January Monthly Recap

January Recap

New Year! This month included packing up Christmas decor, becoming a Nintendo Switch Mario Kart racer, playing in the snow, 20 week ultrasound, website updates, and flying to Arizona. I'm currently posting this from Arizona (we are on our way home this evening). 

Recent Blog Posts

Read

I am using Goodreads to track my reading, rate books and write short reviews. Last year, I read 61 books and surpassed my reading challenge goal. This year, my goal is to read 52 books. I am a part of 3 book clubs and 1 library reading challenge. 

Books Completed in January: 6 books

• Bloom for Yourself II - April Green
  • Poetry and Prose - I loved the first book!
• How To Be Fine - Jolenta Greenberg and Kristen 
  • The hosts of By the Book Podcast wrote a book about what they learned by living out the rules of 50 self help books. I enjoyed the writing style and lessons.
• Home to Harmony - Philip Gulley
  • Huxley Public Library Book Club - not my favorite book
• The Hating Game - Sally Thorne
  • This was a great romance read because the banter was great. It has been adapted as a movie with Lucy Hale, and I pictured her as I read and it was perfect. I cannot wait to watch the movie.
• I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter - Erika Sanchez
  • I liked the use of Spanish here and the culture references, but the story didn't flow for me and I found it difficult to get into the story.
• Clap When You Land - Elizabeth Acevedo
  • This book is written in prose/poetry format. I loved the story and characters and description of the Domican Republic. Absolutely beautiful.

YTD Total: 6 of 52 Books

Watch

• The Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman
  • Netflix 3 Part documentary - UGH! How can someone do this to people?! He completely took control over someone's life and finances through lies and deception. He has many victims and is still on the run to this day.
• CHEER
  • Netflix Season 2 - I love this show! I binged this season and was so excited it was back. It was so interesting so see the impact of the first season on the individuals and on the team as a whole.
• The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story
  • YouTube Original documentary about the boy band manager of Backstreet and *NSYNC  

Listen

I listen to a lot of podcasts, audiobooks, and music. Here are the highlights from the past month.

• By The Book Podcast
  • Half reality show, half self-help podcast, and one wild social experiment. Join comedian Jolenta Greenberg and culture critic Kristen Meinzer as they live by the rules of a different self-help book each episode to figure out which ones might actually be life changing.
• 2000's Pop
  • I have been jammin' out to songs from the early 2000s, think Ludacris, Ciara, T-Pain.

Learn

I love learning new things, and I'm making space to continue learning.

• Baby W's 20 week ultrasound is one of my pregnancy highlights!
  • I loved seeing Lexi's 20 week ultrasound so I was very excited for this babe's ultrasound. I'm fascinated by seeing the heart and spine and profile. It provides a little reassurance plus a peek at the baby that is growing.
• Trekking out in the snow is good for the soul.
  • The weekend we had a lot of snow, Lexi played outside and I made sure to bring my camera out to capture her adventures. After she went inside to warm up, I trekked north of our house to take beautiful snowy landscape photos. It was fun to capture something different than my usual.
• Lexi loves flying on airplanes.
  • Fortunately, it was a direct flight with no layovers, but I think she would handle it just fine. The iPad was helpful especially on the late flight when she couldn't look out the window.