Hello Monday

Hi! I know it's been a while since I've done one of these, but in traditional New Year's fashion, here I am again trying to get back into a good habit of reporting in on Mondays.

Update

Well, a weekend update seems silly since I haven't done this in forever.  Since my last update, we went back to Disney for an early Christmas celebration.  The recap of the first few days have already been posted and the rest will be up in the next few weeks.  If you haven't read any of them, I will say we had an amazing time as always.  Disney is even more magical during the holidays.  

We were back home in time for the holidays, which were wonderful.  We are truly blessed by our families and it was so nice to spend so much time with them.

Besides our traditional Christmas celebrations, my mom also hosted some Grinch themed parties, which I hope to write more about soon.  For now, I will tease you with this.

For New Years, we celebrated with my brother, sister in law, and their beautiful new baby.

Since the holidays, we've been a little lazy, but everything is starting to get back to order.

Hello Monday

Here's your peak at my week:

As you can see, I'm sticking with the bullet journal.  However, you will also notice that the art work is missing.  I've decided to go back to the basics, which is a step I missed last year.  I love my journal from last year, and each week I amazed myself with what I was capable of drawing since I never thought I could draw anything.  After a while though, I almost dreaded each week when I sat down to work on my next spread.  I think I wanted to be able to change it around, but I also didn't want to mess it up since I had stuck with the same format for so long.  I realize this goes against the whole idea of bullet journaling, but that is how I felt.  So, in my typical fashion, I'm fixing that in the extreme this year with the goal of changing my weekly spread every week.  I can still draw in my journal if I ever want to and I hope some small doodles appear at least, but I'm not requiring it this time around.  If you can read any of the details, you might see that this is an exciting week.

Hello Birthdays

We celebrate two very special birthdays this week.  Today, we celebrate the birthday of Patrick's sister and Sunday is Patrick's birthday.  No real plans are made yet, but hopefully we'll get together with Kara this evening and we'll definitely try to make Patrick feel special this weekend.

Hello Date Night

For Christmas, Littlecjc received tickets to see Shopkins Live with her aunt and uncle.  As the show is this week, we will be child free and intend to make the best of it.  We will probably go out to dinner, Patrick's choice since it's his birthday this weekend, and maybe a movie?  I'm not really sure yet, but I am looking forward to our night out.

Hello Preschool

You also may notice that preschool plans are back on the schedule.  We're attempting it again.  We'll see how this goes this time around.  If we succeed, I'll share more about it later.  Littlecjc was excited this morning, so hopefully we can keep this momentum going.  Although, I have to admit that we didn't really get through everything I had planned for today, but I'm okay with breaking up my activities throughout the day or even the week.  I should look at this as an advantage of homeschooling instead of worrying that my child can't sit still through these activities, right?  LOL, either way, I feel like we made it through all the important activities.  It's not like my kid doesn't work on her gross motor skills at dance, and if we never get to the art activity I planned I think we'll be okay.  She did help me paint a new project yesterday to help us display all our Disney pins.  (Don't worry, I'll post about that later, too.  When it's all finished.)  The traditional, circle time activities and her letters are what I really want to focus on anyway.  

Hello Menu

As usual in January, we're trying to be better about what we are eating.  Most importantly, I'm trying to cook more meals at home instead of just picking up something.  I remembered the other day that when I was regularly reporting our menus, I had tried to plan one new recipe each week, so I've decided to bring that plan back to get me out of my planning slump.  So what's on the menu this week:

Monday - Southwestern 2 Bean Chicken Soup

Tuesday - Cabbage Rolls *this is my new recipe this week

Wednesday - Sausage Sweet Potato Pizza

Thursday - Steamed Chicken Teriyaki with rice and broccoli

Friday - date night

Saturday - Baked Hawaiian Chicken with rice

Sunday - Meatballs with sweet potato and brussels sprouts

Hello #Littleliam2017

My sister in law is returning to work this week, and my mom and I are splitting some days to help them out with childcare for a while.  I'm so excited to hang out with Littleliam.

Hello Binge List

What am I watching this week?  Well, we're currently working on finishing the new season 2 of The Magicians.  I'll probably start something else this week, but we'll see.  I've also been working on my cross stitch picture that I didn't even pick up once last year, so most of my me time has been going to that lately.

Hello New Books

After failing miserably last year at my book challenge, I almost didn't even start this year's challenge last week.  However, I decided I did want to try it again this year, but that I needed better planning.  I'm trying to pick smaller books this year, but more importantly, I'm picking more audio books that I know will be available at the library.  I don't seem to have much time to actually pick up a book these days, and so audio books seem to be the only way I get anything read.  The first week's challenge was to read a book with A, T, and Y in the title.  This was a random challenge, but I decided on Scrappy Little Nobody by Anna Kendrick as a quick listen to jump start my success.  The book was okay, but I would have been more interested if she talked more about her work instead of some of the random stories included.  I also didn't need all the curse words, but for the most part it was enjoyable if not really memorable.  

Thanks to books being on hold at the library, I'm jumping out of order on my challenge list to week eight: to read an "own" voices book.  I've chosen Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn.  In case you're wondering an own voice novel is a book about marginalized protagonist (by ethnic group, religion, sexual orientation, mental illness, etc) written by an author who shares that same identy.  For example, my chosen book is written by a female, Jamaican married to a woman and the book is about a Jamaican woman who loves another woman.  I haven't actually started this book yet, so I can't share anything else.

I think that is everything going on this week.

Happy Monday everyone!