Home » Goals » Month in Review and November Goals

Month in Review and November Goals

monthly goals at mama smiles

What a month! First the kids were sick, then I was sick, and now… No photos today, because our computer, along with the rest of the house, has no power. We lost power shortly after I published this post, and no news yet on when we’ll get it back. Our freezer food is mostly lost, but we salvaged most of the fridge. So long as our pipes don’t freeze, I’ll be happy.

Saturday’s storm wreaked havoc on our town. Most people have no power, and there are at least four trees downing wires within a quarter mile of our house. Even the stop lights have no power! Our neighbor had a tree blocking their driveway. Luckily our one downed tree fell across our yard, not our house!

One very nice thing happened this month: Johnny is thoroughly enjoying school! Emma also continues to enjoy kindergarten, and Lily has decided that having me all to herself in the morning has its benefits.

Looking at October goals, I had to laugh at “enjoy fall in New England”. I did enjoy fall weather, so long as the weather resembled fall! The leaves were stunning this month, and I hope to enjoy them into November.

The leaves were, of course, the main reason Saturday’s storm was so destructive. Six inches of snow wouldn’t typically be problematic in our area, but six inches weighing down trees already heavy with leaves was too much for the trees to hold, and so they fell, bringing power lines down with them.

I did some menu planning, largely in the form of making lists of foods we could make and then picking from those lists what I wanted to make each night. That seems to work better for me than having a set menu for each day of the week. Or maybe that’s just a way of excusing my laziness in not formatting set lists…

I’m sorry to say I never took Lily to the library. I’ll try to do that in November, once our library re-opens.

I’m setting only two goals for November:

  • Prepare Christmas gifts so we can thoroughly enjoy December. Target Area: gratitude and peace
  •  Clean up storm damage. Target Area: health



MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.

14 thoughts on “Month in Review and November Goals”

  1. So sorry about the horrible storm, but your excellent attitude helped you and your family. I am glad your children are happy with their school and being with you. Carolyn Wilhelm

  2. I seriously need to be better at menu planning. Somehow, I’m always surprised we have to eat dinner around dinner time. Strange. I also need to work on *returning* library books. It doesn’t happen every time.. but every third or fourth visit something happens to my brain that makes it impossible to return them in a timely manner. It’s really awful. Don’t be like me!

    I hope this is the last of your power outages for the season. I’m so glad to hear that you now have power again. And I’m glad you had someplace warm to go! I was thinking of you and your family. I’m so glad the tree missed the house! We live in the middle of the woods and I know the fear of trees falling. Good luck on your goals and cleanup!

  3. It’s nice you get special time with Lily and she appreciates it. My mom has special memories of her time alone with my younger brother. My youngest are twins, so I didn’t get that special time. We try to find time for special mom and dad alone time with each child at our house. Time seems to slip by quickly. My goal for this month is to get some alone time with each child.
    I like your goal of preparing for Christmas this month. That’s my second goal. (I can reach that one if I even prepare a little bit for Christmas this month.)
    One more thing . . . When my kids were young, we liked to check out stacks of books by one author at a time on our library visits. It was a fun way to get to know some popular authors and find some favorites. We liked: Audrey Wood, Robert Munsch, Dr. Suess, Laura Joffe Numeroff, Mercer Mayer, Frank Asch, and Eric Carle. Have fun at the library with Lily.

    1. I love the idea of bringing home stacks of books by a particular author! I don’t think we’ve read Frank Asch, and we’ve only read Audrey Wood’s alphabet books, so maybe we’ll start with one of them! Thanks for the suggestion!

  4. Wishing you a more calm November. We need to sid down and write some goals for November. I often write educational goals, but like the idea of including family goals as well, maybe even some bilingual ones as well. Will try to post soon =)

  5. I hope your power is on soon. We had a snow storm last week that involved heavy snow. More than 40,000 people lost power… we, thank goodness, were not among them.

    1. Over 500,000 in Massachusetts alone from this storm, more across New England. We are still among them (but hanging out for a few hours at my sister’s nice warm house!)

  6. I can’t believe that October is over already too. It went by way too fast! It sounds like you had a fun month, except for the storm. My husband and I already started our Christmas shopping. It won’t be long and the Holidays will be here. Have a fun and safe Halloween and I wish you all the best for November!

  7. There were a lot of large branches on the ground in the park. The snow storm was such a surprise. I pooh-poohed my husband when he said snow was predicted, but the joke was on me!

  8. Ah, that makes sense now about leaves + snow = too much for the poor trees! I had wondered what sort of blizzard would take down winter-hardened trees as you must have… but in the autumn months it’s a different story.

    For our menu planning, even if we do have an idea in the beginning what day we’ll make something, we often switch it up based on what we feel like or are able to do that day.

    Hope you get your power back on soon and that your pipes stay intact!

Comments are closed.

Scroll to Top