2018

Currently – March 2018

/ Cami Grace / Leave a comment

Happy Easter!  This post was supposed to go up yesterday (yep, same story every time!), but I still wanted to get this up so here it goes!  This past month has been a fun one!  If you’ve read my previous posts you know that our baby turned 1!   I spent this month planning his party and just soaking him in as much as I could on the weekends.  Since that was the big event of the month, and year so far, I honestly don’t have too much extra to share, so I’ll jump right in!

Currently Watching

YouTube!  In order to make cleaning the kitchen and doing dishes more bearable I turn on YouTube and rotate through the channels I follow.  Here are my top 3 favorites

1 – Kathryn Morgan

I found Kathryn’s channel somehow through Facebook a couple years ago.  There was a ballet barre routine she had filmed and after watching it I was hooked.  This also began my journey back to dance.  Through watching her channel and doing her barre routines and exercises I gained the strength and confidence to join an adult ballet and lyrical class a couple summers ago.  After having a baby I haven’t done much dancing, but I continue to follow her videos and absolutely love her.  I would honestly to love to meet her in person.

2 – Brianna K

I found Bri through searching YouTube videos for working mom routines.  She was one of the very, very few that had a channel and worked full-time outside the home. I’m not going to lie, there aren’t a lot of channels out there of moms who do this and I have seriously contemplated starting my own just to get more support out there.  I feel like after having a baby and working full time outside the home I have a lot of advice to offer.

*Side note – she now works from home and travels, but I highly recommend her channel!

3 – Blair Lamb/Blair Blogs

I honestly can’t remember how I found Blair – Pinterest maybe?  I first started reading her blog and was following along there when she started to post YouTube videos.  She does a lot of everyday and weekend Vlogs.  She’s down to earth and someone I feel like I could be friends with.  It’s nice because a lot of her videos consist of cleaning, dishes, cooking, etc. so it’s like I have someone doing the same thing right there with me.

Currently Reading

Simply Clean by Becky Rapinchuk.  It definitely has me rethinking the way I spend my time cleaning.  Her routine consists of cleaning for 10 minutes every day.  I was pretty skeptical when I read the title, but after listening to the audio book, I realize her way actually might work for me.  You obviously can go deeper and spend more time in each area, and her book goes into that as well.  In the end I think I will definitely be implementing her techniques – at least to some extent.

I also finished reading “The 5 Love Languages” by Gary Chapman.  I went into a little more detail on this in my February Recap.

Currently Making/Baking

Confetti cupcakes!  Between lack of time and patience we ended up special ordering a smash cake for Gryffin’s birthday.  However, I did end up making cupcakes for everyone else and they were delicious!

Current Obsession

Oriental Trading Company!  I don’t actually think I can say it’s an obesession, but we had been planning Gryffin’s 1st birthday party and they had the exact party supplies and decorations we were looking for at amazing prices!  We originally were looking on Amazon but I am so glad I remembered Oriental Trading Co. because they beat Amazon’s prices.  I got the box in the mail and the quality of the products exceeded my expectations.

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I hope you all had a wonderful and happy Easter!

Much Love,

Cami

February Recap & 2018 Goals

/ Cami Grace / Leave a comment

Hello again!  Here I am with my recap of last month!  I know we’re halfway through March, but better late than never!  Seems to be the story of my life lately.  I honestly can’t tell if the month of February went fast or slow??  Gryffin started his new daycare – talk about a challenging transition.  The first day was awful!  I don’t think he’s ever cried so hard before, which of course made me cry too (I at least made it out the door before I lost it).  It seriously took everything in us not to turn around and go back to get him.  Honestly, it felt like I was dropping him off for the first time.  My husband and I both were contemplating just quitting our jobs right then and there.  Thankfully it only took about a week for Gryffin to adjust at Julie’s daycare.  We love Julie.  We loved her from the first day we met her.  She runs an in-home daycare with 2 other ladies.  There are 12 kids total (including her after school kids) and there are 2 other babies Gryffin’s age.  It’s evident that she loves each of her kids and she genuinely cares about the parents as well.

Mikey and I also celebrated our 10 year anniversary, which brings me to the goals for this month!

Goals 

Since Valentines Day was just 2 days before our anniversary I thought it would be fun to celebrate both days this year instead of just our anniversary.  Also, with a baby, our date nights have been almost none-existent and I knew we needed to do something about that.  So here is what I planned for this month.

~ February: Be – Loving 

  1. Celebrate Valentines Day & our anniversary
  2. Reestablish date night

Book of the month: The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman

* Here is the breakdown and details on how I did.

1.1 – Celebrate Valentines Day  Fail.  Valentines day landed in the middle of the week and it was Gryffin’s first week at daycare, which meant Gryffin wasn’t sleeping well at all and I was beyond exhausted. Thankfully Mikey was in agreement that we would skip it this year.  There’s always next year and we felt that our anniversary was more important.

