Goal Updates for Week 27

I didn’t mean to drop off the face of the Earth, but I started a new job (after 17 years as a stay at home mom!) so life got crazy busy!! I am currently working at my church semi-full time as the Director of Religious Education and part time as a Youth Group leader. Back in May, I started to feel a little lost and needed a change. After ten blissful years as a homeschooling parent (blissful??…ummm…..I think it’s kind of like when you forget how terrible childbirth is and years later decide to have another one) Kidding…but seriously…I loved homeschooling and highly recommend it to anyone who desires to have hands on learning with their children. Sadly, not all children thrive as homeschoolers and my youngest one was struggling. While my daughter, Emma, was a dream to teach and thrived as a homeschool student, I noticed a difference with my son. Ben is an extrovert, gets bored/distracted too easily at home, and did not like having a parent as his teacher (it’s not for everyone). Because Ben has never been in the public school system, I knew that public school was probably not going to be the right fit for us, so I looked into our church’s private school. I quickly realized that I would need to either get a job if I wanted him to attend the school (private school=$$$$) or we would try another year of homeschool and mix it up a bit. Luckily, the stars aligned, and the perfect job became available at my church. I love kids, Catholicism, and teaching about the sacraments, so I when I heard a job opened in the religious education department, I threw my application in and hoped for the best. Luckily, I was already a part time Youth Group leader, so my priest knew me pretty well and I got the job. The past few months have been spent adjusting to our new normal. We also finished up VBS in late June (which was my first big undertaking as the DRE), so I finally feel like I can breathe again and hope to start blogging regularly again. If you followed my 2022 goals postings earlier in the year, you’ll see I made a few changes, mostly because my life looks a bit different lately. Now if Ben loves his new school, all my ducks will finally be in a row….or at least a zig zag line. Say a prayer for us!

Walk at least 500 miles this year (263 miles down and 237 to go)

I have been keeping up with this goal pretty well. I’ve learned the hard way that if I slack off on my exercise then my back, knees, and hips start to hurt. Thanks to BodyFit by Amy, my workouts never get dull and they are always available whenever/wherever I need them. Oh….and they are 100% free to stream on Youtube.

Read 100 books (54 books read)

I have been on a thriller/dark stories kick lately. It would take too long to list all of the books I have read over the past three months, so here are some of my four star reads: The Night She Disappeared, Widows of Malabar Hill, House of Salt and Sorrow (I flew through this book!), Girl’s Weekend (eerie thriller), An Ember in the Ashes, A Flicker in the Dark, and Silence for the Dead. Other non-scary books I also really enjoyed reading were: My Life with the Saints, Matilda, and Bomb (really good nonfiction about the building of the atomic bomb).

Visit 12 museums or artistic events (5 down)

My children were in a local theatre’s production of Cinderella, and I got to see it three times this past week. We are so lucky to have good quality community theatre in our city. I always feel like I am seeing a professional production. It was amazing!

Take my kids on an outing by themselves each month

I took Ben out to eat after his final performance on Sunday. Logan’s rolls=mmmm, mmmm, good.

Buy more used things

I haven’t really done a lot of thrift store shopping lately due to my work schedule, but I hope to get back to the thrift store soon.

Work on embroidery projects

I finished up the blue honeybee one, but it’s at my office, so you will have to trust me that it turned out really nice. I found some cute freestyle pattern ideas on Pinterest that I might do next. So far, I have only done packaged sets from Amazon, but if you can draw reasonably well, I think designing your own pattern would be easy and cheaper than buying sets. So, I will pop back in to show you how that turns out later.