February Goals- Update

New Years Goals that will be included monthly:

1. Write in a journal every day: I am still writing in my journal and still fighting the temptation to go through and rewrite it. It's a really odd thing to be obsessive about since no one is reading my journal and not even I am going back through and reading past entries. I may at some point though and I think that's what bothers me. There are entries that I wrote so fast I can't even figure out what it says. I really am regretting not taking my time to write neatly. I even knew at the time that it would be something that would end up bothering me and yet I still did it. What an odd thing to be complainy about.
2. Take at least one picture a day: I need to get better about uploading the pictures daily so that I'm not sitting here trying to upload a bunch of pictures to the blog and then trying to figure out formatting all in one day. It's annoying and irritating. I got the big camera out on a couple of occasions and really enjoyed taking pictures of the kids and am looking forward to printing them out and framing them. We don't have a lot of wall space, so I will have to think of something creative to do. I am spending a lot of time working on other projects, so it's been a lot easier to just take pictures using my phone. I am looking into prompts for March to try to spark some creativity because I am pretty disappointed with the photo quality for this month. I know I can do better.
3. Run and/or walk 105 miles: It really doesn't feel like much of a challenge when you are enjoying it so much.. Looking back in my mileage log I only made it over 100 miles in February once and that was in 2012 (and I only went over by 0.92 miles). This year I am definitely more focused and ready to accomplish my goal of 1250 miles in one year (and actually on pace to go well over that). I finished the month at 120.77 miles.
4. Run at least one mile every day to continue running streak: Again, another challenge that hasn't been too difficult to keep up with. There is very little that will stop me from completing my goal of 500 days in a row. I've made it this far, there is no way that I am starting over now. Today is day 131.
5. Track on MFP: Most days were not 100% complete, but I did log on and had the best intentions every day to track and I call that a win. It means that I am dedicated to trying to make each day a healthy one. Whether it ends up that way or not is an entirely different story.
6. Read two books: Completed and happy to say that both books were really good. They were both by Nicholas Sparks, so not difficult to get through and of course touched the sappy romantic side. It's amazing how happy I can be in my marriage until I read one of his books and then start to wish my husband was more of the romantic type... But he wouldn't be the man I fell in love with if he was that way and I much prefer his sense of humor anyway.

February Goals:

1. Have at least one child free date night with Patrick:  Patrick and I went out for Valentine's. Although our plans got changed it was still a wonderful, simple evening. We did end up getting dinner at In-N-Out (which was amazing, as always) but the wait at the go kart place was two hours long. Since we were planning on picking Isabel up after our date we decided to postpone the go karts and go out for frozen yogurt instead. It was simply a wonderful evening.
2. Take Isabel bowling: We ended up taking all of the children bowling, including my niece. It was so much fun and I bowled my best game to date (a 182!). I have never bowled so well and was secretly hoping to break 200, but I think I jinxed myself on the tenth frame. It gave me some hope that if I actually put forth some effort to my bucket list goal of bowling a perfect game that I could at some point. Seriously though, before this game my highest score was at or around a 125 if that...
3. Plan Isabel's birthday party:  There are so many exciting things happening with the planning of Isabel's birthday. I can't even begin to explain how excited I am for her birthday to get here already.. I am doing my absolute best to not tell her of my super secret surprise. I've already told quite a few people and want to keep it a secret because she is going to freak out. I think I said this at the halfway point, but I have a feeling that my ideas are going to fall short of my expectations but completely blow her away. There is nothing that brings me more joy than to make her happy.
4. Cook dinner at least once: I'm not sure if I can consider this "making dinner" but I did put together dinner one night by heating up a dream dinners and some veggies. I guess it's better than not being in the kitchen at all? Granted the purpose of this goal was to get me to actually prepare and cook a meal so I don't think I should count this. I did bake some delicious cupcakes though for Valentine's day. The cupcake mix was packaged and I made the frosting from scratch. Strawberry cupcakes with vanilla frosting, except the cupcakes were white and the frosting was pink. It totally threw a couple people off.  
6. Spend less time on my phone: Still a work in progress. I find that there are a lot of things that I do on my phone (like track of MFP, communicate with my accountability buddies, banking, etc) however there are a lot of things that I can spend less time doing (like checking facebook). I have rekindled my love for pinterest as it is helping me piece together some great ideas for Isabel's birthday party.
7. Set up and stick to budget: I set up the budget for February at the beginning of the month and I have really been looking forward to updating it. I really love physically seeing our balances grow in our savings, our balances get smaller with our debts and overall seeing where our money is going each month. I'm sure once we have a few months completed we will be able to look over it all and see what needs to be adjusted (if anything) and continue improving.