How I Did on My 2017 New Year’s Resolutions

Last year, I basically had one resolution and it was to:

Have a daily routine

I’m still tweaking it, but I think it was very successful.  The resolutions were bold and I’ve turned them either green or red based on whether I now do them the majority of the time.

6:30-7:30 am: Get toddler out of bed.  Change him, bring him to my bed and read my scriptures while he jumps on my husband’s head or wakes up everyone else.  (I read my scriptures but not at 6:30 am.  I blog at that time now and my toddler sleeps in.  I read them at night instead)

8 am: Eat healthy breakfast to help lose weight while I read an actual, physical copy of The Wall Street Journal.  After the election and all the fake news, I want to be well-informed with credible news. (I did lose weight but by the end of the year, I had changed my diet to low FODMAP.  Since that is such a strict diet I stopped trying to lose weight and I now weigh a little more than I did from January of 2017.  Even though I didn’t lose weight, I didn’t gain much either so that’s pretty awesome. Not only do I still read the print newspaper every day, I subscribe to The New York Times as well as the Wall Street Journal.  The unintended side effect of reading the print news is I spend less time scrolling Facebook.)

8:30 am: Make lunches and help the kids get off to school.

9 am: Do 15 minutes of yoga.  I try to distract my toddler with TV so he won’t come sit on my head while I do yoga.  It doesn’t always work.  And dad’s left for work by now so mine is the only head he can sit on. (I had even worked my way up to 30 minutes but then Christmas happened and I’m starting over again at 15 minutes.  The toddler loves watching TV now and the morning is the only time he does so I can get my yoga done.)

9:15 am: Pray after I’m done with yoga.  I feel so relaxed and meditative after I do yoga that I felt like it was the perfect time to pray.  (This is a routine I still love doing.)

10-11 am: Do chores.  Depending on the day I will pay bills, put away laundry, go grocery shopping, tidy, run errands, make phone calls, or do the dishes.

11:00 am: Eat lunch and put my toddler down for a nap.

12:00 pm: Shower.

12:30 pm: Read for an hour.  Post to Instagram.  Write a book review.  Whatever I feel like until naptime is over. (I read every day, but it wasn’t quite for an hour – it was more like 20-30 minutes.  I’m going to work on that this year)

2:30 pm: Play with my toddler after he’s woken up from a nap.  Keep phone and TV off and just be present. (I do this after yoga and before lunch instead of after nap time.  He’s gotten older and his nap time has pushed back so it’s easier to play with him before he  naps.)

4 pm: Listen to the kid’s stories when they get home from school and get them a snack. (Sometimes I ask about their day at dinner instead of after school.)

5 pm: Make dinner and tidy the kitchen if it needs it (it always needs it).

6 pm: Eat dinner as a family

6:30 pm: I teach piano lessons, go to scouts or we have family home evening. If it’s Friday it’s my day off!!  I spend 2-3 hours on Friday blogging and relaxing while all the boys have a boys night out and girls are definitely not allowed (I am the only girl in this house).  Aw darn I can’t come lol.  Looks like mom will have to spend some time alone upstairs.  Heck yes I lock the door. ( I did this once or twice.  It was such a huge chunk of time all at once that it was hard to keep doing it.  Plus I would burn out blogging that long.  I enjoy blogging first thing in the morning every day much better.)

8 pm: Nag the kids to get ready for bed.  If I’m not totally exhausted by this point, I try to turn it into a game of who can get ready before mom does?!  I’m usually tired though and just nag them to get their pajamas on and brush their teeth.

8:30 pm: Read to my kids.  We read Harry Potter and then read scriptures and have a family prayer and then do a family cheer afterwards.  The cheer helps them look forward to the prayer :) (My middle son didn’t want to read Harry Potter, so we read My Side of the Mountain.  My oldest still reads Harry Potter with me.  We are on book 5.  I think reading one on one with them helps them calm down at night.  The other gets ready for bed while I’m reading.  No rough housing and things actually get done!)

9 pm: Write in my journal for 20 minutes while I burn a lovely scented candle. (I do my planner at night before bed and there’s not much time left for journaling.  My goal this year is to do my journal on Sundays.)

9:30 pm: Listen to music while I get ready for bed.

10 pm: Read.  I like that I have a back up time to read during the day.  Sometimes nap time gets cut short or there were extra chores I had to do that day and I don’t always get a chance to read in the afternoon. (I still always read before bed but I never make much progress.  I’m always falling asleep after about 10 minutes.  I’m pretty busy all day so it makes sense.)

10:30 pm: Pass out.  Oh I mean go to bed.

The Rest of My Resolutions

These are the resolutions that didn’t fit in my daily routine.

Exercise – I don’t even know where to fit this in.  Maybe some days I could skip chores and go to the gym instead??? Who needs clean laundry anyway!  I found a new app today called Fitstar that has short 15 minute workouts that I will try doing after yoga.  But I’m pretty sure that going to the gym is just plain out. (I ended up doing it at the same time as yoga every other day.  So one day I do yoga, the next day I workout.  I try to do that every single weekday and unless I was sick I pretty much did.)

Start decorating the house – I finished my kitchen last year and I’m excited to finish the rest of the house. (We did what I call extreme home makeover.  We bought new furniture in three different rooms in the house – the loft, the music room, and the living room.  The music room used to be our office but now it just has the piano in there.  The office moved upstairs to the loft.  It’s my goal in 2018 to finish these rooms because they are about 80% done.)

Cleaning schedule for me and the kids and teach the kids more chores – I don’t know if you know this but only one hour of cleaning every day leaves out little things like cleaning the bathrooms, vacuuming, mopping, sweeping, taking out the garbage, and changing the sheets.  Unless I want to spend hours on Saturday doing all that stuff, my kids are going to have to help.  (My husband helped my come up with a card and point system and we do chores as a family every Saturday.  It kind of fell apart at Christmas, but we are going to start doing family chores again.  I’ve taught my kids to take out the trash, clean a bathroom, unload the dishwasher, and change the sheets.)

Finish our yard and get swing set – we still need to plant things, put in a drip system for those plants, and put in garden boxes to grow vegetables and stuff.  (We started a garden and got the swing set in.  We just need to cut out some more grass and put in the trim.)

Go on one-on-one outings with my kids – The hard part has been fitting these in, but our kids love going to the movies or the arcade and getting all the attention from mom or dad. (We tried but there were a lot of months where we skipped it.  It got expensive because all they wanted to do was go to the movies.  We will have to come up with cheaper activities if we want to do this consistently.)

Go on two dates a month – I’m trading teaching piano for babysitting which will make going on dates a lot easier. (We did go on dates, but I still want to try and do dates more often.)

Get out of debt – I had this goal last year and even though we aren’t totally out of debt, we did manage to pay off $5000 which I’m really proud of.  (We refinanced our debt but it will be a couple years even with the low interest before we are debt free except for the house and cars.)

Plan vacations – Hawaii and Harry Potter world are on our bucket list.  The sooner we get out of debt, the sooner we can save to do those things :) (I got to go to Harry Potter world and it was magical. Maybe we will go to Hawaii soon.)

I’m pretty happy with the progress I made.  I didn’t do every single goal, but that’s okay.  I finished more of them than I thought I would.