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Ben
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Target

Nikki
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Adam
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Target

I’m dedicated, however slowly, to a few blogs that I love.  I feel as though I know the writers personally and like I’m looking in through a window on their lives. This idea draws me in two very different directions – are blogs reducing and/or changing the ways in which we engage with others or are the allowing technology to reduce geographic challenges? and – I would like to create that sort of environment for friends and family we don’t see often to keep up with us (other than just through pictures on Ben’s site).

So, is this a good format to engage?  If so, what would you like to know about?  Daily activities, struggles, what direction our family is headed, something else entirely?

It’s been a while, and Casey and Ben have been keeping us very busy.  They’re fabulous, and exhausting!  I did draft a post late March, but I just found it today, so I thought I’d start over and give the whole big update.

–  finish the guest room

I think it’s gotten more junk in it recently, but we’ll get there.  The new throw pillows for the couch are on the bed, waiting on the seam of one to be fixed, the mirror for the new dresser in our room is waiting to be installed, and then there’s a pile of boxes that are empty and a pile waiting to go into the attic.  Sometime in the next few weeks, I’ll change Ben’s clothes out and the pile to go to the attic will move out.  Maybe I’ll get sewing stuff out at some point and fix the pillow, hem the couple of pair of pants, and such that needs.  As for the lamps and the picture… no progress.  I’m still hopeful for having this back as a functional guest room by the end of the year.  The pile of boxes of hand-me-down items are also in need of going through and finding homes.  I don’t want to talk about that though.

– learn to coupon

I don’t regularly get the paper, but I do pay attention online to grocery sale ads and when the coupons in the paper are extra good, so I can pick them up.  I have learned several things though, such as, we’re a couple of brand specific people, the things we buy most, we like in our brand of choice, so couponing is a challenge.  Also, buying brands just because they have coupons and not because that brand is your favorite is dumb, i.e. diapers.  I did some math a couple of months ago, tried some different store brands (after determining that my preference between huggies and pampers depended on where Ben was in growth related to the size of the diaper) and decided that I like target brand diapers just as well as any, and when not on sale, they’re the cheapest.  Unlike many store brands, they do go on sale, and I get 5% back when I buy them online with my debit card (which I now do, unless, like last week, I can get 10% back on a store gift card).  So, I have definitely learned about couponing and shopping sale ads, including when to forget it and buy the store brand instead.  Also, when I buy formula, wipes, and diapers online, I do get about $10 back a month, so I consider this a success!

-find a church

This is a hard one for us.  It’s hard because we like to hang around in our pjs on the weekend and because it’s hard to get a puppy out, exercised, fed, and back in her crate, while trying to get two adults and an infant presentable, fed, and ready to leave the house.  Also, this is just a hard thing to find a good fit on.  All of that, combined with our goal of listing our house in March to transplant across town (closer to Adam’s work), means that this is even harder.  We did actually talk about it some this weekend and since we were able to, without hurry or stress, leave the house by 9am on Sunday, we’re planning to start looking for churches near our hopefully new side of town (so we don’t have to do it twice, and because we’ve had no luck on our attempts on our current side of town).

-lose the baby weight

Done.  By the grace of God alone, I managed to fit back into most of my pants when Ben was about a month old, and about the time he was 10 weeks old, I finally lost those last few pesky pounds.  My new goal is to hit and maintain my end of first trimester weight (which, yes, is lower than my pre-pregnancy weight – thank you lots of puking, not).  I’ve hit it a few times, but maintaining it is a different story.  It would be helpful if I’d jump on the treadmill more than once a week.  My current goal is twice, then I’ll work back up to three times a week.  August wasn’t a nice month to my schedule, but September is looking up.

So, only a few months left, combined with several holidays, birthdays, and too much else I’m sure.  We’ll make more progress, and hopefully I’ll finish the guest room at least.  It’ll be one less thing to do before the March listing date.

Here is the quick and easy progress report:

The CNC Router and finding a church projects have fallen down, and they can’t get up.

I ran most of a 5k about a month ago. My overall time was about the same as my training run speed. I walked a lot of it, so that means that I ran faster than I thought. Big thanks to my brother in law Andy for running with me!

As for the Internet marketing… Well I had a great April. I made a little over $250 total across all my sites! Most of that was due to a how-to I wrote on my main site. It was a really good feeling seeing those commission reports.

Now I just need to do it harder 😀

Full Stop.

Well, not full stop. I’m still running. Kinda.

Our son was born on March 1st. Since then, it’s been a little….hectic.

