Welcome to my weekly post I share a peek into our lives, talk about things I'm loving, share links to interesting articles or helpful ideas I've collected throughout the past week, and just talk about whatever is on my heart! 🙂
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As I mentioned, we spent almost all of last week near Mountain Home, Arkansas at Bull Shoals Lake. It’s a family tradition for us all to get together at least once a year at this lake.
The tradition started before Jesse and I were married over 15 years ago and has continued — and now there are 27 of us total (though my brother couldn’t make it this year because he was serving as a counselor at The Wild Camp.)
Here’s a little peek into our time together…
We played lots of games — including some fun rounds of Spot It.
My dad rented two boats for the week, so we spent a LOT of time on the water.
Some of the days were a little cloudy, but mostly, the weather was beautiful — not too hot and not too cold!
I fell in love with knee-boarding on this vacation and had so much fun attempting different things (I still haven’t mastered backwards knee-boarding, but I’m determined I’m going to get it!)
Most all of us went bowling one evening. They rented out the lanes for just $16 each for an hour, so we got three lanes and a BUNCH of us bowled for every minute of that hour and had a blast — and it only cost about $51 total!!
Close to 7 pm, they turned on the strobe lights for Cosmic Bowling!
Kathrynne planned games for the younger kids every afternoon and they earned tickets which they got to cash in for prizes at the end of the week (see below).
This roll the marble game was a hit! You had to sit or stand behind the line and roll a marble and you got points based upon where the marble landed.
Most of my nieces and nephews were better than me at this game! 🙂
We also played a rousing game of Whoonu — and my 5-year-old niece beat me fair and square!!
Have you ever played this game? It was a lot harder than I expected it to be!
My sister’s daughter, Cadence, planned snacks for the younger kids on two of the afternoons (and my brother’s daughter planned snacks on the other two days).
One of the snacks was these cute apples that all of the kids got to make!
The kids really enjoyed making these!
The best part? They got to eat them after they made them!
There was a lot of double-slaloming that went on during the week. Here, two of my brothers are showing off their skills!
It was so peaceful and beautiful!
We had multiple swimming breaks in the lake.
Another shot of how beautiful this lake is!
The boys climbed up on the rocks one day and would have stayed up there for a long time if I hadn’t told them they had to come down (because I was a little afraid they were going to slip and fall!)
Kathrynne did so well at skiing this year — and even got up on one ski the second time she tried (I didn’t get a picture because I was screaming so loudly about how well she was doing!!)
And then Silas wanted to try skiing on the big skis. He’s gotten up on the kid skis before, but never on these larger skis.
The boy got up on his second try and stayed up for over 2 minutes!!
I was SO proud of him and I think he just might be able to slalom soon, too!
At the end of the week, the kids took all of their tickets and they got to cash them in for prizes that Kathrynne had in her “store” (all of these came from Dollar Tree).
The kids came in one at a time and got to redeem tickets for one item — from youngest child to oldest child.
And then, once the first round of ticket redemptions was finished, they got to do another round and choose another item.
We drove back home on Saturday — and made a stop at this place we found in Jonesboro last year. I love little coffee shops, even if I don’t drink coffee any more! (I got their cinnamon tea and had them make it like a London Fog.)
From My Heart…
This made me laugh and say ouch, because yup, there's way more truth to it than I'd probably like to admit.
One of the reasons I chose the word SLOW for this year was because I knew I needed to work on being slower to respond. And it's been so good to make it my goal to actually take time to think before I say something instead of just blurting out the first thing that comes to mind.
It's still a challenge and I still have had to apologize and stick my foot in my mouth, but I'm thrilled to tell you that by making this one word my mantra, it's actually been making a big difference.
I'm talking less and listening more — and I'm taking more time to weigh my words before talking. And it's really making a difference. I'm even not always having to get in the last word in a conversation or discussion… which is no small miracle!
2018 Goals Update
Personal Goals
1. Read 100 non-self-help books that will build me up/encourage me/inspire me/recharge me. (Fiction/story-driven/biographies/inspirational living books/devotionals.) See the list of 44 books I plan to read this year.
**Progress: 42 books read so far this year
2. Read through the entire Bible.
**Progress: I'm using the Robert Murray M'Cheyne plan and am all caught up— yay!
3. Write one handwritten note to someone every week.
**Progress: 31 notes written so far this year
4. Run 500 miles.
**Progress: 290 miles run so far
Marriage Goal
5. Go on an overnight trip with Jesse without the kids.Jesse and I went to NYC together in January.
Family Goals
6. Read 10 books aloud with the kids.
**Progress: I've finished two books so far. (I have a plan for how we're going to incorporate more reading into our schedule once school starts and we're all driving in the car to school drop-offs every morning. For now, I'm just happy that we're fitting in a little family reading a few times per week when we're all in the car together driving to the pool or somewhere else. Something is better than nothing, right??)
7. Take the kids to South Africa. We took this trip in July. What a memorable experience!
8. Go on a family road trip.
**Progress: We've been researching some options for this and are hoping to make this happen over Fall Break. Stay tuned!
Financial Goals
9. Save up to pay cash to finish off an office for me and workout room for Jesse and me in the basement in our new house.
**Progress: The workout room is DONE and the office is getting close to being done!
10. Replenish our Emergency Fund (we dipped into it to replace my car when it got totaled because of the carpet beetle infestation.)
Business Goals
11. Increase our gross income from the business by 8%.
12. Launch 5 new courses.
**Progress: We launched 4 Weeks to a More Productive Life launched in January, Content Creation 101 in February, 4-Week Blog Coaching Program in March, Email List Setup 101 in March, Make Over Your Mornings LIVE in April, the Facebook Live Masterclass in May, and we launched Build Your List 101 in June!
