I’m late in posting these because our plans had to change a bit this week. We’d originally been told that Matt would no longer be needing to travel up to the old location for work starting in mid-December (and he did, in fact, work the last two weeks of the year from the new location, which is close to our new house), but because of things still not being set up fully at the new location and the business still needing to function, Matt is once again having to live away from us during the week to be close to work, which means my schedule is entirely dictated by the needs of my three small humans, with few breaks.
However, I’m still super excited (as I always am) about the promise of a fresh start and a brand-new year, and you’d better believe my mind has been chugging away at all my dreams and plans and goals and schemes, many of which I plan to post here on the blog.
All in all, our December was pretty enjoyable, albeit different. We were so thankful that Matt got to be home like normal the last two weeks (and had a bunch of time off so that we could have even more time with him!), and though we had none of the usual Christmas parties, we still enjoyed a few (very) small gatherings with our parents and some other family members, and Christmas Day with the kids was pretty magical as they’re just in a super fun stage right now with the holiday.
Our house is sloooowly getting put together and unpacked, though you’ll see that I have MANY goals this new month of continuing to get it more under control.
Onto the report!
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December Goals
- Get oil changed in van
- I hardly drove at all in December, and because of the holidays and me getting sick right before Christmas (not with covid, thankfully), I didn’t get to this one. This will be a rollover goal for January.
Register Raven for kindergarten- It took me way longer than it should have to find her birth certificate (I blame the fact we just moved and that there are boxes EVERYWHERE), but I finally did this. And she LOVES it! And I love it! Homeschooling was right for us during that time of transition when we didn’t know exactly when we’d be moving, but I think that sending her to school is definitely where she should be right now.
- For those of you who ARE still homeschooling, make sure you sign up HERE to be alerted for when the Ultimate Homeschooling Bundle goes on sale in a few weeks. It’s only being offered for two more days until it’s gone forever, and it was BY FAR the best $30 I spent for our homeschooling journey. (And even if you’re not homeschooling and just want easy, minimal-prep activities for your kids to do at home, it’s worth the purchase!)
- It took me way longer than it should have to find her birth certificate (I blame the fact we just moved and that there are boxes EVERYWHERE), but I finally did this. And she LOVES it! And I love it! Homeschooling was right for us during that time of transition when we didn’t know exactly when we’d be moving, but I think that sending her to school is definitely where she should be right now.
Celebrate Hyrum’s birthday- We kept it pretty low-key and just had the grandparents over for dinner who live somewhat close (well, two hours away). They were all gracious enough to actually come in the morning and help us out with house projects all day leading up to our little party, so we actually got a decent amount done on this day!
Get washer and dryer set up and working- This was priority numero uno last month, and even though it required Matt having to teach himself how to replace a leaking washer hose, we were able to get both machines set up and functioning just a few days into the month.
- Find a pediatrician and set up Hyrum’s 12-month appointment
- Obviously I don’t have enough experience living in small towns because I didn’t realize that you don’t really HAVE pediatricians nearby, at least not here—you have “general family doctors” instead, unless you want to drive an hour away. Since our children are overall healthy and we have no real concerns, I’ll probably just try and find someone local, and I need to do it ASAP because Hyrum is now overdue for his 12-month vaccinations.
Find a pediatric dentist and a regular dentist and make appointments for all of us for January- So, I’ve quickly discovered that there aren’t many healthcare specialists down here—just general practitioners. There was a family dentist office in the town over that seemed to cater pretty well to kids, so I’ve booked us all an appointment for the end of January (except Matt, who just did his check-up with our previous dentist since he was commuting back up there by their office).
- Finish flooring in kitchen
- Nope, we didn’t even start. We might have to hire a contractor to come repair some of the subfloor that we’ve discovered is rotted through, which is holding everything up.
- Finish flooring in playroom
- Almost, almost, almost! Matt only has two small rows at the very edge of the room to put down.
Finish second coat of paint in master bedroom- Thanks to our parents, this is done! (And it looks amazing!)
Update light fixture in master bedroom- My stepdad installed this for us, and though we weren’t originally planning on putting new lights in there, I’m SO GLAD we did. I didn’t realize quite how dim it used to be until we upgraded the lighting, and now it’s like our little sanctuary (well, it will be once we get all the boxes unpacked and moved out of there, anyway!)
Start the process of painting the kitchen cabinets- Thanks to the miracle that is my mom’s ability to get 100X more done than any other human, we actually completed this! Now, we still haven’t put all the cupboards and drawers BACK yet, but they ARE at least painted :).
