Weekly Wrap Up – How about something new?

Hello! I thought I would try something a little new and different this week. I love creating posts that are informative, educational, or inspirational, but sometimes I just want to share random things about my day or my week. New things I’m trying, progress I’ve made on my personal goals, or a difficult challenge I’m working to overcome. Some of my readers might care to have a more inside peek into my personal life, while others might just be interested in the more informative posts.

I decided I will try out a weekly wrap up type of post to share these bits and pieces of my life. If it’s something you’re interested in, please enjoy. If my personal life and goals aren’t what you’re looking for here, then feel free to just skip over these posts. I don’t know that I will do a weekly wrap up each week, but if it seems to be a reasonably popular feature, then I hope to make it a semi-regular thing. (By the way, I consider my weeks to run Monday through Sunday, so I tend to wrap things up on Sunday instead of Friday or Saturday like most normal people).

Also, I’ll be talking a lot about my goals and habits here, so check out this post to get a run down of what my goals and habits are for 2017.

Let’s Get Physical

Apparently, I’m running at 25k next weekend, which is 15.5 miles. I found out about this race late in the game and made a last minute decision to run it. I’m not going for speed or any type of record, I’m just running it because it’s for a good cause (pediatric cancer) and I have a friend who decided to run it with me (at least I hope that’s still her plan). This will technically be the first race toward my goal of running 4 races of at least half marathon (13.1 miles) distance or longer.

This will be my 3rd race overall for this year (I’ve already run two 5k’s), but surprisingly it appears that this race will be the coldest race of the winter season so far. We have had such a strange, warm and not snowy winter. We have been super spoiled, but now every time it gets cold and/or snowy, I get really grouchy. Hopefully, it won’t be too cold next weekend.

Also, my strength training goals are moving along very slowly at the moment. I had a really strong start to the year and then I broke my toe while trying to do a pull-up. Can you imagine how that could be possible? I know, I know, if my toe is involved in a pull-up, I’m probably doing it wrong. So I’ve heard…a few times.

Our pull-up bar is set up for my husband (and not adjustable), so when I come down I land on my tippy toes. Well, one time I landed wrong and my toe has been mad at me ever since. Fortunately, it doesn’t hurt (at least not anymore) when I run. But I can’t do pushups or lunges or several other exercises that involve toe bending, so I’m just taking it easy overall in the weight lifting department to give my toe some time to heal.

What I’m Reading

You may or may not have heard that I’m working on writing a book. It will be a self-published book that will hopefully be available (eventually) in both e-book and print versions. This is a crazy big goal. Even bigger and scarier than when I first created the goal because now I’ve actually started working on it. And I’ve learned that something has got to give. Writing a book takes a lot of time and a lot of focus and a lot of really hard work.

I also have a goal of reading 52 books this year. A doable goal of reading just one book a week. But that is not a very doable goal if you are also trying to write a book, work full-time, raise children, be a decent wife, and keep up a consistent blogging schedule. So, my reading goal will soon be paused until the book is done. It may take a month or it may take all year.

For now, I’m in the middle of about 17 books. I’m hoping to finish at least one or two books before I cut myself off. I’m on the launch team for Lisa-Jo Baker’s new book Never Unfriended, so I’m committed to finishing that one and I’d also like to finish reading Jessica Turner’s The Fringe Hours. I was nearly done with it when I started working heavily on my book, so I feel like I should just finish it up before I move on too much.

New Obsession

Lately, it has felt like I pick up the kids in the evenings and then spend all night cooking dinner, eating dinner, cleaning up dinner, and then it’s time to start the bedtime routine. I want to actually have time to play with my kids and maybe even relax and enjoy my evenings with the family. I’ve been trying out several options to make mealtimes easier. While I love meat kit delivery programs, like Green Chef, they take a significant amount of time to prepare in the evenings, so I only like to use them on occasion.

I also tried out eMeals for a few weeks. I chose their crock pot menu option, but just didn’t love it. The prep work just got moved to my mornings instead of the evenings, and the recipes created way too much food for our family, and we didn’t even love the food that much. I have heard so many great things about eMeals, so I think it works great for some families, it just wasn’t the right fit for our family.

I have recently discovered Once a Month Meals and I think I might be in love. I have always been intrigued by freezer cooking, but way too intimidated to start. With Once a Month Meals, the process is still a little overwhelming and daunting, but they take care of many of the concerns I’ve always had with freezer cooking.

I have the flexibility to choose the meals we want to eat and then their system creates all the directions I need to complete a freezer cooking day. They give me a grocery list, preparation instructions (veggies to chop), cooking day instructions (in order), and freezing/thawing/serving directions. Freezer cooking several meals in one day is still a ton of work, but it is so wonderful to only need to throw something in the oven at night and then relax with my family while it bakes up.

How was your week?

I could keep sharing for hours, but I’ll stop for this week. Let me know if you like this new feature so I know if I should continue it or not.

Now, tell me about your week in the comments. What new things are you learning or trying? Any challenges you are facing?

If you happen to have a blog and you write a weekly wrap up as well, feel free to share your link.

Have a great week!