2018 FAMILY GOALS: CHECK IN #2

Happy Friday, it’s the weekend!

I’m trying really hard not to think about the fact that it’s my second-to-last weekend before the cross country kicks off and all of my weekends are taken up with work, meets and travel for a few months. We have some fun plans including swim lessons, date night Saturday and grilling some good steaks from Whole Foods on Sunday night. Gotta soak up every last minute of summer before it’s over (even though the summer weather is going to stick around for a few months!

Today I’m coming at you with the second check in on how Henri and I are doing on our family goals for the year. You can check out our family word of the year that is the guiding theme of all of our goals here and read the first check in from March here.

2018 GOALS: WE WANT TO FINISH THE YEAR…

• … feeling like our year was guided by our Word of the Year – “simplify”

I’m not sure that adding a second little one qualifies as simplifying but in general I feel like we are doing a good job of this so far. We have gone through and gotten rid of a lot of our clothes and shoes that we no longer wear but there is definitely more work that we can do in this area. I especially want to go through the baby clothes that we have and donate what I don’t think we’ll use the second time around. In terms of family commitments I think we’ve done a pretty good job so far of minimizing our schedules while finding a good balance where I’m happy with the amount of “fun activities” we’re doing and Henri is happy with the amount of downtime we’re building into our weeks. Of course some weeks are busier than others but we’re really trying to find pockets of rest within the craziness.

• … with a completed house. 

You guys! We have most of the *major* home renovation projects done. The biggest one that Henri and his dad completed at the beginning of the summer was the kid’s bathroom upstairs. The last two major things we have to get done are totally redoing our master bathroom (it’s already totally gutted, now we just need to rebuild it) and getting the smoke-y smell out the spare bedroom upstairs that is empty right now but is becoming Lavinia’s big girl room!

There are, as always, lots of little things to get done. A few weeks ago Henri and I came up with a new system to get cracking on these smaller projects. We wrote out a list of things that need to get done around the house that would take less than an hour to complete. I think Henri and I are both “big project people” – in that we like to take on big projects but doing small tasks is hard for us. So this list is helping us to make small progress almost every day on the house. Some of these little things that have been completed recently are…

. Henri bought and installed the final two new door knobs that we needed so now all of our doorknobs finally match!

. Henri and his dad moved the treadmill from the guestroom into the garage.

. We moved my desk and office chair out of the spare room upstairs and into the guestroom.

. I found a painting for above our bed. 

. I bought Lavinia’s big girl bed (it still needs to be assembled).

• … having taken a family vacation, specifically a vacation not connected to a race in any way.

We still haven’t made any plans for a family vacation but this summer we’ve been very intentional about spending time together as a family of three. We’d still like to get away sometime in the fall and are looking at doing something in November after the cross country season is over. It’ll probably end up being a road trip somewhere in California like Santa Barbara or similar. 

• … having gone on couples’ vacation – just me and Henri.

• … owning both of our cars. 

We completed this in February! Yayyyyy for no car payments for a long time (fingers crossed).

• … having more money in our savings + less debt (student debt).

For the first few months of the year we were doing a really good job of budgeting and tracking our spending. But then the craziness and busy-ness of track season set in and we kind of fell off of the bandwagon. Luckily, during the months that we weren’t good about tracking we never really went “over budget” because we had gotten the hang of how much and when we should and shouldn’t be spending on things.

This month we are recommitting to budgeting and diligently tracking our spending and so far so good (3 days into the month, lol). We have big goals of me being able to stay home once baby #2 arrives so getting a really good handle on our finances and increasing our savings cushion is a high priority that has us super motivated. As we get a better handle on this and establish a good routine around our budgeting and spending tracking I’ll make sure to share any tips or tricks that we learn.

• … feeling like we’ve established a good routine with the house + yard.

Just in the past month or so we’ve gotten in a really good rhythm with the dishes/kitchen and have succeeded in keeping that area pretty clean for 4 weeks which for us is a major win. Laundry on the other hand is an area that we need to improve on.

Henri was in a good routine with the yard but then we made the decision that we are going to reseed the grass and redo the landscaping this fall when things cool off so in the meantime we are kind of letting the grass in the backyard die so that it’ll be easier to rip out/reseed in a few months.

So that’s where we are 7/12ths into the year. Personally, it’s really hard for me to look at the goals that we set and see that we haven’t achieved them all and may not achieve them all completely by the end of the year. BUT I just keep reminding myself that we’ve made the progress that we’ve made because we set the goals. If we weren’t striving towards anything we may not have improved in these areas. So I’m proud of the steps that we are taking and progress we are making.