Complete Goodreads yearly reading goal- I just *barely* eked out a victory on this one the day before New Year’s Eve, but I did it! (And in case you missed my yearly reading and “best books” round-up, you can find that post here.)
Enjoy Christmas!- This was by far our biggest “splurge” year when it came to gifts for the kids, but this play house we purchased has been worthy EVERY PENNY. Seriously, the kids play it in every second they can it seems, every single day. (Also, this play washer/dryer set was a big hit, too).
Other goals accomplished in December (that were not listed above):
- Got the room off the front entry totally set up and tidy before Christmas
- Made major progress on my 101 in 1001 goal to declutter 1,001 items (post with more details to come soon)
- Got Raven’s next-size clothes sorted through and put away in her drawers and closet
- Got the kids’ rooms basically set up and semi-organized
- Ordered the majority of our vegetable and flower seeds for the new year
I really have no idea how January will shake out since we have no idea how long Matt is going to be working away from us during the week. The good news is that he got a new temporary work schedule where he is working three twelve-hour shifts in a row, which will allow him to be home Thursday to Sunday.
While it has been crazy chaotic much of the time to be doing the single-parent thing for this long, setting goals each month gives me something concrete to focus on and that I can actually control, which helps to keep up morale around here.
Here’s what we’re attempting to do this month:
January Goals
- Order rest of seeds + bulbs
- While we’ve ordered almost all of the seeds we’re planning on trying this year, there are still a few that were out of stock and a few that we need to get through local or different companies. First up on the list? Finding some peonies! We tried the entire time we lived in Hyrum to get ours to bloom with no luck, and considering it takes 3 years on average for a new plant to start blooming…best get cracking!
- Map out planting schedule and garden plans
- I’ve already started this, but I would ultimately like to make a pretty exhaustive plan, like how many beds we’re going to build, what we’re planting in each one, the week-by-week planting and seed-sowing schedule, etc. (I’m using this book as my guide, in case you’re curious.)
- List Buick
- Looks like we’re going to be able to complete one of our new 7 big financial goals earlier than we thought! We hadn’t planned on replacing our second car until we’d saved more (or until it died, whichever came first), but my in-laws are buying another car and offered to sell us their old one, which is in great shape. I don’t know that we’ll get much for the Buick, but time to put it on the market and see!
- Buy Command hooks and hang artwork
- We had my mother-in-law help us hang a few pieces of artwork last month, but our walls are still pretty bare. Because many of our walls are lathe and plaster now instead of drywall, we’ll be going the Command hook route to hang up a lot of them.
- Finish unpacking and setting up furniture on main floor
- A lot of this is completed (or at least good enough for now), but we do have a big dresser to move, a bookshelf to bolt in, the playroom to set up, and all the boxes in our master bedroom and master closet to unpack.
- Spray paint 3-legged stool
- I’ve been trying to decorate and spruce up our home a bit more, and before I run amok and buy a bunch of new things, I want to see how I can look at what I already have and use that first. Years ago, I bought a little wooden 3-legged stool at an estate sale, which I think would look so cute spray painted and then used to display something. Time to test that theory!
- Spray paint old light fixture
- See what happens when I get one spray paint win under my belt? We started updating a lot of the light fixtures on the main floor, and I am in love with the results. One of the light fixtures we replaced wasn’t too bad, but the brass just didn’t work with anything we had, so I’m going to try and spray paint it an oil rubbed bronze and try it in our playroom.
- Touch up paint on blue dresser
- ‘Tis the season to paint and touch up All The Things, apparently. Both our painted dressers got scratched up a bit in storage, so we need to do some touch-up to make them look fresh again.
- Touch up paint on gray and white dresser
- See above.
- Finish flooring in kitchen (including repairing subfloor)
- Rollover goal. This seems so daunting right now, but maybe by some miracle we’ll complete it this month anyway. It seriously will make our life so much easier when it’s done.
- Finish flooring in playroom
- In theory, this should be a shoe-in.
- Finish putting kitchen back together
- At this point, it’s mostly just a matter of figuring out the best way to deal with getting the drawer fronts back on and doing some touch up work on the cabinets, but we’re close!
- Buy baseboards
- We basically have to replace all the baseboards in the rooms where we redid the flooring because of the height difference. Best get on this before we’re totally burned out of doing house projects!
- Get oil changed in van
- Rollover goal.
- Find a family doctor and schedule 12-month checkup for Hyrum
- Rollover goal.
- Get a library card
- Really, the only reason this hasn’t happened yet is because the library here is open by appointment only, and I’ve just been too busy to make one. I’m planning on doing this within the next week!
