I just wanted to take a moment to invite you to hop on over to Debbie’s Digest to continue participating in Goal Planning Monday. Debbie, who has not missed a single Goal Planning Monday in the nearly 2 1/2 years I’ve been hosting the meme, has graciously offered to carry on for me. I look forward to linking up there when I have the time and will be checking in to see how all my goal planning friends are doing!

Thank you so much for all the weeks you’ve joined in. We’ve accomplished thousands of goals together!

I’m sad to be putting Goal Planning Monday on hiatus. I cannot seem to get my act together to post a linky in a timely manner and quite frankly, find myself struggling to come up with goals each week just so I have something to post. My main goal is to keep my head above water and keep my kids happy, healthy and cared for, anything else is extra. If anyone would like to post a link up for Goal Planning Monday so that you can still find encouragement from each other please feel free to contact me and I will give you my blessing. I do know that a few of you still check in here regularly and I don’t want to leave you without a place to link if you are still interested in participating.

Thank you for the last couple of years, it has been fun to see how much we have all been able to accomplish each week!

Welcome to Goal Planning Monday!

If you are new here be sure to check out the guidelines before you join in. We would love to have you! If you are returning, I hope you had a good week. Thank you for stopping in and sharing with us. Be sure to keep sharing with your friends as we all could use some accountability from time to time! I hope to see some new members this week. Keep spreading the word as we could all use some encouragement and support as we go about achieving our goals. If you have a moment get sure to hop over and see what others are doing.

I’m sorry that I am a little late getting back to you this week. We had a little bit of an injury in the house over the weekend and I’ve found myself with less free hands for blogging or writing as the little one likes me close. He’ll be as good as new in a few weeks and I am sure that we will all have adjusted before then, but if not, just keep checking back. Goal Planning Monday will still make an appearance even if it is a little late.

Last week’s goals

Writing

1. Blog about the movie This is Our Time. Done. 

2. Blog about Coursera.org, DIY.org, and KhanAcademy.org. Not done. I didn’t get much blogging done last week. Mike came earlier than expected and then the weekend did not go as planned.+

3. Participate in at least one meme/bloghop. Not Done. 

Health goals

1. Avoid gluten and cut down on sugar. Done. I did have birthday cake and a small amount of pasta on Thursdays for Ruadhan’s birthday, though. 

2. Make a grocery list full of yummy goodness to pick up next time we go. Done. I did not meal plan, though.

3. Drink water. Partially done. I did not drink a ton of pure water, but I had ample amounts of water kefir.

Homeschooling Goals/Education

1. Keep up with my two Coursera courses. Done. I will probably end up stopping one or both of them because I do not think I will be able to keep up now. 

2. Work on my paper for one of the classes. Not done.

3. In addition, start my third Coursera course with Liam. Partially done. I’ve been watching the videos, but I made Liam his own account and he is doing the coursework and projects on his own.

4. Continue using Spanish for You. Done. Review will be coming this week.

5. Help Morgaine keep her very own kefir and plants for the garden alive.  Partially done. One of Mike’s cats slept in my tomato plants and killed them, though. We have one sole survivor. 

Household Chores

1. Clean walls in laundry room. Done.

2. Clean refrigerator. Not done. 

3. Scrub floors in kitchen/living room area. Partially done. Only in the living room half/.

4. Make sure the counter is cleared off every evening. Done. Maybe not as cleared off as I’d hoped, but dishes were done most nights. 

This week’s goals (are going to be few):

1. Keep wee boy as happy as possible. He is a trooper, but not as mobile as he is used to and that is hard for an active 3 year old.

2. Attend lego for homeschoolers this week. I haven’t really met anyone with kids since we moved so I am looking forward to this.

3. Cook a few big batch meals to freeze. I’m not sure how we’re going to do it when Mike leaves, but I’m hoping wee boy will be on the mend.

4. Keep up with my seedlings. I just planted a lot more (because I clearly don’t have enough to do!

5. Decide whether or not to continue with my coursera classes. I’d rather do them when I can dedicate the proper amount of time to them.

6. Write a whole bunch of reviews. It is an insanely busy week and I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to keep up and take care of my other writing obligations! I will do it to the best of my ability, though!

I hope that you’ll still drop by this wee even if I posted so late. What are you up to this lovely April week?

Welcome to Goal Planning Monday!

