PhotobucketPhotobucketPhotobucketPhotobucketPhotobucket

April 1, 2013

2013 Goals: Status Update








I am going to label March a big, fat fail. I basically completed none of my goals (with the exception of reading a ton thanks to a baby that wants to be held from 2-5am every.single.night). Here is your warning - this is a boring update that basically says I didn't do anything I wanted to this month.


I blogged 10 times in March. Not bad but definitely not great either. I also failed to complete the "pages" at the top of the blog. So yeah. Like I mentioned, I pretty much failed this goal for the month. There's always April, right?



I feel like we have had a wonderful family month! Several visitors (my dad and his wife in early March and then my mother-in-law to help when Will had his surgery), tons of fun family outings, special days with each child, etc. We really enjoyed the beautiful weather we've had here in Houston and spent quality time as a family.

I did really good with meal planning so that Alex could take leftovers for lunch which meant he had a good, hot meal, nearly every day of the week!

Arts and craft time continued and is still one of Kate's favorite times of the day! She knows she can only do certain things when Will is asleep which leads to her coming up to me hours before nap time and saying "momma, go put bubba to seep. We need to make crafts!"

My focus for April is one on one time with Kate. As of now, Will will be admitted to start chemo in May and my time with Kate will be extremely limited. I want to soak up all of the time I have with her now before things get extra crazy. I'm hoping we can have a few special momma/ Kate dates in the next few weeks!



Another fail.

While I did pull out my camera (I took approximately 889 pictures in March) I have yet to edit a single one. I shoot in RAW which means unless I open and convert the files, there is minimal sharing. So until I take the time to work on all 900 pictures, they will just continue to sit on my external hard drive waiting to be seen.

My lack of editing also means I have opened Photoshop maybe 3 times all month so I've learned nothing new in that area either.



12 books read for a total of 30 books completed this year!

I did not fail at reading (which is probably why I failed at blogging and photography). I tend to get very focused on one thing and ignore the rest. I was hoping that these goals would help me spread my time more evenly among the things I love. Clearly that has not happened. While I love blogging, and adore photography, my true "I am so stressed out and need to unwind" passion is reading. Losing myself in a book is so freeing to me!

I've had several people ask me how I read so much and there are two reasons why - 1) I am a speed reader. I can finish a book in just a few hours. But, I only read fast when reading on an eReader (I have a Kindle). If I am reading an actual book? I read so slow. No clue why! and 2) Will hates to sleep. He is up for 2-3 hours every single night. Not crying, just wanted to be held. We have a couch in his nursery that we will snuggle on and he will drift in and out of sleep during those hours but he will not let me put him down. Because of his platelets, I am terrified I will fall asleep and drop him so I keep myself awake by reading.

Here's what I read during the month of March:



(All images are clickable for more details/ descriptions.)

I don't normally go in to detail about my opinions on what I've read but I have to talk about two of these books!

It took me ages to finish The Nigh Circus. I'm talking weeks. I just couldn't get into it and felt like it was such a slow read. However, about 75% in, I was hooked and devoured the last bit of the book. It turned out to be one of those books that you weren't thrilled to read but once you finished, you couldn't stop thinking about. I still cannot put my finger on what exactly made this book so wonderful to me. The mystery of the circus? The magic of it all? The characters and their decisions? I'm just not sure. But it was a phenomenal book and I highly recommend it - just remember to push through when you are ready to give up!

Hopeless is another book that really stuck with me. I am a member of an online book club and this was the March book. I'd never heard of the book or the author, Colleen Hoover, before and was excited to try a new author. Hopeless is a YA book which is clearly a genre I read often so I'm surprised I'd never read any of Hoover's work before. Without going into details (it would give away too much of the book), Hopeless is an amazing story filled with plot twists and turns. Hoover is amazing at character development and I absolutely fell in love with Sky and Holder! I enjoyed this book so much that I finished it in 24 hours AND then downloaded Hoover's two other books and finished them 48 hours later! I highly recommend this book! And I am eagerly anticipating the second book Losing Hope that comes out this month!

So there's my March update! Pretty much a fail but documenting, and admitting failure, has me eager to meet these goals in April!

3 comments:

Kristin B said...

I shoot in RAW+JPG. It really doesn't take up that much more space and if your image is pretty good you may not even need to edit it and can put it up as is. See how many pictures you can take with just RAW then change it to RAW+JPG and see how dramatically it changes. Just a thought.

Lucy Marie said...

March was a big fat fail for me. And it's pretty sad because my goals were not lofty. At all. I gotta kick this in the butt and get motivated. But I have to say, I felt kind of good knowing I wasn't the only one to write a "I kind of sucked in march" post haha

Meagan said...

I couldn't get into night circus :(

Blogging tips