We’re settled in to the early winter schedule now.  Things will change up again in January.  In the past week:

  • The twins went to math morning and Before School Sports.
  • We had two dentist appointments.
  • We had four swimming lessons.
  • I took the youngest to gym class and drop in gym.
  • The oldest went to a friend’s house.
  • The oldest had his first two winter baseball workouts.
  • On the middle school half day, the oldest went with the rec department to an Escape Room place.  Never been before, but found it fun which is good because he has a birthday party there in another week.
  • I had the last middle school conference.  I think the teachers are a bit worn out from conferences and looking forward to their completion.
  • I made reasonable progress on Christmas preparations.
  • We have many of the decorations up, but not all.  I need a free evening so I don’t have too much “help” to finish them off.  Even Darth Vader got in on the act.

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  • Our first grader put some rules up for their room.  Not sure of the inspiration, but the translation:
    Rules
    – No Fighting
    – No Destroying
    – Have Fun!
    – No Throwing

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  • I finished the freezer audit and will write about it this Thursday.
  • I continued making progress on the whole house clean.

So how did the November goals go?

  • Finish cleaning the house.  This means everything – under/behind furniture, all surfaces, inside the furniture/cabinets themselves, unfinished areas, etc.  My plan is to start at the top and work my way down.  This is halfway done already.  I expect to finish everything (except maybe the basement and garage).  Almost there.  I’m missing the master bedroom, office, basement, and garage.  At this point the garage may wait until spring unless we have another round of really warm weather.
  • Inventory the freezers and plan to use up anything that’s been there for a while.  This is largely in anticipation of holiday meat sales.  Inventory the pantry for things that need to be used up / seasonal items / items that go on sale seasonally.
  • Get back on track with four blog posts per week.  I got a little off at the end of the month, but overall this was a success.
  • Order and send Christmas cards.  Nope.  Need to hurry up on this one.

So, that sets us up for December.  My goals for this month are:

  • Order and send Christmas cards.
  • Find/buy/wrap all Christmas presents.  Mail if needed.
  • Finish cleaning the master bedroom and garage.  With the holiday break, the other spaces are just going to have to wait for 2018.
  • A big recipe clean-out.  You know, all those magazine pages I’ve torn out or websites I’ve printed.  Are we really going to try them?  Also, going through my binder of tried recipes to weed out those we really don’t actually eat.  I’m aiming to try one new recipe each week this winter and I’m on track (minus Thanksgiving week) so far.