If you are new here be sure to check out the guidelines before you join in. We would love to have you! If you are returning, I hope you had a good week. Thank you for stopping in and sharing with us. Be sure to keep sharing with your friends as we all could use some accountability from time to time! I hope to see some new members this week. Keep spreading the word as we could all use some encouragement and support as we go about achieving our goals. If you have a moment get sure to hop over and see what others are doing.

My mood was mostly better this week, so I did get some of my goals accomplished. That felt good, too. Hopefully, I can keep it up for a while. I’m hoping to make this big spring cleaning week so we’ll see what we can do.

1. Make a image introduction to this meme. Not done. Opps. It would have been pretty easy, too. Oh well.

2. Make a blog post about Penny, our newish boxer pup. Not done. I did make one other post that I was planning on writing about my experience with the company 23andMe. I’d actually thought that I put it as a goal, but I guess I didn’t.

3. Touch up the paint in the bathroom. Done! It looks much better. I also painted the entrance and the stairway to the second floor. It all looks so good. Those two areas were especially dirty. I think the person in that unit (the house we bought is/was a triplex) had a couple really young children that would run their hands along the wall. Our kids are too tall to leave a trail where these prints were (and I carry the littlest one or walk with him holding the railing).

4. Stay up to date in the two Coursera courses I am taking. Done! It’s pretty insane, though, and I am starting another today to do with Liam. One of the ones I’m taking is a graduate level medical neuroscience class and it’s nearly a full time job itself. I’m probably doing 20 hours a week on just that one!

5. Get outside every sunny opportunity. Done! It really wasn’t sunny at all this week. We had a freezing cold picnic outside one day early in the week and then we walked to the mail once. That’s about it, though. It was rainy/snowy or cold all week.

6. Organize my spice cupboard. Done! Looks good. I may have room for a few more spices.

7. Clean up the computer a bit. Partially done. Honestly, it has been very partially done. I expect this to take about a month to get done in it’s entirety. Last week I cleared up the desktop, but that was by far the shortest job on the list.

This week’s goals

Writing

1. Blog about the movie This is Our Time. I will be having a giveaway for it so I hope you will  check back for a chance to win.

2. Blog about Coursera.org, DIY.org, and KhanAcademy.org. We’re all loving these  learn online opportunities. There are so many free sites out there for education. What a wonderful step in the right direction.

3. Participate in at least one meme/bloghop.

Health goals

1. Avoid gluten and cut down on sugar (yep, I eat too much sugar).

2. Make a grocery list full of yummy goodness to pick up next time we go. Ideally I would meal plan ahead for the whole next month, but yeah, I’m not sure that is going to happen.

3. Drink water. It still isn’t second nature and I think I spend way too much time walking around dehydrated.

Homeschooling Goals/Education

1. Keep up with my two Coursera courses.

2. Work on my paper for one of the classes. It makes me a little nervous as  I haven’t written a paper in ages.

3. In addition, start my third Coursera course with Liam. He should probably have his own account. He will be doing the work and I think it will thrill him to get a certificate of completion from a university/college if he can get the work done.

4. Continue using Spanish for You. We have a review coming up soon and I’m not sure we’ve done quite enough to get a really good feel for it.

5. Help Morgaine keep her very own kefir and plants for the garden alive.

Household Chores

1. Clean walls in laundry room.

2. Clean refrigerator.

3. Scrub floors in kitchen/living room area.

4. Make sure the counter is cleared off every evening. I usually hop onto the computer to work on my courses after the kids are in bed, but it feels really good to come down to a clean kitchen in the morning. I think I’ll aim for 5 days out of 7 with a clean counter.

Please stop in and let us know what your plans for the week are. I’d love to stop by to say “hello!”

Welcome to Goal Planning Monday!

If you are new here be sure to check out the guidelines before you join in. We would love to have you! If you are returning, I hope you had a good week. Thank you for stopping in and sharing with us. Be sure to keep sharing with your friends as we all could use some accountability from time to time! I hope to see some new members this week. Keep spreading the word as we could all use some encouragement and support as we go about achieving our goals. If you have a moment get sure to hop over and see what others are doing.

I’m sorry I missed out on posting last week. My husband was still in town so we spent the morning running errands and then he left that afternoon. It’s been a harder week for me just because I miss him and I miss our old community  a lot. It is really isolating here and we really do not see anyone the whole time Mike is away. I spent more time crying last week than feeling like writing, but I am back now.

