What I Focused on in April:

1. Work (Coffee Shop and trying to find balance with writing/blogging/etc…)
2. Family time and church and trying to stay healthy
3. The A to Z Challenge

Reading Update

Fiction: 6
Nonfiction: 1
Audiobooks: 3

Traveling:

Nights Gone: 3
New Places: 0

Goals:
1. No dairy 15 days – NO
2. A to Z Challenge – Haha. YES, but not the correct way
3. Comment 150 times on A to Z Posts – NO
4. Four books Reviewed – NO
5. Train 15 times – YES
6. Track Coffee Shop Hours – YES
7. Find Theme for Children’s Church – YES
8. Celebrate (things with family) – YES
9. Spend quality time with sisters – YES

What I’ve Been Learning

Balance, y’all. Balance. Yo, folks. This is a crazy season of life. My family has all sorts of wonderful and crazy things going on which I’m a huge fan of, but sadly finding time in the midst of the craziness for everything I need to accomplish is impossible. Therefore I’ve been focusing on being really intentional about what I do. There were so many times this month when I had to just stop and think through all my options and decide what would be the best decision long-term. That’s why I didn’t always blog. Or always write. Or always do something, or not do something, or read the books I had on my list, or fill-in-the-blank. It was a good month for learning balance, and I’m so looking forward to May and hopefully having a better starting point this month than I did last one.

About the Amercian and French Revolutions. People, somehow I randomly picked up three books that all had to do with the revolutions. Well, I knew two of them were from the same time period, but not the third one. I’ve never really studied the French Revolution because it’s so horrible, so to finally find out a little bit more about it (than just what I had to learn for school) was enlightening and makes me want to study it even more.

Instagram. My sister told me forever that I should get on Instagram and I finally complied last autumn but didn’t do much with it until this past month. It’s been so much fun becoming a part of Bookstagram and wowzers, folks! There’s a lot to learn. I want to have a specific style and all that for my feed, so I spent a lot of time looking at bookish posts and connecting with other bookworms and deciding what I do and don’t like.

I’ve also been learning more about blogging – and about myself as a blogger. I’ve been blogging for a long time, but I haven’t really delved into the ins and outs of the blogging community like I want to, so I’m working at figuring out a way to do that, and really pinning down exactly who I want to be as a blogger.

Food vlogging. Haha, can we just take a moment to shake our heads at me? This has been a lifelong dream of mine, (like, something I wanted to do way before I even thought of blogging, etc… probably even before I wanted to be a writer), so I’m so glad I took the plunge and did it. But let’s be real folks, my cooking vlogs need epics amount of help. If I’m going to do more in the future (which I’d really like to), then I’ll have to have a far better set up then what I used this month. I learned so much from the experience though – one of the big things being I truly DO enjoy making cooking vlogs, and I want to get better with them someday.

Did anyone notice a lack of review for the month of March? Yeah, I didn’t forget that, and yes, I’m still planning on writing it. That’s another thing I learned about myself. When I have huge things happening in my life, sometimes I simply can’t pull my energy and thoughts together at the same time to write the posts I want to write. (And by “huge things” I mean just the normal “my family is growing up and look at all those exciting things happening right now!” type of huge.)

Other

April was sadly a month with a lot of sickness. I had some sort of flu that lingered on, and then near the end of the month just when I was feeling better again I got strep throat. Thankfully I was able to make some strides forward, as well as doing some things which will hopefully make the rest of the year better.

We had Christmas in April. Well, we had it in December, too, but there’s a certain Christmas celebration that didn’t fit into December, or January, or February, or March, so when April rolled around my sister and I decided to pull out all stops. We decorated the house (or at least a few rooms), made two kinds of Christmas cookies, had Christmas music blaring, and dressed up in red, white, and green. It was rather glorious.

Everyone talked about the weather so much in April that I hardly feel the need to mention it. Except, y’all, except to say that in the midst of the back and forth and fickleness of April I was able to cut grass! Mowing with Chadwin (my lawnmower, in case ya didn’t know) is one of my most favorite things ever, so this was a highlight indeed.

All in all, April was a really good month despite being sick and not accomplishing all my goals. I learned a lot and worked through a lot that I know will help make the rest of the year so much better and more productive. SO YAY.

What I Listened to While Blogging:
Lindsey Stirling on Youtube
Where I Blogged:
In my office with the windows open and birds singing
Fun Fact:
Growing up we were allowed to begin going barefoot May first.
Question of the Day:
Do you generally like April or May better?