1. Paint the Master Bathroom.
Our master bathroom was painted the color of yellow highlighter. Bathrooms should not be that color of yellow. I learned a lot from this project. I painted the baseboards, trim, and doors first. I learned that doing it last works a little better. The way I planned to complete this goal was to paint a wall every week. So I would do all the taping for a wall, paint the wall, rinse all the brushes and equipment, and do a second coat a few days later. Repeat for every wall. That meant our bathroom was a construction zone for a couple of months. After that, I learned that it's much faster to do it all in one go, or tape everything one day, paint the next day, and do a second coat the day after that.
Not only did I accomplish this goal, I completed it early, and I also painted all three bedrooms, the girls' closet, the other bathroom, two living room walls, half the kitchen, the laundry room, 15 doors + doorways, and 90% of the baseboards in an effort to get our house ready to sell. Whew! That's a big accomplishment!
2. Go to the temple 9 times.
When I made this goal, I was hoping to do nine endowment sessions, but life changed my plans. Instead, I did three endowment sessions, did sealings and initiatories at the Atlanta temple, took our family to have a picnic and walk around the grounds once, went with our family to the Raleigh Temple open house, and went to the Washington DC temple visitor's center three times to perform with the choir. So it did add up to nine times, but not in the way I expected. I hear the Washington DC temple is supposed to be rededicated sometime next fall, so I'm looking forward to that because we live pretty close!
3. Do 12 home dates with Ryan.
I put reminders on my Google Calendar to do a home date every month with Ryan. The first few months went well. We sketched with the help of a YouTube video, put together a puzzle, played Wiki Wars, and watched a movie. Then we listed our house for sale, and after our move I was so worn out that on Fridays I didn't have the energy to even do home dates. Ryan did come with me to one of my choir concerts and we stopped for burgers afterwards, and that kind of felt like a date. I think what I'm going to do for a while is try having simple movie nights together.
4. Read books.
I had five nonfiction books that I made a goal to read this year. I scheduled when I would read them and put reminders on my Google Calendar to keep me on track. Here are the books I read:
- Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow
- Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, Volume 1
- Thank You For Arguing by Jay Heinrichs
- The God Who Weeps by Terryl and Fiona Givens
- The Christ Who Heals by Terryl and Fiona Givens
I'm still working on The Christ Who Heals, but I should be able to finish it by the end of the year. This worked out really well! So far I've read 58 books this year. 25 of those were audiobooks. I've gotten through a lot of books driving to choir because it's about an hour and fifteen minutes to get there and 45 minutes to an hour to drive back.
In general, I think this approach to goals worked really well for me, and I'm working on finishing up my plans for next year's goals using the same handout I used last year. Stay tuned for my new goals!
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