Since I didn’t have any goals last week, I’ll just post my goals for this coming week.

1. Make a image introduction to this meme. I’ve heard that google takes it as spam if you repeat the same things over and over in your blog and I’ve been going it for years. I’m not expecting to be ranked great on google, but I know that I can get more people directed to this blog than my old ones!

2. Make a blog post about Penny, our newish boxer pup.

3. Touch up the paint in the bathroom. I painted over the weekend, but it needs a little bit of extra work.

4. Stay up to date in the two Coursera courses I am taking. I also want to try to make a blog post about Coursera as well. It is a wonderful tool.

5. Get outside every sunny opportunity. I think the winter is getting me down and I need to soak up some sun! The temperature warms up enough to sit out on the deck with a book and a blanket while the kids play. Unfortunately, I think it is going to be a pretty wet week.

6. Organize my spice cupboard. I didn’t get it done last time and I am running low on certain things and would love to make an Epicure order by the end of the month.

7. Clean up the computer a bit. This will likely take place over a couple of weeks. I have so many resources that aren’t organized whatsoever. I also have a lot of stuff that is no good as is just taking up room. It would be nice to have an organized computer because I’m sure we’d find good things that I’ve downloaded years ago and have forgotten about.

Please stop in and let us know what your plans for the week are. Are you looking at organizing the next school year? Doing spring cleaning? We’d love to hear about it!

Welcome to Goal Planning Monday!

If you are new here be sure to check out the guidelines before you join in. We would love to have you! If you are returning, I hope you had a good week. Thank you for stopping in and sharing with us. Be sure to keep sharing with your friends as we all could use some accountability from time to time! I hope to see some new members this week. Keep spreading the word as we could all use some encouragement and support as we go about achieving our goals. If you have a moment get sure to hop over and see what others are doing.

I made a lot of goals for this pass week and I didn’t really accomplish as much as I thought I would be able to do. I still did a fair bit, but feel that I should have been able to do more considering that I’ve been feeling well and besides a couple days where Morgaine decided it would be good to be very dramatic about EVERYTHING, the week was pretty smooth. Oh well, it’s a new week now, and I’ll work on getting the things done that I didn’t get finished.

Writing Goals:

1. Write guest post for Homeschool Mosaics. Partially done. There’s a little bit to add and some editing to do, but it will be finished today or tomorrow.

2. Write article for Homeschool Horizons. Not done. I think I have homeschool writing burnout. I don’t know. I’m feeling like I can’t add anything new or particularly interesting. I think I want to be writing fiction. I’ve been writing homeschooling stuff for years and it gets a little, I don’t know, repetitive after a while. I’ll continue to try to write something of quality.

3. Participate in Think Back Thursday and Friday’s Fave Five. Done.

4. Write at least one post here that isn’t a meme/bloghop. Not done. I’ve started several things, but haven’t really felt any of them. They are all homeschool related and like I said, homeschool burn out or something going on here.

Health Goals:

1. Drink water. Not done. Did horrible with this. I’ve hardly drunk anything beside coffee and only that in the morning so I just don’t drink most of the day. I do have a glass of kefir as well, but it’s not near enough fluids.

2. Avoid gluten at all costs. Done. Feel pretty good. Will keep it up.

3. Do something active with the kiddies. Done. I exercised with Ruadhan one evening (he’s a good partner because he wants to keep going and going and going.. We dances around some and played an active game of Real Life Angry Bird last night.

4. Keep up with my remedies. Not done. They don’t really seem necessary. They aren’t bad, though, and a part of good nutrition so I probably should.

5. Nourish my kefir babies. Done. They are still thriving.

Other goals:

1. Seal the bathtub. Done.

2. Establish a new routine for chores. Done. I’m getting much more help with little complaint. Thank goodness.

3. Make sure the kids roll their dice for school. Partially done. Liam have been keep up and going above and beyond. I spent more of the week dealing with Morgaine’s behaviour so besides reading and writing she did not get a lot of actual school done. It was, I hope, well worth it, because by the end of the week things were running much smoother with her.

4. Use my planner. Done. I don’t need it all that much right now that we really don’t have anything going on, but I still like it very much and could have used it last fall when every day was booked!

Actually looking at it, I think I had a pretty decent week after all!

This week’s goals

Writing Goals.

