2017 Goals

Throwing out all the rules this year and just setting however many goals we want!

Mine:

*Read 24 books including 12 from Modern Mrs. Darcy's 2017 Reading Challenge (the fun one). I convinced my sister to do it with me and I've already picked out books for most of the categories!

*Finish reading Jesus the Christ and 21 Days Closer to Christ.

*Run a marathon.

*Get caught up on my blog/budget and stay caught up!

*Finish 3 quilts and 2 puzzles.

Rog's:

*Ride his bike to KPB (the Kaiser in downtown Portland where he works a few days a week) at least once (but hopefully more).
*Learn something new (possibly Spanish or the guitar).
*Get halfway through the Old Testament.

Corbyn's:

*Learn to tie his shoes.
*Run a marathon.

Peyton's:

*Learn to read.
*Run a marathon.

Logan's:

*Learn to talk in sentences.
*Learn to ride a tricycle.

Our family goals:

*Go on at least two hikes a month May through September.
*Go camping at least once.
*Plant a garden.
*Make our wills.
*Add clothing/supplies to our 72 hour kits.
*Go to the temple and go on a date at least once a month.

2017 is gonna be great!

22 Months

It's hard to believe Logan is almost 2! Corbyn was 22 (and a half) months old when Peyton was born. I can't even imagine having another baby (yet) and I'm glad that Logan can stay my baby for awhile longer!

Logan at 22 months:

*Loves to set the table. He gets so excited when I pull out the plates and ask him to set the table. He knows where the big plates go and where the little plates go on the table as well as the forks and cups.

*Loves to "help" cook. Unfortunately he's very much at the age where his "help" is more a hinderance. Sometimes I have to distract him by turning on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (when he really can't "help" with something), but I try to be patient and let him "help" me when I can.

*Will only watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. If I try to get him to watch something else, even another Mickey show, he gets so mad! I've started checking out Mickey Mouse Clubhouse DVDs from the library because I get sick of listening to the same 3 episodes (that are on the Disney Junior app) over and over again!

*Calls for "toodles" when he's watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. 

*Loves Pluto and gets excited when he sees his Pluto toy or anything with Pluto on it.

*Loves to turn the lights on/off and open/close the garage door. 

*Actually enjoys sitting and listening to books now. His favorite book is Snuggle Puppy by Sandra Boynton. He picks it almost every time we read books and says the "Ooooh" part with us.

*Is starting to make a lot of animal noises.

*Learned how to say "Ho ho ho!" for Christmas.

*Knows where we store his bibs and will often put his dirty bib away when he's done eating.

We saw this huge display advertising the Logan movie coming out soon when we saw Moana and had to get a picture. 

He thought this fire truck cart was the coolest thing ever.

Playing at the airport while we were waiting for our flight to Denver for Christmas.

He puts up with a lot of love from his sister.

Still his favorite person!

Logan was Rog's helper when they were playing hide-and-seek with the kids. He was so cute trying to cover his eyes.

Taylor and Martha recently got a dog and brought it with them to Colorado for Christmas. Logan was in dog heaven.

He loved unwrapping presents this year.

Sometimes you're just too tired to get ready for bed.

We came home from something after his bedtime and he would have fallen asleep like this (mid diaper change) if we had let him.

He has had one cold after another and his nose has been a faucet. Also, he loves putting all of our Disney Tsum Tsum bracelets on.

He wanted to make sure I got a good workout in.

He wasn't going to get to go sledding with dad, Corbyn, and Peyton because he's lacking a few snow essentials. Luckily I realized Peyton had gloves and snow pants from when she was this age.

One of his favorite things to do.

He was playing with a Lego Duplo train (that he made himself) at dinner and was making the cutest face with each cho-choo.

He had his first trip to the dentist and did great if I held him.

Finished Room Friday: Kitchen

Welcome to my favorite room in our house. When compared to our townhouse, this room gets the award for most-improved room. Hello counter space! Hello spacious cupboards! Rog says we bought this house because of the kitchen and while I say we bought this house because it was the best house available close to our price range the weekend we came to buy a house, the kitchen definitely didn't hurt!

I love having these cupboards with windows to display our nice dishes. I bought a special rack to display our mosaic dinner plates upright. We registered for those plates when we got married and they were the start of our mint green kitchen. Only seems fitting that they be displayed in a place of prominence. 

I took the shelves out of the two bottom cupboards on both sides and put my can organizers in them. I haven't seen case lot sales here like they had in Utah and my supply is getting very low. I need to just start stocking up on cans when Winco has them at good prices. I'm just used to being able to do it all at one time.

