1. Sleep well before the move and beat jet lag as quickly as possible after – We all slept through the night the very first night here. But the next night, the girls woke up at 5:30 a.m. and came into our room. So we all were awake. I’ve been crashing at the kids’ bedtime, and that makes me wake up early–like last night, when I woke up, convinced it was morning, before 4:00 a.m.
2. Maintain a healthy exercise schedule coming into the move so I can get back at it as quickly as possible afterward. Didn’t get that last workout in before getting on the plane because I realized it would leave me with sweaty laundry and I knew I didn’t have time to do anything about that before we left. Haven’t exercised since arrival, unless you count hefting heavy bags of meat, vegetables, cooking wine & soy sauce up the hill to our house, and the trip back to get the buckwheat noodles that I forgot to buy the first time (which I think you should).
3. Finish packing before the move, unpack and organize the kitchen, bathrooms and homeschool room after the move to get things up and rolling ASAP. My ideals are meeting with reality here, although I am making slow progress. We’re hampered a little by the heat–or rather lack thereof. On Friday, I was out meeting a friend and getting my cell phone SIM card in the cold and rain and came back to the cold house with a bit of a chill. Holed up in the warm rooms for the rest of the night and didn’t even do the dishes! (Don’t tell my mother.) I just couldn’t face the freezing kitchen.

Ever have the urge to add something to your goals list, just so you can cross it off? I have that urge this month, because I actually accomplished quite a lot–just few of the things I set out to accomplish.

This month was more hectic than I anticipated. It seems I say this often. I’m not sure if I met my 3 in 30 goals, and I missed updating them twice, but something else happened: my novel is being published. And that was completely unexpected–at least so soon after I finished the last word.

And we found out we’re heading back to China. We now have an unofficial date (unofficial because flights aren’t booked quite yet) of February 7-ish.

I opened up two new blogs. I will continue to blog about homeschool here, but I’ll blog about our China adventures and begin our Mandarin lessons for children at www.holdthemsg.com and I made a website for After the Snow Falls as well as a Facebook page.

So it’s not like I haven’t been productive, I just didn’t quite achieve November’s goals. I’m definitely going to be moving one of those goals into December: work on my personal schedule. My days haven’t exactly been ordered this month. I want to work on getting up earlier, having my devotional time first and exercising.

Here were my goals:

1. Work on my personal schedule: I did fine on this goal for the first week, although I must confess I didn’t actually make it to the exercise portion. I’m trying to console myself in the fact that the Gluten-Free diet is making it easier to stay on top of my weight goals regardless of the lack of exercise.
2. Begin moving preparations: I didn’t do a lot on this, I must confess. Part of the slow-down was that we recognized we wouldn’t be able to leave in January because of the Chinese New Year. Since we’ve moved the move into February, there’s perhaps not as big of a rush as I’d originally thought. I did, however, make a lot of lists and start to buy the spices I’ll need. I also did a lot of weeding through homeschool books to start deciding what goes, what gets given away or sold and what gets packed away for the future.
3. Pull off a successful birthday celebration for Sweetpea and have a blast on our trip. Mission definitely accomplished! We have had a wonderful time. We head home tomorrow.

How was your November?