goals

This whole blogging-once-a-week thing has become a habit. One I hope to break here shortly. But holy cow it just seems like once a week (usually on late Saturday or Sunday) is all I really have to sit down and post something. Can this semester be over already please? Please?! Also, I sometimes feel like I should only post when I do something really cool or interesting, but let's face it...if I did that, this blog would be doomed. So I'm trying to move passed that mentality.

Life can get so busy sometimes. School, work, and homework seems to be what consumes mine and Andy's lives lately and it's such a bummer because as I've mentioned before, Idaho summers are seriously the best and all we want to do is go outside and play. But nooo...because there's this thing called a "diploma" and in order to receive it you have to "pass your classes." So. Homework it is. But lately I haven't been feeling my best. Physically, mentally, emotionally, I've been in a bit of a slump. Yesterday it all came to a head when Andy picked me up from work and I immediately broke into tears as soon as I got in the car. Honestly, it was out of nowhere. Work was good...my day was just fine...but the tears just kept on coming. Poor Andy. Bless him for being so nice to me in strange, eyebrow-raising moments like this one. Together we concluded that we had gotten so dang busy with life that we'd forgotten about the things that matter most. The things we need to be putting first in our lives had kind of been pushed to the back burner. Our goal has always been to center our lives and our relationship around Christ and around the gospel, but lately we'd been letting all these other less-important things take priority. To be honest, we both were already aware that we were slacking a bit in some areas of our lives. Every now and then one of us would pipe up and say "You know, we really need to be better about reading our scriptures." or "Let's really try to go to the temple this week." But then it was left at that and life would once again do what it does best and distract us away from that mindset. Balance is so hard to find sometimes, but we decided that it was time to stop talking about what we should be doing and start actually doing it. Tonight, we sat down and wrote out a list of our spiritual and physical goals for this week and a drew up a chart to keep track of our individual progress. Some of the goals were things that we already do, but maybe not as consistently as we'd like to. Others were things that we wanted to start doing in order to form better habits.
Some of these goals included:
-nightly prayer together
-individual daily morning prayer
-daily scripture study together (even if it's just for a few minutes!)
-eat out only once a week
-get all homework done by 11 and be in bed by 12 (clearly this one will need some work because it's currently 12:30...We'll get there.)

We set some exercise and financial goals as well. I like writing out lists for these kinds of things because I can be a teeny tiny bit forgetful at times. And I put that list right up on our fridge so it'll stare us square in the face every single morning. Even if I want to forget that I'm not supposed to have another Dr. Pepper that week, I won't be able to! With small changes here and there, I really think I'll be feeling like myself again in no time. (cue "Eye of the Tiger" intro) We are determined! We are looking forward with positive attitudes! But right now we are both just really, really tired!

Jumping in head first tomorrow. Goodnight!