We put a key holder on the inside of the top left cupboard door. It's nice to have a set place for them.

I made this schedule and to buy list years ago and it has been a great way for me to stay organized. I just write on the glass with a dry erase marker.

The Eiffel tower is from when I had a French kitchen theme. I still have a few French things in here, it's just a little more subtle now. I do miss my Bon Appetite vinyl and I may make one someday. And that gray canister is from IKEA. 

We had to have a mint wall and it didn't come easy. We thought we had brought a can of our mint paint from our townhouse, but when I went to use it I discovered it was one of the rejects we tested before we found the perfect color. I don't know why we kept it all those years! We had left the color swatch for the new owners of our townhouse just in case they liked the color and needed to buy more to do touchups or whatever. We had them text us a picture of it and then we went all over trying to figure out where we bought it. We thought for sure we bought it at Walmart or Home Depot, but turns out we got it at Lowe's. This picture does not do the wall justice. In person, it's the perfect green! 

I got that plate holder from Rod Works when we first moved into our townhouse and I still love changing the plates out each month. Kitchen printables from here.

This is my first time having a gas stove/oven and I like how it cooks. I don't love cleaning under the grates, however.

I've never regretted buying a mint mixer. 

This is actually a greeting card from Our Best Bites' shop. It's the perfect green and goes so well with those kitchen printables.

This bakery breadboard is from the Wood Connection. (Can't have a room without something from there, right?!) I cut out the vinyl to make it before December, but just finished it and I'm loving how it turned out.

Oh how I love having a Lazy Susan in that bottom corner cabinet. Whoever came up with those is a genius!

More canisters from IKEA. They came in a set of two. I bought the green ones when we first moved here and then last time I was at IKEA (in November) I saw that they had them in gray. It was just too perfect! Also I had to have a Little Moondance print in here. 

I only had room for a flour and sugar container in our townhouse. I'm basically in heaven having room for all the containers I want here. Rice, flour, wheat flour, sugar, powdered sugar, brown sugar, and salt. Someday I might cut out vinyl for these and I might do it in French like I did before, but we'll see. I'm also in heaven having room for my Blendtec to be out on the counter at all times. It was basically the biggest pain having to get it out nearly every morning in our townhouse.

It took us forever to decide what we wanted to do for window coverings here. We just decided we're going to do roller shades for this window and a few other windows scattered throughout the house that we haven't covered yet. We have a hot date planned to order them Saturday night, but I didn't want to wait for them to post about this room. I'll post an update when we get them hung up. 

The plants in the window are fake ones from IKEA and I love them. I love how the vases are all slightly different, but matching and I love that they are fake. Lol. Because real ones would never look that good!

Mint green flowers because I basically buy anything mint that I see. I made that menu years ago and love it still.

These magnets are on the side of my fridge and they make me so happy. Each picture was taken when they were each about 18 months old (give or take a month or two) and they all look like they could be the same kid - especially Corbyn (on top) and Logan (on bottom).

This spice drawer is basically the best thing ever. I had more drawers than I knew what to do with, so I ordered a couple spice organizers on Amazon and totally lucked out that they fit just perfectly in there. Any bigger at all and they would have been too big.

This is kind of random, but I thought I'd share how I store a few things since this has been working so well for me. These huge containers were my Grandma Ford's and I took them when we were going through her house not really knowing what I'd use them for. I used to store my sprinkles on the top shelf of a cupboard and it was so hard to keep them organized. When I was unpacking here I discovered I could fit almost all my sprinkles in one container and it's been a game changer. And having a huge container to fit all my cookie cutters has been amazing. Finally I learned from Mel that Mason jars are perfect for storing muffin liners.  

We're short people and our cupboards are tall, so this stool from IKEA gets used all the time.

I first saw stools like this on Sara from Our Best Bites' Instagram and I thought if I ever have a counter, I want stools like that in mint! Dreams come true, people! Ours came from Target, but similar stools are sold at many stores in many colors.

And that's our kitchen!

Now see that fireplace up there? See those empty nooks on either side of the fireplace? Roger is working with his Uncle Ron whenever he can to build cabinets for those nooks and they are going to be awesome, but they are also not going to be done for awhile. 

Also, I'm working hard on my craft room, but I can tell you right now I'm not going to be done by next Friday, so since the living room and craft room are the only two rooms left for me to post about, I'm going to have to take a few weeks off from Finished Room Friday posts. But don't worry, not from all posts since I'm on a mission to get caught up! 

