You're listening to the Girl Next Door podcast. I'm Kelsey. And I'm Erica. We're two former next door neighbors and good friends who love a good chat and a good laugh. We're inviting you to come on in, have a drink, and stay a while. Hey, friend. So as you know, our first episode of each year is focused on our goals for the year. And since we are now halfway through 2019, it is time to check in on our progress. It can be easy to lose steam midway. That's a little pep talk for us. But actually, it's the perfect time to take a deep breath and realize that there's still plenty of time to make good on the goals you set for yourself or to modify or even let go of something that's bringing you more stress than

energy. I like that. So let's talk about how 2019 overall is going for us so far. So can you give us a

review about what you declared as your intentions or goals for the year back when

the year was shiny and new and share kind of how it's going so far? Okay, so I did this this year

kind of like a word that inspired everything, but then broke it down how that word would impact

different categories of life. So my word for the year was little because I felt like

there was big changes and big changes and big starting new things and moving and all of the

things the last couple years. And I wanted to focus on how the little things were impacting

our life. So in terms of family, I wanted to remember how little my kids actually still are

and how these little day-to-day

interactions are also shaping them and to be intentional about those. And then to take also little

actions adding up to have a more peaceful, smoothly run household. So I do feel like we're recording

this with like a week after school. Yeah, we're getting ahead. It's a bit of a bad time of

year to talk about this and how orderly my household is running at the moment and how lovely I'm

talking to my children at the moment because it's not really happening. But it is a good reminder

going into summer that this was a goal of mine. Right. And when I am frustrated with the dawdling in

the morning and the attitudes and the, oh, good Lord, I'm going to be spending two months with you.

It's good, it's good to take a breath.

I do overall think that I've been good about just paying attention to how cute and little they still are and kind of celebrating those moments even just internally noting them

and taking a picture um i think i've been speaking nicer to them and more calmly which was kind of part of

that and just taking more time to like truly connect and snuggle and listen to the little

stories that sometimes are mind numbing but this is where we're building that connection for more important talks later on.

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