1. Write article for Homeschool Horizons. It shouldn’t be as hard as I am making it.

2. Participate in the two bloghop/memes I mention above. I quite like both.

3. Write something else on my blog, even if it isn’t homeschool related. I have an idea and it involves food, but it may have to wait until the weekend because we are low on certain foods that would be needed.

4. Write some just for fun. That’s probably what I need.

Household/Homeschooling Duties

1. Help Morgaine with subtraction. She’s caught the tricks for addition, but hasn’t been able to apply them to subtraction and I’ll admit that I find it a little frustration, because if Liam didn’t see the patterns on his own, he got them the first time you showed him. We’ve been looking at subtraction on and off for three weeks and she still doesn’t quite get it. I’m going to get her to do some drawing and see if having her make the examples will help.

2. Do the next chapter of Nutrition 101 with Liam.

3. Help Penny, our boxer, who is arriving in a couple hours, adjust to our family and home rules. I’ve been researching and talking to the kids about her and what I expect from them. Now, we just have to see what kind of personality she has.

4. Clean/organize the spice cupboard. Seems the children have spilled cinnamon in there and it could use a good organization anyways. It’s not terribly functional as it is.

Health goals

1. Drink water. Lots of water. I can tell I need it.

2. Exercise. I need to keep it up. My goal is to be able to run on the trails behind our house with Penny this summer. I’m not there, yet.

3. Research meat providers here in New Brunswick. It would be nice to be able to get pastured pigs/chicken/eggs. Look at Sobeys to see if I can get my organic lamb (I miss it!) and liver (which I am craving).

Other goals

1. Keep up with my Coursera course that starts at some point today.

2. Continue to do my HTML/CSS book with exercise. It is fun, but my server is unreliable and sometimes slow so there have been a couple times when I was free that I wanted to work on it, but couldn’t.

3. No yelling. I try, and do okay, but I do yell (and there’s really no need besides my frustration) and am sometimes more critical than I should be. *sigh* This parenting thing is not easy.

That’s about it for the week. I hope that you will drop in and let us know what your goals for the week are as we could all use a little accountability.

Welcome to Goal Planning Monday!

If you are new here be sure to check out the guidelines before you join in. We would love to have you! If you are returning, I hope you had a good week. Thank you for stopping in and sharing with us. Be sure to keep sharing with your friends as we all could use some accountability from time to time! I hope to see some new members this week. Keep spreading the word as we could all use some encouragement and support as we go about achieving our goals. If you have a moment get sure to hop over and see what others are doing.

We’ve had a week to get things back in order since Mike’s visit. It didn’t go as well as I hoped because we’ve (hmmm, I’ve) been dealing with some attitude from the kids again. Seems to come in phases. Hope this one is short. While I may not have gotten everything accomplished on my list, I did do a couple extra things that I was going to add to my list that I didn’t. I’ll put them in at the bottom because I am really glad that I got them done!

Last week’s goals:

1. Get the house back under control. Partially done. I’m not at all satisfied with it, though. The main issue with the kids at the moment is their lack of interest in doing their chores and picking up after themselves (and the attitude when I tell them to do it….if you don’t want to be reminded just DO it!). I’m hating having to wade through their stuff, just to get to the cleaning part of take care of the house.

2. Comment on everyone that links up here. DONE! Except for one blog that I wasn’t able to comment on.

3. Write two blog posts. DONE!

4. Read the CSS/HTML5 book that Mike got me. Not done. I looked at it a bit and read a couple chapters, but there are so few words in a chapter that I cannot even say that I partially reached this goal. I really didn’t read much. I’ve been fooling around with HTML a little in the evenings, though.

5. Drink water and continue with all the remedies that Mike is encouraging me to try. Partially done. The less pleasant one, I’ve only done a couple times, but I’ve kept up with most everything else. I did eat gluten this afternoon because I was in a bad mood (opps) and I don’t feel particulartly well this evening but that may be stress, too. Who knows?

6. Work of several other writing projects I have going on. Not done. I’ve been fooling around with HTML at night because that is what my husband is going and we type back and forth on Skype. I probably should be writing, though. I really have to get them done this week.

Here are the two goals that I didn’t add to my list because I figured there was no hope in accomplishing them but I’ve surprised myself:

Keep wee boy peeing in the toilet. He peed on the floor every single time on Monday. Tuesday we used a timer (potty training is more about training Mom, I think) and by Wednesday he was asking every time he had to go and has not had an accident since.

