February Goal Checkup

Remember those New Year's Goals we made?  We started working on them in January.  Now it's time for our February checkup.

Personal Growth
Spiritual - After reading about this idea on several of my favorite blogger's sites, I decided to try an email accountability group.  Two other wonderful, Christian women and myself are now electronically accountable to each other.  The first one of us to do our quiet time emails the other two.  Then when the others finish, they just "reply to all" to that message.  It's working out very well.  We are able to encourage each other, tell each other some new insights we are learning as well as the main goal - to remind each other to do our quiet time.  So, with this new method in place (and God's guidance leading me to it), I'm able to say I have been very consistent with my quiet time over the last 2 weeks.

Blog - I have kept up with my blog schedule for the most part.  I have also been learning a lot about monetizing a blog (and have been sharing it with you).  I'm starting to implement some things I've learned but it is coming slowly.  I have also been trying to blog on the weekends and schedule my posts ahead.  Sometimes it works, sometimes not.

Mommy jobs - I'm coming up with a chore chart.  I haven't got it all worked out yet.  I'll let you know when I do.

Physical Health
Exercise - I'm 3 weeks into my 8 week challenge for the art of weightlifting website.  I'm eating much better, thanks to Taylor's guidance.  I've also gone 3 weeks doing 3 weight workouts a week (biggie for me).  Only 5 weeks to go!!

Food - We still haven't added a new veggie. According to our goals, we have until the end of Feb to do this.  Any suggestions??

Marriage and Family Life
Marriage - We did not have a date night this month, so we are overdue.  However, we did have 2 date lunches and my wonderful hubby took today off to be with me at a doctor's appointment.  So we did get to spend some good time together.

Family - We are still having our nightly Bible readings with our kids as well as devotionals in the mornings before school.  We had one family night in January where we watched the Lion King.  Our poor, deprived kids had never seen it. (I'm trying to show them all the good classic Disney movies before our big trip to Orlando in May.)  We also had our monthly dates with the kids.  Tim and Julie had a date sponsored by the letter M: Mexican, milkshakes and movie.  David and I weren't so alliterate, but more economical: pizza, ice cream (free with coupon), games at home.  For Feb, I'll be taking Julie out and Tim will get David.

Children
We are still working eating more veggies.  David is doing pretty well with reading. He reads us 3-4 stories a week.  We'd like to get this up to 1 story a day, just so he feels more confident in his reading. Julie has been much better behavior-wise, whether that is just because we are phenomenal parents or because it was a phase that has passed, I don't know.  I just hope it doesn't come back.

Financial
- Fully save for Disney trip - DONE!!!
- Begin saving for Disney cruise - We're on our way and the first $200 has been saved! Yay!
- Fully fund our Roth IRA - We've calculated out how much we need to save from each paycheck (every 2 weeks) to fully fund our accounts.  So far, we've been able to save that amount every time but once.  I feel confident we can "recover" that amount we missed and get them funded by the end of the year.
- Up our amount in our Emergency Fund - Well...unfortunately with a refrigerator repair, and a plumbing repair, we did have to spend some out of our Fund.  But we have already reimbursed it.  And we have a plan for adding the rest of the amount we need.  That should be complete by the end of March.
- Give to missions through our church - This is ongoing.  We are taking up a special offering on Sunday and we plan on giving to that.

Thanks for listening.  And, please, if you have any great veggie recipes that you'd like to share, I'm all ears!!