Wednesday Snap Shot

Good morning! And happy first blog post of 2019!

It's been a whirlwind week for us. We drove north to see my in-laws and my sister in law. Tobin's parents live way up north in Washington state. Then we headed south into California to see a few of our children and grandchildren. In all we drove 1750 miles in 5 days. Now we're home and have spent some time recovering :). It was so good to see our family.

My little grandson's are growing like crazy. It's hard not to be closer to them and see them more often than we do. But we try to see them as often as we are able to.

One concern we had with making the drive into California was going over the Siskiyou Mountain Pass. It can be a challenging pass in the winter. I was watching the weather and saw there were no storms predicted for when we'd be crossing so we went for it. It was a beautiful day and the scenery was gorgeous, as usual. Mount Shasta is always breathtaking..

After spending a few days visiting we headed home and made it back in record time. It's typically a 10 to 11 hour drive for us. We tend to stop often which can drag it out. We kept our stops to a minimum and made it home just under 10 hours.

Now it's time to focus on life again. Look forward and work on goals and plans. I don't do resolutions, I make goals for things I want to accomplish. And I make a plan on how I'm going to accomplish my goals. I keep things like this written down in my notebook so I can make sure to keep myself on track.

With all that driving I had time to focus on my One Word for this year. At first I wanted something that signified a fresh start. Like 'reboot' but that wasn't feeling right to me. Finally I picked my word: Peace. Last year, as you know if you read this blog regularly, was a difficult year. It was anything but peaceful as I dealt with several problems, hospital stays, double vision, endless doctor's appointments and so on. Now that I'm past all that I'd like to focus on peace in my life, not chaos.

Goals

Today's goals are rather simple:

~Grocery shopping – I need to restock us with fresh fruits and veggies and a couple other things. I'm only needing to stop at Winco so it should be a quick trip to town

~Finish up the laundry from our trip

~Figure out and make dinner – this was not a week that I could easily do a menu plan.

For the Love of Books!

It's time to start a new book. I'm going to be reading My Antonia by Willa Carter. This was a book suggestion given to me by a couple different people commenting here on the blog. I'm looking forward to starting it.

Projects

Now for the moment I've been waiting for. I get to share my crochet project that I did for my grandchildren. I made 14 hats – one for each grandchild....

I had such fun doing this! I was able to get a picture of each of them wearing their new hats....

I don't have any new projects lined up yet. A lot of things I'd like to start doing. I need to make soap. I made 2 batches of soap about a week or so before Christmas and ended up giving most of those bars away. That was the goal when I made it, so now I need to restock our supply soon. We have a few bars left so I'm not in crisis mode :).

I have a serger sewing machine that needs some repair. I'd like to take it in to the sewing store and get it fixed. It's been a long time since I used it and I'd like to think about making some leggings and sweats for my grandchildren.

I have more things I'd like to do, but will be taking it one step at a time. :)

Frugal Living Practices

I'm thinking about my grocery budget and any changes I can make, try and reduce costs, if possible. Well it's always possible, ha, ha.. When we had 8 children at home it was absolutely necessary to keep the budget under control. Now that our budget is not as tight, it's harder to stay disciplined. I think I need some goals and plans for the saved money to give me more motivation.

Fitness and Health

The holidays and all that driving did nothing to help me with my fitness goals. It's ok, and to be expected but now that January is here it's time for me to get serious again. My goals are simple enough:

~Walk 10,000 (or more) steps 5 to 6 days a week

~Eat a 75% plant based diet – focusing on fresh fruits, veggies and whole grains

With the walking I'll continue to challenge myself with more and more hills. Walking up and down hills is so good for the muscles. I started this back in November and could see results all most immediately.

View from my Deck

What a beautiful day out! The sun is shining brightly. It's 33 degrees out right now and I when I woke up this morning there was frost covering the grass. That melted as the sun rose. So far this winter has been very mild, we'll see if that continues. 

 

Today's weather: High: 46 Low: 38

That is all for this week!