Month 8: Love to My Spouse

I attempted this goal on a previous month and, sadly, was doing poorly by day 2, so I decided to save it for another month. I knew I was going to set this goal to treat my husband with more love and respect for one month of my happiness project, so I have been making gradual changes leading up to this goal. I used The Love Dare by Stephen Kendrick to guide my days. There are some great day goals in the book; one that was really good for me was Day 7: Love believes the best.  In general, I worked on not nagging my husband, greeting him in a good mood when he came home from work, having more patience, allowing him more guy time (and not complaining about it!), not complaining once about picking up after him, and I tried to set aside quality time for him each day. I also read or listened to Elder Clayton's talk from General Conference frequently throughout the month to serve as a focus and reminder.

For the first half of the month, I was feeling pretty good about how I was doing. There's a group that plays Ultimate Frisbee, Matt's favorite sport, on Tuesday nights and Saturday mornings for a couple of hours. The time they play on Tuesday night is during dinner/bedtime hours, so I usually say no for that night. On May 7, I suggested he go, and even when the night ended up being more difficult than usual, I didn't complain to him about it. Matt got plenty of back scratches (which he loves), and I left a few surprises in his car to let him know I was thinking of him.

I thought May would be a great month to focus on this since it led into our anniversary on June 2. But the closer we got to our moving date, the more things started tapering off. Our to-do list was always a mile long each day (it still is!), that we literally fell into bed each night exhausted and prayed that there would be no interruptions from our children that night so we could get a full night's sleep.

So I definitely could have done better, and Matt would probably be surprised reflecting on the month to realize that this was my goal for the month. I still worked on having more patience and I did accomplish not complaining once about picking up after him (he takes his shoes and socks off and forgets to put them away), but it became too much to try to do anything "extra" with how busy we both were with preparing to move on top of our other daily duties. I'm looking forward to continuing to try to do something extra each day to let Matt know that I love him.

Also this month, I managed to fit in some indexing, not quite my goal of 200 names, but close.

I am SO excited about my goal for the month of June! This month I'll be focusing on my children...giving them more of my time and focus and love. I'm also doing the 30 day Orange Rhino challenge with my sister where you yell less and love more. I loved Sister Wixom's talk from General Conference about turning off technology and spending quality time with your children. That will also be another focus. These three boys are my world, and I don't want them to have memories of Mommy losing control or getting angry or yelling. I love them to pieces and there are definitely ways to show that more.