Top Ten Things I HAVEN'T Gotten done this summer!

I'm joining in the Top Ten Tuesday fun over at Oh Amanda's blog. I had many plans for this summer. I was going to do SO much and get all sorts of things taken care of! I was revved up and ready to go!

Then life happened. Waylon got a new job working extremely long hours, 6 days a week. I underestimated how challenging a newly walking almost-one-year-old is. I forgot how hot and muggy summers in Texas are and how much they DE-motivate me from doing anything. I forgot how incredibly messy my husband and I can be.

Soooooo...here are the top ten things I THOUGHT I was going to do this summer, but haven't...yet...

1. De-clutter my house. I had huge plans to start the week after we got out of school to get rid of tons and tons of "stuff" in my house. We have a bunch of it and we don't use most of it! I'm sick of all this "stuff" that takes up space and clutters my house and collects dust! I haven't gotten rid of hardly anything, at least not enough to really see a difference. This frustrates me. I have full intentions of still getting this done though! I'm not raising my white flag just yet!

2. Work out. I was going to get up every morning and take a walk with my daughter before it got hot. That hasn't happened ONCE! I figured that since she wakes me up early every morning that I would just get up, put her in her stroller and head on out and take a 20-30 minute walk every morning to get back into the exercise routine. Nope, hasn't happened. Most mornings I just lie in bed after she wakes and let her crawl trample all over me. She seems content with that and I get a few more minutes of sleep. She's even slept till after 9am a few times and that makes it REALLY hard to get out of bed and take a walk because by then, it's already up to 90 degrees outside!

3. Read my Bible everyday. This one I've done the best on of all. I have put in much more effort into this than anything else, but I'm still not reading it everyday. I've come up with a method/plan that I think I will like a lot and that will motivate me to do it everyday. One of my problems with reading my Bible and having my quiet time has been that I didn't have a plan laid out as to how I was going to do it. That leaves me all in a dither. I would read a passage and then didn't know whether to read more or meditate on what I read or write what I learned from it. I have very limited time and I need to use it the best I can! I would spend more time trying to decide what to do then actually DOING it. So I took some tips from a wonderful website I've discovered (Scripture Dig) and I'm on my way to a better quiet time. (BTW, I will be doing a post all about the information I've gleaned from this website soon!)

4. Done more activities with Brooklyn. Due to all my mommy guilt from working and not being able to stay home with Brooklyn, I planned on using the summer to take her all sorts of fun places and do a variety of activities with her. I have not been able to do that. In my own defense, I just recently (as in last week) had my van finally fixed so that I could use it on a daily basis. Until then, I had to either use my husband's car for the few hours in the morning that he's home before heading off to work, OR have my parents come over and get me, OR drive my van that had no A/C and that I had to jump start each time I needed to use it! Talk about frustration! That's enough to keep anyone indoors all day. Well, the van is fixed so I have my freedom back. What I'm encountering now is laziness on my part and the fact that it's a lot of work taking Brooklyn out to do anything. But I have been able to do more and tomorrow I plan on taking her to the aquatic center in Hurst.

5. Record songs for Brooklyn. You may read this and think it's weird. Let me explain. For a while now, I've been wanting to use the nifty Garage Band application on my MacBook to record me singing some songs for Brooklyn for her bedtime. They would just be simple recordings of me singing and playing the guitar to some kid songs and some worship songs and hymns. I haven't yet done that either. Part of it is because it kills my fingers to play guitar now since I haven't played in years and my fingertips don't have their callouses anymore. This is something I DO still want to do this summer.

6. Spend more "quality time" with my husband. No, "quality" isn't code for "intimate". I mean quality as in, time interacting and doing things that bring us closer together, NOT just watching TV.  This has taken a back seat as his new job takes a lot of his time and we need him to keep this job and be successful at it. So I'm biding my time and taking the little snippets of time I can from him until the time comes when things aren't so hectic and we are able to have a date night each week or every other week. It's been hard though. I miss having him around. Sniff...

7. Meal plan. I really wanted to get into the habit of meal planning for each week. I thought it would be super easy to do during the summer when I'm not working and I have a bunch of extra time. Psh! I'm so bad at managing my time now! Having no structure to my days has created a scheduling nightmare! This is something I will have to put a lot of effort into and be very purposeful about. Grr...

8. Gardening. I had BIG plans to start my own straw bale garden. I got the nifty idea on MckMomma's blog and I did a lot of online research about it. I even went and bought a bale of straw and cleaned out the garden bed in front of my porch. I put a lot of work into it. Well, the straw bale is still sitting out there. It's been watered a ton but has yet to have anything growing on it. Mainly because I haven't planted anything in it yet! I'm so frustrated about this because I really thought this would be a nice therapeutic hobby for me. But alas, there is not time for the garden.

9. Developing a weekly house cleaning schedule. I'm such a spaz when it comes to cleaning my house. The only rooms that consistently get cleaned are the kitchen, living room and my bedroom. Everything else gets put off over and over again since it's not in plain sight if someone were to come over. I wanted to develop a weekly house cleaning schedule so that every room got at least straightened up every week. I'm still working on this. Meanwhile, the same three rooms have all been cleaned multiple times this summer but I HAVE gotten to some others (my bathroom, Brook's room, the kitchen table).

10. Successfully sleep train Brooklyn. Our plan was to already have her happily sleeping in her crib all night, every night by two weeks ago. I'm embarrassed to admit that she still doesn't go down without me either rocking her or patting her on her back and that she wakes up in the middle of the night and I bring her to my bed to sleep off the rest of the night. I know, consistency is the key. Yet, I continue to NOT be consistent with her. It breaks my heart to hear her desperate cries when I leave her in there to cry it out but I'm starting to realize that unless I do that consistently EVERY NIGHT, she is never going to settle in to a routine. I'm going to have to teach her some tough love. Tough for her, tougher for me.

So there you have it! My Top Ten Things I Haven't gotten done this summer. It's frustrating, it sucks, but I know that these are all things I CAN get done, even if I just go at them one at a time. So I will press on in the quest to get these things done!