How is your summer going so far? After I whined my way through winter (ha!), I’m loving being back in my element with hot weather, long days, and just the right amount of nostalgia winding through my heart and mind each day, reminding me that the opportunity to create sweet summer memories for Charlie starts now. We’re also well into Ordinary Time in the liturgical year, so I’ve been going back to what I wrote about this season for Blessed Is She a few months ago. You can read the whole post here if you’d like, but the sentiment that I feel especially strongly about is this one: “We are called to conversion daily—not just in seasons of spiritual highs—but in the everyday, the mundane, the busy…the ordinary.” Learning about and celebrating feast days has been instrumental to my ongoing conversion this year, as you know, so in this and future goal posts, you’ll find a short list of feast days that are coming up! If you ever celebrate any of them or have traditions surrounding them, I’d love to hear :)
(Note: this year, I’m setting a monthly goal per yearly goal!)
June Goals
1. Write thank you letters to our beloved priests and go to confession with one of them
2. Make much-belated dentist appointments for all three of us and map out appointments for the rest of the year (Ugh, this gets a little complicated without family nearby–it seems so silly to hire a babysitter so I can go to the dentist! Mamas, what do you do for appointments?)
3. Clean out our guest room
4. Celebrate Dave well on Father’s Day!
5. Write graduation letters and get gifts together for my sister and niece
6. Keep up with half-marathon training plan
7. Write guest posts for Blessed Is She and Spoken Bride
8. Decide on some new action steps for our financial goals in the second half of the year
9. Finish Brideshead Revisited (It is so good and I am taking forever to read it, but I’m close!)
July Goals
1. Private faith-related goal this month–say a prayer for me as I work on a special project!
2. Make dentist appointments for all three of us and map out appointments for the rest of the year
3. Make a final decision on our porch redecoration and plan accordingly for end-of-summer sales
4. Plan fun road trip activities with Dave ahead of time so we use our upcoming 22 hours in the car well (Leave ideas for us in the comments, please! :))
5. Celebrate one sister’s birthday and one sister’s bachelorette weekend from afar
6. Choose a yoga class at the gym and go weekly
7. Write a guest post for Spoken Bride
8. Come in under our budget for the month, especially for our Charlie and “everything else” categories (our two toughest to stick to recently)
9. Finish Brideshead Revisited and read Parenting with Love and Logic (as per Emily’s recommendation)
Upcoming feast days to celebrate:
July 4: Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati
July 6: St. Maria Goretti
July 12: Sts. Zelie and Louis Martin
July 16: Our Lady of Mount Carmel
July 22: St. Mary Magdalene
July 26: Sts. Joachim and Anne
I have on my list for this month Love and Logic Magic – the birth to six years version of Parenting with Love and Logic that someone recommended on my post! Hope you love it!!
Oh excellent! Maybe I’ll get that one instead since I missed my requested hold at the library for Parenting with Love and Logic…whoops :)
Wish you could come to my bachelorette!
Celebrating from afar!! xoxoxo
I’m glad you added the link to Emily’s post! I am in need of some parenting guidance right now so I promptly went to the library to pick up the books they did have and requested the ones that were checked out! So, thank you!
Also, I hate the dentist but know if I fall off the six month rotation I will never go back…
Also, when I go to the dentist I take the very first appointment of the day. That way, my husband will keep the baby while I go to my appointment and will then he will go into work. Maybe Dave could hang with Charlie and skip his lunch break that day?
I did just get my hair cut on a Friday during Charlie’s nap (while Dave was working from home) and that worked out well! I have never seen Dave not work through lunch, unfortunately, but nap time might be a winner :)
Oh, I’m so glad to hear that! Emily always has amazing book recommendations :)
Wow, 22 hours in the car! That is a loooong time. May I ask where you are headed? For road trips, or in my case more often long trips on the train, I love audiobooks because I can’t read or write while in a moving vehicle. However, audiobooks also make me fall asleep really quickly and so I spent most of the time sleeping :D When I have a travel buddy my favorite part about a long road trip are the many conversations we get to share. I don’t know what it is with cars but growing up being in the car (no matter if it was 20 minutes or two hours) I would always have the best conversations with my Mom talking about all things life. One of my favorite childhood memories :-)
We are driving to and back from the mountains in upstate New York, where we’ll be spending a week with Dave’s family! It’s about 11 hours each way. I definitely think we’ll need to err on the side of conversation because we’ll be driving a good portion of it at night so Charlie can sleep in the car. Audiobooks might be risky! :)
Ah yes, having a sleeping child with you definitley means less talking in the car. I hope your trip up there was successful and I wish you the best time on vacation :-)
Not a mom but I do try to schedule all of my appointments on the same day so instead of having to take multiple mornings off work I just take one day.. it’s hard to get started but if you schedule them far enough ahead, it is easier to work out! Then you could just hire a sitter for a whole day and you are done with your appointments!
That is a very interesting thought! I may have to see if I can swing that :)
My suggestions for dentist appointments-
Go when family will be in town to watch Charlie
Find a mom friend and go to the dentist together. You can have back to back appointments and watch each other’s kids in the waiting room or find a mom friend who also needs to go to the dentist and swap childcare (you watch her child one day while she goes, she watches Charlie another day while you go)