things to do right now. This is another idea I got from the Money Saving Mom website, and I'll link the specific page in the post.  (Honestly, right now I need to be getting to bed, so goodnight!)