The CNC router has had absolutely no progress in the last two months. We haven’t even thought about churches since we went to that Nazarene one back in February. I’m still trying to train for a 5k, but missed about a week and I can’t get to the end of the training run without hitting my maximum heart rate, so I have to stop early.

And see how I stopped updating this blog? The other ones are worse. I think I made $8 in February across all my sites.

I’ve got a long way to go and a short time to get there.

However.

My son is about the coolest thing in the world.

In case you spied the January pt 1 on my last update, I had the best of intentions of updating progress twice a month…oops.  Things got busy, or stayed that way, and I didn’t.  Now that it’s 6 weeks later, I’m going to make my new goal once a month and if I can easily make that happen, perhaps updates will become more frequent.

Guest Room – all most of the extra stuff is out, except for a bag of back up Casey amusements for the dog sitter and a late birthday present for the baby nephew, oh and 3 boxes and a basket of magazines, but all of it is much more out of the way than the packing for brunch/shower or packing for the hospital stuff (which is now out of the way) was.

Learn to coupon – I’ve continued to use coupons each week.  I had $3.65 last week, and only spend $60 on the trip (aka didn’t buy a whole lot).  I still need to blog about my shockingly awesome couponing trip – where we bought one of everything in Target’s baby section and them some (or at least it felt that way).

Find a church – we went to one.  We decided which one to go to next, as the first wasn’t quite it.  We appreciate that we have friends there, but it’s more Nazarene (not that there’s anything wrong with that, we had a Nazarene wedding) than community (which is really what we’re looking for).  Now, to get to the second one…

Lose the baby weight – still gaining…just made cookies because I wanted to eat cookie dough…oh well.  I haven’t had any cravings like I’ve heard others describe (of the “someone’s going to pay if I don’t get x” variety), just my normal stuff…chocolate, cookie dough, ice cream, and at the normal capacity really.

I’m progressing on all 4 counts for now!  Better than half at the last update!  (yes, I count still gaining baby weight as progress, since the baby isn’t born yet, it’s just what I’m supposed to be doing.)

changes…

Guest room – the baby brunch stuff invaded, the packing to travel to the baby brunch invaded, and both were cleared out.  Then packing to go to the hospital invaded…no progress yet on hanging the picture or painting the lamps. 

Learn to coupon – I have a whole other coupon file for baby coupons, and the past two times I’ve gone to the store, I’ve used coupons.  This isn’t $10 a week yet, but it’s a start! 

Find a church – we’ve talked about it…and about going this weekend, but we’ll see, I’m not hopeful that this is the weekend.  Maybe next.

Lose the baby weight – I’m still gaining it, right on schedule.  I guess that is part one, to gain the baby weight. 

That’s 1 for 4 in the progress department, but I’ll take some credit on the last one, I”m doing exactly what I should be for now, so I’ll say 2 for 4!

I love the idea of setting goals.  Just look at the white board on our fridge.  It’s got a grocery list down one side and a to do list on the other (and sometimes the to do list takes over the whole board, like this week).  However, the idea of goals/resomutikns at new years is intimidating to say the least.  I have lots of goals and lots of things I’d like to do, and they usually just get pushed to “later,” yes I’m a procrastinator.  Also, with the anticipated arrival of our son, I keep saying that not losing my mind is my goal, but that doesn’t seem nearly concrete enough.  So, that said, here is what I hope to accomplish this year:

– finish the guest room.

Since we moved in, there has been a print in the floor of the guest room. 

We recently added two lamps that are desperate for a couple coats of paint (and I like to start projects before finishing others and then come back years later).  I will get those things taken care of and finally off the to do list.  This really doesn’t require that much time, so I should be able to accomplish this before April is over.  — If by some miracle this happens in the first quarter, I have some ideas for quarterly “finish the unfinished project” goals.

– learn to coupon.

Years ago, I’d save at least a few dollars a trip, recently I don’t even get the paper, so I’m going to start getting the Sunday paper for coupons, clipping coupons online, and paying attention to sale books for groceries.  My goal is to save $10 per week by the end of August. 

– find a church.

Yes, this is Adam’s goal too.  It’s also something we have talked about for a long time, and something that’s even more important to us now that Ben is on his way. 

– I said that Casey and I were going to start training for a 5k this fall, then pregnancy happened and that didn’t.  As things stand, my goal is to be at my pre-pregnancy weight by labor day. 

Before I get questions about this being realistic, this does take into account several worst case scenarios all together (c-section/extra long recovery, another 10lbs of weight gain over what I’m on track for, etc.).

Now, off to make somethings happen…