{99 in 999} No, I haven't forgotten about the list...

I just haven't had a chance to post lately! So, here's a quick recap of some of the progress I've made on the list this month.

#1. Have a morning retreat with God once a quarter.

Tom had this past Wednesday off from work, and he watched the girls while I spent the morning at Panera having an extended quiet time. I may just have to write a separate post about this because it was just so good.

#2. Watch all of the Best Picture Oscar winners I didn't watch during my last challenge.

I watched Spotlight at the beginning of the month, as one of the first things I did for this list. (It's available for streaming on Netflix right now, so it was a pretty easy one to knock out.) I gotta say, I've never really taken Mark Ruffalo all that seriously as an actor...maybe because I had only seen him in 13 Going on 30 and the Avengers movies. However, I thought he was fantastic in Spotlight. And the plot...such an important issue, and it was told in a way that I thought was respectful of those involved without sugar-coating what happened.

#4. Organize the storage room.

I've been making good progress with this, but, man...it is slow going because *someone* in this family is mildly obsessed with Christmas decorations. (I won't say who it is, but his name starts with a T and ends with an "om.") And by "mildly obsessed," I mean that we have boxes upon boxes of ornaments, lights, and Christmasy knickknacks. Then there's our tree, which we love, but it's pretty huge (even when disassembled), so the box takes up a lot of space. There's really nowhere else to put all the Christmas stuff, and the chances of us getting rid of any of it are slim to none, so I'm just kinda working around it.

#10. Create a recipe binder.

Done! I've wanted to have printed copies of my go-to recipes for years now, but I just never got around to it until now. And whadya know, one of the things I found while clearing out the storage room was this binder that already had divider tabs in it, which makes it super-easy to organize all my recipes into categories!

#15. Plant a garden.

Does a container garden count? If so, I can cross this off too! I'd planned on clearing a garden plot in the backyard or buying/building a raised garden bed; but some friends of ours offered us some tomato, strawberry, and mint plants before then. I wasn't about to say no to free plants, so containers it is, for this year anyway!

#16. Memorize the Romans Road.

I'm working on memorizing the Romans Road together with a friend this summer. So far we have four verses down!

#27. Try 10 new recipes with one or both of the girls.

My 2-year-old loves to help me in the kitchen, so I try to include her in the cooking process whenever I can. A couple of weeks ago, we had some zucchini that needed to get used up, so I decided to make zucchini bread muffins. She had so much fun helping me grate the zucchini and stir the batter, and she was so proud of her work that she couldn't wait to try them. Then, last week, we were stuck in the house on a rainy day, so we were going to make cookies, but it was way too hot to turn the oven on, so we made no-bake cookies with oats, peanut butter, and honey. Yum.

#88. Finish decorating E's room.

I had all these plans for decorating baby E's room in the hot-air-balloon/travel theme I'd picked out, but I was so sick throughout my entire pregnancy that I couldn't do much of anything before she was born. So I'm taking a "better late than never" approach and trying to get it all done now, starting with this balloon made of buttons!