Paint the kitchen cupboards white. Parts of them were very dark brown so it took more coats then I would have liked (therefore, more time), but I got them done and they look pretty good.

Goals for this week:

Writing Goals:

1. Write guest post for Homeschool Mosaics.

2. Write article for Homeschool Horizons.

3. Participate in Think Back Thursday and Friday’s Fave Five.

4. Write at least one post here that isn’t a meme/bloghop.

Health Goals:

1. Drink water.

2. Avoid gluten at all costs.

3. Do something active with the kiddies. Be it dancing around or something more formal (we used to have an morning exercise routine).

4. Keep up with my remedies.

5. Nourish my kefir babies. I haven’t been doing quite a good as I could be and they are a little on the extra tart side these last few times. I like it, but if I want all the kids to drink it I need to make sure that there is a little sweetness left. It’s probably better on the grains, too.

Other goals:

1. Seal the bathtub.

2. Establish a new routine for chores. It’s not working and I need more help (mostly because I strongly believe they need to be doing more than they are).

3. Make sure the kids roll their dice for school (maybe that can be my blog post for the week). Also make sure that they do the work. Morgaine needs help with the work she is doing and I need to make time to sit with her and make sure she is getting it.

4. Use my planner. I love it, but I am so not good at planning, at all.

That’s about it for the week. I hope that you will drop in and let us know what your goals for the week are as we could all use a little accountability.

n

Welcome to Goal Planning Monday!

If you are new here be sure to check out the guidelines before you join in. We would love to have you! If you are returning, I hope you had a good week. Thank you for stopping in and sharing with us. Be sure to keep sharing with your friends as we all could use some accountability from time to time! I hope to see some new members this week. Keep spreading the word as we could all use some encouragement and support as we go about achieving our goals. If you have a moment get sure to hop over and see what others are doing.

My husband is here visiting for hte week so I’ll likely keep my goals pretty simple for the week. It’s always nice to have a little bit of a plan in place, though, even if you expect the week to be a little more spontaneous. Maybe it is especially important to have a plan then, actually.

Last week’s goals:

1. Promote Goal Planning Monday being back at it’s old home so people can find it. DONE! Probably didn’t do this as well as I could have, but I will continue to promote this week. I am spending a lot of time looking at the various themes and things so I actually don’t want to promote too much because sometimes my blog looks quite horrible or isn’t functional at all.

2. Visit everyone who linked up last week so that they know to come here from now on. Not Done.

3. Work on my widgets for the blog. Not Done. My husband thought that my blog was a little boring and unoriginal so I am back to the drawing board. *sigh*

4. Work on an upcoming review. DONE! I have a couple reviews to post in the next week and I am quite excited about it!

5. Write a blog post about computer programming that has been floating around in my head. DONE! You can read it here.

6. Do some deep cleaning in the house. DONE! It never really ends, though.

7. Drink water. Partially done. I’ve been drinking more, but not as much as I should.

8. Be more patient with the kids. DONE! We’ve had a better week, but it wasn’t perfect. I guess no one is perfect, though.

9. Work on a grocery list for the next month. DONE! We are going grocery shopping in the city this morning.

This week’s goals

1. Find somewhere that the family can go for a walk and insist that we do it. Way too much time on our various gadgets and the kids really want to do things with us.

2. Continue to eat gluten free. I’m about 10 days in am my gut seems to be shrinking, but it is hard to know what is doing it or if it just a fluke. Cutting gluten in the summer didn’t do anything to help my situation.

3. Nourish my beautiful kefir babies every day. We just got new grains and I am hoping that they don’t see the same sad fate as my last ones. I will be the one that is in charge of them this time.

4. Look at planning a family meeting each week. I think this is something that we need to implement. We don’t tend to talk to each other a lot about things so people don’t know what is going on when and who is taking care of what. I think that life will be simpler if we sit down once a week and look things over a bit and see what is working and what isn’t.

5. Get the final theme figured out on my blog. I’m feeling really unmotivated about it. I don’t know what I want to do and what I want it to look like. Any theme I find that I like has things that I don’t like about it or things that I don’t know how to fix/remove.

6. Promote Goal Planning Monday.

7. Post my first review for Mosaic Reviews. It should be up within the next day or two. I’m just putting the finishing touches on it.

That’s about it for the week. I hope that you will drop in and let us know what your goals for the week are as we could all use a little accountability.