Hustle and Bustle, Business and Babies: 2019 in Review

Life Hacks

This post may include affiliate links. See my full disclosure here.

As much as I love the idea of new goals, resolutions and looking to the future, we’d be remiss if we didn’t take time to reflect on the past! I love looking back at the past year to both celebrate the highs and mourn the lows before moving on to 2020. Let’s talk about how to show gratitude for the past!

Well hello there! You might have noticed that I took a small hiatus from posting here on the blog to sink all my time and effort into my Novalie online store. It’s been so much fun learning, growing and spreading the word but I’ve SO missed writing about life, and sharing tips and encouragement to all you moms out there. I’m so glad to be making more time for Bonnie & Blithe in this new year!

Before we dive into all the great content I’ve got scheduled for you guys this year, I wanted to reflect a bit on 2019! I recently heard a business coach say that when she accomplishes each goal that she’s set for herself during the day, she pauses for just a moment to reflect on it before rushing off to the next. She thinks back to when she made the goal, how it felt to cross it off and maybe even offers a small prayer of gratitude for her accomplishment.

I loved that so much! I’m learning (slowly and surely in my old age) that life isn’t just about accomplishing and improving, it’s about reflection, gratitude and peace. So, without further adieu, here’s a look at 2019 in review…

  1. A shift in focus. Apparently I’ve been thinking and feeling similarly about goals for the entire year! This post talks more about how I planned (and largely succeeded!) at more gentle goals for 2019.
  2. I launched a podcast with my co-host Audrey (also a mom of 9)! This has been a big but really fun and fulfilling undertaking and is currently the project that makes me feel the most like I’m contributing to the world. We make almost no money on it but we sure love sharing tips, encouragement and humor with other moms! Listen here.
  3. I attended my first fashion tradeshow in February and then launched Novalie in August! I can’t even begin to tell you guys how happy this has made me. It hasn’t been all sunshine and roses and it’s a long, slow road to growth but opening a clothing store has been my dream for over a decade and I can hardly believe that it’s now a reality!
  4. Lots of pregnancy and maternity fashion posts as we awaited the arrival of baby Dean. He came into the world on April 15, our first birth center baby and first birth witnessed by some big siblings! (Check out this IG post for a clip of the birth video!)
  5. We did quite a bit of traveling in 2019, some trips with Luke and the kids and others by myself.
    • Luke and I took a long weekend to New Orleans for a babymoon
    • I traveled to Palm Springs for a blog event
    • my mom and I took a couple kids to Disneyland in May
    • we drove to a cabin up north with my extended family in the summer
    • I drove the kids by myself to Utah for a week to escape the summer heat (check out the vlog from that trip here)
    • Luke and I road-tripped to Tennessee with all the kids to visit Luke’s sister (and Audrey and I met up for the first time!)
    • I flew back up to Utah with baby Dean for a quick weekend with friends and a business event
    • we flew the family to Oregon to have Thanksgiving with Luke’s brother…
    Phew! It sure didn’t feel that exhausting until I typed it all out 🙂 I’m excited for even more fun trips in 2020!
  6. Our twins got baptized! In our church kids can choose to get baptized when they reach 8 years of age and Kira and Vivian reached that milestone in July. It was such a beautiful and spiritual event!
  7. I hired some help. Even though we’ve had a sitter come help me during the day here and there, this year was the first time we set something up on a regular basis. We currently have a part time tutor who helps with homeschooling M-Th, a sitter who helps with dinner and running the household two afternoons a week and we had housecleaners come for about 7 months out of the year. We’ve sinced stopped the cleaners in hopes that our big kids will pick up the slack, so keep your fingers crossed for me!

And that’s it! Overall a great year full of momming hard, building businesses and traveling alone and with family: some of my very favorite things, as luck would have it!
Instead of letting 2019 slip by without much fanfare, I’m so gratful for the chance to reflect and show my gratitude.

I’d love to hear some of YOUR highlights of last year!

previous article
next article

No Comments

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.