Mikey still ended up surprising me with a stuffed animal though, so I will be making up for that!

Solution: Try again next year!  Also, since I didn’t get him anything for V day I plan on getting him an Easter basket this year – which we’ve never done in the past for each other. 

1.2 – Celebrate Our Anniversary  Thankfully we planned for this in advance…sort of.  Our anniversary was on Saturday, February 16th, and I took the Friday before off of work so we could have a day together while Gryffin was at daycare.  In addition, we also planned for my brother to watch Gryffin for the afternoon on Saturday so we could go see a movie.

So what was our big plan for Friday?  We went got our taxes done (insert hand to forehead emoji here)!  Honestly, it was just so much easier to do without a squirmy 10 month old.  We then went to HuHot Mongolian Grill, which is one of our favorite restaurants and then just came home and relaxed.  We were seriously laughing though, because over the years we talked about going on an exotic trip or doing something super fun for our 10 year anniversary.  Funny how having a baby changes things, but we wouldn’t trade it for the world!  We hadn’t had a relax together day with just the two of us since we had Gryffin, so honestly, even with getting our taxes done it was glorious.

What about Saturday?  Gryffin ended up getting sick with a cold so we rescheduled our movie date.

2- Reestablish Date night  We ended up going on two dates within a month, which is just so rare.  The first one was the Friday we got to spend together to celebrate our anniversary.  The second was when my brother watched Gryffin a different weekend.  The original plan was to go to a movie, but since we couldn’t agree on a movie we went furniture shopping instead and then out to dinner at Mackenzie River Grill.  We both love to shop and eat so we were happy.

The hard part about date nights at this stage in life is that it’s just not really possible for us to have a date night very often.  We’ll go out just the two of us when we’re able, but we don’t have family or friends that are available very often, so that makes it difficult.  For now our date nights look like an evening at home, eating brownies on the couch and playing Mario Kart, and we’re ok with that.

Solution: Keep doing what we can.

Book of the Month: The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman.  To be honest, this book hadn’t been at the top of my to-read list.  I had heard about the 5 love languages and I knew what they were, so I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend the time reading something I thought seemed pretty straight forward to me.  After searching for what I should read this month I went ahead and downloaded the audio book anyway. Guys, I am so glad I listened to this book.  Yes, I did know what the 5 love languages were, but I didn’t fully understand them until I read this book.  I ended up learning more about myself as well.  One thing I really appreciated about this book was that there was no threat of “you better do this or else…” type of thing.  I ended this book knowing what ways I can improve my marriage and help Mikey feel more loved.  I’m sorry if that sounds ridiculously cheesy – it’s just that it felt like a lightbulb had gone off and I finally understood.

Stay tuned for the March update!  Let’s just say spring cleaning is *suppose* to be happening around here!  :)

Hope you all had a wonderful February and are having a great March!

January Recap & 2018 Goals

/ Cami Grace / Leave a comment

Here we are half way through February and, wow, that happened fast!   I meant to post this a couple weeks ago – oops!  I felt like my little family spent almost the whole month of January being sick.  Poor little Gryffin had it the worst.  He had a stomach bug, followed immediately but a horrible cold which included a fever that lasted off and on for two weeks.  Thankfully that bug is behind us but I can’t wait for this cold and flu season to be over with.

In addition to the cold virus going around and dealing with the stress from that, we also found out that the in-home daycare we had been taking Gryffin to since he was 8 weeks old was closing.  I’m not going to lie, I’ve been pretty emotional about it.  For as much as I hate having to work full time, Amber had been his second mom and having to find someone new was rather heart wrenching.  We have completely been blessed having someone we could trust.  After a few weeks of searching we finally found a place that has been a good fit (more on this in the next update).

So now with that recap I will dive into how I did with my goals.

Goals 

In a previous post I had written what I hoped to accomplish for the whole year.  After having a baby I’ve had to intentionally let some things go (such as a clean house at all times) and other things seemed to have fallen by the wayside, but now I’m to the point where I’m ready to start getting a handle on things.  The month of January I wanted to focus on getting back into my Bible, praying, and being rooted in Christ.

Here is what I had planned for the month of January and the details of how I did.

Be – Rooted 

  1. Go through a devotional  
  2. Start a prayer journal 
  3. Go to church/listen to sermons every Sunday 

Book of the month:  Of Mess and Moxie:Wrangling Delight Out of This Wild and Glorious Life by Jen Hatmker

* Here is the breakdown and details on how I did.

1 – Go through a devotional  I’m giving myself a half point here.  I started off reading through The Purpose Driven Life.  It was really good and I enjoyed it.  The downfall is that the chapters were longer than I could handle most nights.  By the time I get my baby to bed I’m exhausted and struggle not to fall asleep on the couch.  This turned into a fail by the second week.

Solution: Getting the audio book from our library.  This isn’t the most ideal solution since I only have the audio book for a certain amount of days, but it’s still better than nothing, especially since I really did want to finish it.

