Update on September Goals

We are almost to the end of the month, and I am thankful I've been able to knock out so many goals (and bonus goals) over the last thirty days! Here are my updates from September!

 1. Schedule fall photo shoot.

(Photo from last year's shoot)

Done! I reached out to a photographer and scheduled a photo shoot for us for next month. Since this will be the tenth anniversary of our engagement photos, I do plan to recreate a small handful of those pictures. And we'll include Lexi in some of the pictures as well. (This will be her first non-parental photo shoot, so we'll see how that goes. Think she can remember how to look at the camera?)

2. Complete my Connection Center Coordinator Love INC training.

(Squinting in the sunshine on my last day of training)

Done - as of yesterday! I sat in on four training sessions over the course of four weeks and took pages of notes! Love INC (where Ryan works and I volunteer) has a national office that provides great training sessions for staff. I really loved the sweet lady that led all these sessions. She was born to train, that's for sure. She offered really helpful information and was exciting and engaging to listen to in every session. I was able to take away quite a few things to use in our future work with Love INC!

3. Work on the Love INC website.

Done! I mean the website is not even close to DONE, but I completed my goal of working on it! I am really not a website designer, so even though we chose a company that is pretty user-friendly, this was still a challenge. (Thank goodness I have a very talented friend who is jumping in at the end and rescuing me from myself. Thank you, Julie!) I decided to take the route of creating the most basic and usable site I could so we could get it up and running, and then I will continue to add content, piece by piece. It'll truly never be done, because we will always have updates to add. But I am so excited that the beginning stage is almost complete! It should be officially live soon!

4. Decorate our front porch.

In super exciting news, I was able to get a perfectly sized tiny table for our front porch area - for free! Ryan's sister has a room full of things that had been his mom's, and she shopped the room for me. We picked it up when we went to our farm date night, and right after that, we got some mums and BOOM! That became one pretty porch! I was pleased with how it turned out.

5. Finish preparing for the women's retreat.

On Labor Day, I was able to put together the Power Point (which is largely made up of pictures and Scripture) for the retreat. Ryan saved the day by finding my previous Power Point. I knew I had made one for this retreat in a previous year, but I could not find it ANYWHERE! It wasn't on any laptop, in any hard drive, or on any flash drive. I have no idea how I managed to lose my copy, but he had it on his computer and that saved me hours of work. I had to tweak several parts of it, but WOW. It saved me so much time. Thank you, Ryan!!!

After that, I was able to finish up everything about the retreat just in the nick of time to present it! Thankful for the opportunity and thankful it went well. 

6. Make my scrapbook of our family trip.

I knocked it out in one afternoon! The benefit of a shorter trip means I don't have as many pictures. (Well. Sometimes.) But I was pleased with how it turned out! I have three books made now, and they're running a great sale this week, so maybe I'll place an order!

7. Choose my workouts early each day.

The website I've been using for workouts (Faithful Workouts) offers four choices of workouts each day. The choices cover a range of time frames, difficulty levels, and types of workouts. I had made this goal so that I wasn't constantly choosing the shortest workout on the fly at the end of every day. Well, because of both sickness and travels, I didn't work out every single day, but on the days I did exercise, I followed this goal of choosing my video early in the day. it was great accountability and quite helpful in getting me to try things that were tougher to do. (Also...I had a request to write a post about the workouts I do, so that one will be coming down the pike in a little bit!)

8. Journal more thoroughly.

This month, rather than writing in my journal only when I was exhausted at the end of the day, I started journaling first thing in the morning and carrying it out throughout the remainder of the day. With the exception of the days I was the sickest (and therefore didn't care about anything in life), this plan worked really well. I am thankful to have more of my deeper thoughts escaping my mind and not just a running list of what I did that day. This was, hands down, my best month of journaling in a while.

Other Accomplishments:

* I cleaned up my blog list so hopefully I'm not clicking on a bunch of dead blogs anymore! (Now if Blogger could make a goal of accurately reflecting recently updated blogs, that would be GREAT!!)

* I had my hair cut and colored and returned to curling it more regularly. I also got some layers cut in, so it doesn't feel as heavy!

* I made a document for Love INC to help us keep track of upcoming speaking engagements so we always make sure everyone involved is on the same page and we don't have any lapses in communication on things that matter! (You can take the girl away from the producer role, but you can't take the producer out of the girl!)

* I finished reading a book! It was my first in a while - because of all the crazy life-stuff we've had going on. But it was a joy to sit and read some almost every day, and I'm excited to keep reading!

* I tried several new-to-us recipes and found in there a few keepers I'd like to make again!

* I began planning our future amazing road trip. I haven't told you about this yet, but that requires a whole post of its own. Stay tuned.