Thanks for sticking with me through these Finished Room Friday posts! I really enjoy doing them and it has given me great motivation to get things finished.

 

2016 Goals

Here is a review of our 2016 goals.

Mine:

1. Read 24 books including 12 from Modern Mrs. Darcy's 2016 Reading Challenge. I read 25 books and read books from 9 of the 12 categories in the reading challenge. (See Fourth Quarter Reading.)

2. Run Ragnar So Cal. Done! And I'm dying to do another!

3. Spend time each Sunday studying the gospel in addition to my normal scripture study. I was doing well with this until about April and then life just got crazy and I never got back into the routine of doing it.

4. Go through our house as we pack and not move anything we don't need and/or love. I actually did a really good job at this. I did end up getting rid of a few things while I was unpacking and decorating, but I got rid of almost all of the stuff we didn't need/didn't love before we moved.

I was also going to focus on two words for the year, maintain and faith. Clearly I did a terrible job with the first word, maintain. I am so behind here on my blog and with our budget. 2017 is going to be my year to get caught up and then stay caught up! I did a much better job with the second word, faith. I am in a much better place mentally than where I was as 2016 was starting. 

Rog's:

1. Graduate with his MBA and MHA. Done.

2. Run Ragnar So Cal. Done.

3. Find a house in Oregon. Done. 

4. Read 4 fiction books. He read The Martian, The Count of Monte Cristo, Harry Potter and The Cursed Child, and most of A Christmas Carol (finished in 2017). Clearly he was very concerned about this goal because I asked him about it a few nights ago and he couldn't think of a single book he read. 

Corbyn's: 

1. Learn to count to 100. Done. And he also made great progress in reading.

2. Make new friends in Oregon. Yes! He really lucked out that there are two neighbor boys who live very close to us that are just a little younger than him (both in Kindergarten). Both of Sebastian's parents work, so he attends day care during the week, but they play most Saturdays. Emery rides the bus with him and they play almost every day after school. And they happened to both be Iron Man for Halloween!

He's also become friends with Kingston and Chayse Yates. They are in our ward and don't live too far from us. Kingston is in 2nd grade and Chayse is in Kindergarten, but he is just a few months younger than Corbyn and is in his class at church.

3. Learn to catch a baseball. Baseball didn't work out this year. It didn't start until the end of May in Utah, so he would have missed way too much for us to justify signing him up. And we were too late to sign him up here in Oregon. But he did play spring soccer in Utah and fall soccer in Oregon and made some improvement. We think baseball is more his kind of sport and we're excited for him to try it this year.

4. Learn to tie his own shoes. I forgot we made this goal for him and he didn't get shoes with shoelaces until the very end of the year. We're still working on it, but are confident he'll get it this year.

Peyton's:

1. Learn to write her name. Done! So grateful for her awesome (free!) preschool at Rees Elementary.

2. Make new friends in Oregon. Unfortunately Peyton wasn't so lucky in the friend department. It's almost all boys where we live! Emery does have a sister, Kinley, who is 8 months younger than Peyton. They get along well enough. There are a couple girls her age in our ward, but they do not live close and it's a bit of a chore to set up play dates with them. Fortunately, Peyton doesn't seem to mind playing with Corbyn and the boys most of the time.

3. Learn to sleep in her own bed all night. She goes in spurts. She'll sleep in her own bed for awhile and then revert back to coming into our bed for awhile.

4. Learn to ride her bike without training wheels. Done!

Logan's:

1. Learn to sleep through the night. Done!

2. Learn to walk. Done! Seems like so long ago. It's crazy to think a year ago he wasn't walking!

3. Go to nursery without a fight. He had a hard time at first, but he loves it now.

4. Learn to talk. (At least a few words.) Done. Although we're hoping for a lot more words in 2017! And sentences too! 

Our family goals:

1. Make our wills. We didn't get this done, but we set aside some money and are going to finally do it in 2017!

2. Add clothing/supplies to our 72 hour kits. Nope. Another one we're going to have to knock off in 2017.

3. Plant a garden. We would have had to get on this right away when we moved here and that didn't happen, but I have big plans for a garden in 2017!

4. Go to the temple and go on a date once a month. Finally one I can say we did! We might have missed a month or two on one or the other, but we did pretty well considering this got a whole lot more difficult when we moved away from family.

We did pretty well with our individual goals, but bombed our family goals. Moving and getting settled in here took pretty much all our energy this year.