April Progress Report: 18 for 2018

The first item I published to this blog was my 18 for 2018 list, which was inspired by Gretchen Rubin and Liz Craft’s lists that they shared on the Happier podcast. I felt like this was a great way to set measurable, achievable goals for the year. It’s time to check in and see how I’m doing!

I’m halfway there on #2: Plan fun birthday adventures for both kids. My son turned one last month and we spent the day at the Indianapolis Children’s Museum. If you live within a few hours of Indy, I can’t recommend this place enough. We’ve been a couple of times and always have such a great time. There’s more than enough to keep busy for a full day and the staff is incredibly nice and helpful. My daughter’s birthday is later this year and we aren’t telling her in advance, but we’re taking a family trip to DisneyWorld the week after she turns 5! My husband and I are beyond excited.

The 6th item on my list is to try watercolor painting and I’m pleased to report that I’ve done it. I was shopping at Target with my daughter a few weeks ago and as we walked through the crafting aisle, I saw a pack of paints. She seemed interested, so I grabbed them along with a few pads of paper and we spent the rest of the day painting. I confirmed, as expected, that I have minimal skill, but it was one of the most enjoyable days I’ve had in awhile – just me and my best girl, churning out “art” like two color-obsessed maniacs. It was so calming to spend some time playing with the colors for no reason other than to see what might happen.

On to #8: Complete part 1 of the presidential reading challenge. I realize now that this one sounds a little abstract. One of my local libraries is running a 7-year book club. Every couple of months, they read another biography of a president and meet to discuss it. I didn’t join the group (meetings at an inconvenient time + expensive) but decided to follow along and read the books. Annnnd… I’ve tried… but I’m amending this one. I tried to read the George Washington bio – I really did. I spent weeks on it. Renewed the book four times. I just couldn’t do it. It was such a slog. I’m a total presidential history buff, but it was such a dry read. My reading time is limited to begin with and after more than two months of trying to read it, I decided that I will TRY each biography on the list, but if I get 50 pages in and I’m bored, I give myself permission to put it down. I think as we progress in time, I’ll have an easier time. The Revolutionary War period was never the most interesting to me.

I’ve made a tiny bit of progress on #16 as well, which is about making cleaning up my beauty routine. I wrote about it here and am still using those products. While I’m sure there are cleaner options out there, these are a definite improvement over my previous routine.

And finally, #18: Leave room for fun. I will always be a work-in-progress on this one. My nature is to plan time to schedule things and then schedule time to plan things. Luckily I have a husband who can relax a little more. This past weekend we found a random carnival in the parking lot near our favorite restaurant and after eating lunch, we took a 20-minute detour through it. We had errands to run and my mind was racing with all the things I wanted to clean at home, but our daughter was so excited about it and our son looked intrigued, so we went for it. It was worth every minute and every penny (250 pennies, to be exact).