October Goal Review

Happy Halloween! I am out of town (actually out of the country) right now visiting my sister in law and her family and meeting the newest addition to our family, Baby C.

That is what my scheduled post was supposed to say. However, I am actually not out of the country visiting my new nephew. I started to get sick on Wednesday so I decided not to go. Then, I started to get better on Thursday, so I decided to go. Then, on Thursday evening I found out that someone close to me had been in close contact with H1N1 and was exhibiting symptoms herself so I felt that I should not go visit the new babe. I am still not really sick (although not feeling 100%), so I am hoping that I have been able to evade the illness. Either way, I didn't want to risk going there and being around young children ... especially a new born baby.

The FD was supposed to leave last night for a week of hunting but was sweet and decided to stay home until this morning so I didn't have to be by myself for quite so long. We had a nice little date last night.

So, I'm going to head home to visit my parents today and come back either Sunday or Monday. I don't really care for staying home by myself ... especially since FD took Nika with him. It gets a wee bit quiet and lonely.

On September first, I decided to start keeping track of monthly goals on my blog as a way of keeping myself motivated and accountable. At the end of the month, I did a review of how the goals went and I found that I did pretty good at keeping up with my goals.

We've now come to the end of October so it's time to see how I did with this month's list of goals. Unfortunately, October was not as productive as September.

1. Complete Christmas savings and get a good start on Christmas shopping. Christmas saving is done. Getting a good start on Christmas shopping is not done. I only bought two small gifts all month. I will be getting serious about the Christmas shopping in the coming weeks. I am NOT a last minute kind of gal.

2. Switch out summer clothes for fall/winter clothes. I got this done but it really wasn't a very hard job since most of my clothes stay out and all it is is a matter of unloading on rubbermaid bin into FD's closet and putting his shorts and t-shirts away.

3. Celebrate Thanksgiving with both of our families (remember, Canadian Thanksgiving is in October). Yup - we had a lovely weekend spent with our families.

4. Get ethics approval, secure participants and arrange focus group dates. This whole process is taking way longer than I ever anticipated and is causing some serious grief! I finally got approval last week and have now started to secure participants.

5. Tidy up lit review, complete introduction and theory chapters. Lit review is good. The intro is still weak. The theory chapter - well, let's just not go there.

6. Complete the Love Dare. Ha! In my September review I stated that I was on day 12 of 40 at the end of the month. I am now on day 15. Apparently I did not achieve this goal.

7. Make and can applesauce and apple butter. Yup - we did it.

8. Continue making soup each week. Yes - this month we had French Onion Soup, Minestrone Soup, Cabbage Soup, Chicken and Dumpling Soup and End of the Garden Vegetable Soup

9. Continue and improve cash grocery shopping budget. I did pretty good this month, although our party last week threw me off a little bit (i.e. I used my debit card at the grocery store a few times). I'm ready to start fresh and get back on track starting tomorrow.

10. Proctor and mark midterms. Blech - yes. Done and done.

How was your October?