Since my main goal was to try and get into reading my Bible more I started going through reading plans with the You Version Bible app.  These plans tend to be short and I can usually manage to read the day’s section when I crawl into bed.

2 – Start a prayer journal  For the same reason as above, I am just way too tired at the end of the day to keep up with it.  As for the weekends, I still find myself scrambling for time.

Solution: Bag it.  I figured it would be best for baby steps so for now I will stick with Bible reading plans.

3 – Go to church/listen to sermons every Sunday  Guys – this one is so embarrassing for me to admit…we listened to only one sermon the whole month.  I have my excuses, but it just doesn’t cut it.

Solution:  Really make it a priority and schedule it.  My husband works graveyard which is why it’s so difficult to actually go to church.  We don’t have an excuse to not listen to a sermon online.  I plan to actually schedule it like we would a doctor’s appointment and make it happen.

Book of the Month: Of Mess and Moxie by Jen Hatmaker.  Ooooh my gosh you guys!  I loved this book!  I found it by a complete accident while browsing through audio books through our libaray – I saw it and though it looked like it might be good.  I started in on my Monday morning commute and got to work feeling like I just had the best pep talk for my day…no…for my life.  Jen Hatmaker is hilarious and sooo much of what she said was incredibly relate-able.  I felt like every day I was hanging out and listening to a friend.  I plan to buy a hard copy of this book.  I highly recommend everyone listens to the audio book at least once though.  She reads the book herself and makes it that much more enjoyable (this is the one and only book, so far, that I give this recommendation to).

My hope is that everything I work on will carry on into the next month as I add to my goals.  I don’t expect to be successful all the time, but I am hoping that the more I try and the more I work on it that eventually it will stick and become just part of my routine.

Hope you all are having a wonderful February.  Stay tuned for the next update!

 

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Hello 2018!

/ Cami Grace / Leave a comment

Wow!  What a crazy year 2017 was!  Not only did we have a baby but we also bought our first home!  There was so much packed into the last 12 months there’s just no way I can do a full recap.  With having a baby, working full time, and moving I wasn’t able to keep up with my blog very much (as you can tell), but here we are in 2018 and I’m back!

Looking ahead I’m excited to see what’s in store for the new year.  I’m most excited to watch Gryffin grow up and see more of his personality develop.  I’m also looking forward to working on some personal goals.  I have laid out quite the task for myself.  Instead of focusing on just one goal throughout the year, I am taking on my own version of The Happiness Project and plan to work on a different goal each month.

But before I jump into my New Year’s plan, here’s what you can expect from my blog.

~ Currently posts.  I have always enjoyed writing them and I also enjoy going back to read through them too.

~ Baby Posts.  I don’t want to overload the blog with baby posts, but at the very least I would like to finish up a few.  I will have a baby shower post coming soon and also my labor and delivery story.  I have Gryffin’s monthly updates written out that I never actually posted on my blog (let me know in the comments if you enjoy reading these).  He’s already 9 months so I basically would post them until we were all caught up.  You might find a “What’s In My Diaper (or work) Bag” and a bedtime/morning routine in there as well.

~ Monthly Goals.  I would like to do a recap at the end of each month regarding my monthly goals.  I will share what I did at the end of month and if I felt like I was successful or not.

So here’s my outline for 2018.  In addition to the list below I plan to also choose one book each month regarding the topic for that month.  This is just a rough draft, but I think it’s a good start!

~ January: Be – Rooted 

  1. Go through a devotional
  2. Start a prayer journal
  3. Go to church/listen to sermons every Sunday

~ February: Be – Loving 

  1. Celebrate Valentines Day & our (10 year!) anniversary
  2. Reestablish date night

~ March: Be – Organized

  1. Pick it up, put it back
  2. Set up guest room
  3. Organize laundry room
  4. Set up rec room

~ April: Be – Prepared

  1. Go to bed at 10:30 every night (at the latest!)
  2. Bedtime Routine
  3. Morning Routine

~ May: Be – Mindful 

  1. Live in the moment

~ June: Be – Fun  

  1. Laugh every day
  2. Find fun things to do

~ July: Be – Chic 

  1. Update Wardrobe
  2. Always look presentable (based on the Madame Chic books)
  3. Look in the mirror before leaving the house

~ August: Be – Me 

  1. Read for fun
  2. Enjoy a pamper day
  3. 30 day photography project (if I’m feeling up for this)

~ September: Be – Healthy 

  1. Healthy Recipes
  2. 30 days of Yoga

~ October: Be – Thoughtful 

  1. Go out of my way to help others

~ November: Be – Thankful 

  1. List of things I’m thankful for every day

~ December:  Be – Generous 

  1. Give of my time
  2. Donate

I do plan on giving myself extra grace because I am so busy and I need to make sure my priorities are straight, but it’s nice to have a variety of goals and something to look forward to.

I hope your year is off to a great start!  Feel free to share your goals and/or what you’re looking forward to this year!

Much love,

Cami