Today’s post marks the fourth yearly reading list that I’ve shared here. It has been a delightful exercise in thoughtfully planning my reading, which makes a certain amount of sense given the vast number of good books in the world and the relatively few I’ll be able to read in my lifetime. Over time, though, I think I have leaned a little too heavily into curating a list that looks good and checks a lot of boxes rather than a list of books I’m chomping at the bit to read. That’s okay – I think choosing an elevated list of aspirational reads is its own worthwhile pursuit, and I may return to it. But this year (perhaps in tandem with my 2023 goals), I am craving a ready list of books I can’t wait to read, and so that’s what I’ve compiled. My main criteria, after vetting them in my usual ways, was simply: would I want to dive into this book tomorrow?
After completing 18, 16, and 15 of 24 in the last three years, I’m aiming for 24/24 in 2023 :)
In most months I chose one fiction and one non-fiction book, but you’ll see I took a few liberties, as well. If you’d like me to join me for any of my picks, I’d love to have you!
January: Becoming Mrs. Lewis | Once I knew Mere Christianity was going to be my January pick, it was only too perfect to pluck this one from my TBR list. Mere Christianity | One of my favorite books of all time. I read it every few years.
February: Remarkably Bright Creatures | Described as a love story with a giant octopus, this novel has been universally adored by everyone whose opinions I trust. Love that it’s her debut. Deep Work | I have had a Cal Newport book on my list every year I’ve made one, and somehow I have still never read one of his books!! Will this be the year? With my new schedule I’ve been craving even more focus at work, so this seemed like the one to try.
March: Book Lovers | We have a copy that’s been circulating in Articles Club for the last few months with post-it notes added as it changes hands, and I’m up next. The Gospel Comes with a House Key | This one seemed fitting for my goals this year!
April: The Inheritance Games| This year’s list leans a little more “fun” than in years past, and so a buzzy YA mystery with “thrilling twists” seems right at home. The Odyssey | I haven’t read The Odyssey since ninth-grade English. I loved it, though hadn’t had much urge to re-read it until this first female translation came highly recommended. We’ll see – this may be one I later regret adding to the list, but right now I’m excited about it :)
May: Every Summer After | I have been warned that this one will make me sob, but we’re going with it. Camp Girls | A nod to June’s and my mother-daughter weekend, recommended by a friend who knows the author!
June: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow | Another seemingly universally-beloved novel. I enjoyed her other well-known book and am intrigued by this one! The Life We’re Looking for | This book doesn’t seem to have gotten much love (only 154 Amazon reviews, though positive!), but I loved the other book I’ve read by Andy. Also seems fitting for this year’s goals: “a deeply reflective primer on creating meaningful connections, rebuilding abundant communities, and living in a way that engages our full humanity.”
July: Carrie Soto is Back | I have never read a Taylor Jenkins Reid book even though she’s had a number of blockbusters over the last few years. It’s time, and this tennis-themed one seems like a good place to start! Raising Emotionally Strong Boys | My love for Raising Boys & Girls runs deep. Since I didn’t grow up with brothers or many male cousins, I am always looking to learn from the wiser people around me, and David definitely qualifies.
August: The Maid | I think three separate friends described this book as, verbatim, “just a delight.” Perfect for a summer vacation read. As You Wish | We have been wanting to watch The Princess Bride (one of my favorites!) for family movie night, so I’ll time its premier with this read!
September: Marriage Portrait | I added this one in the hopes that it would have similar vibes to the Ken Follett trilogy – a distinct historical period, layered plots, intriguing characters. We shall see! Teach Your Children Well | This one’s a bit of a wildcard, but I heard the author on a podcast about family discipleship and enjoyed what she had to say.
October: Lessons in Chemistry | The definition of buzzy. I am actually not sure I’m going to love this one as much as everyone else does, but giving it a try because of effusive reviews from a few trusted sources! The Hiding Place | A classic I know very little about, but am excited to read.
November: The Flatshare | Sister and mom loved it. See: light, feel-good books for this year’s list. Habits of the Household | I adored the other book I’ve read by him. This is one I’m not sure I’ll wait to read until November!
December: At Home in Mitford | Steph reminded me that December is the perfect time to read a Mitford book. I haven’t picked one up in years (my grandmother loved them!), but it does sound like the coziest holiday read. Cozy Minimalist Home | Setting myself up for a new year of nesting in each season.
Honorable mentions I’m hoping to squeeze in, as well:Black Cake, Telling God’s Story, Start With Hello, The Measure, The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post, and The Cartographers.
I’d love to hear: Have you read any of these books? Would you like to read any alongside me in 2023? Let’s chat!
As I worked my way through my PowerSheets and moved on to naming my goals, I felt some of the familiar anxiety creep in. This part of the process often trips me up: I dive eagerly into the guided questions and have no expectation that I’ll live out my goals perfectly, but in the middle of the process, I’m realizing that I do have expectations for the goals themselves. I want them to be well-organized and meaningful. I want them to fire me up. I want them to be winsome and interesting. I want anyone who reads them to immediately understand what I’m aiming for and the heart behind them.
Here’s something I already know that gave me fresh comfort in this season: I don’t have to be worried about whether my goals are perfectly named and framed, because I know I am headed in the right direction. My goals (however I organize them) are aligned with what matters to me and with my vision for the future (thank you, PowerSheets Prep Work!). I’m confident I’ll make the right adjustments and pivots along the way, and will fill in the next best action steps and choices, because I know what matters. That much is abundantly clear. My goals are just a plan, and plans can change.
That being said, I am really excited about my 2023 goals! They feel free and loose and fun, and I believe they help me steward what God has graciously entrusted to me.
This year, I decided to organize my goals into three pillars, based on my great aunt’s life motto: every day, seek to learn something new, do something kind, and see something beautiful. This is a prescriptive that has been repeated in my family for as long as I can remember. Of course, these pillars are loose, and many goals could fall under any of the three – but it seemed like a fun way to inject a little novelty into my goal setting this year. Without further ado…
Learn Something New
1. Create a book for the first ten years of Em for Marvelous. It’s baaaaaaack! This goal first surfaced in 2021 (I made no progress). I recommitted to it in 2022 (still no progress). In 2023, we’re going to hope that a slightly-freer schedule will give me the breathing room needed to make it happen, because it really does matter to me: while I place tremendous value on sharing here with friends near and far (and LOVE hearing from you when a post touches you – truly, one of my favorite things!), I have long thought of this place as a repository of stories, memories, and wisdom for my children. I’d like to create a physical book for them of the best posts from the first ten years of my writing here (I’m in year 16 now!).
I’m pretty sure I’m going to use Blurb to create the book, and using their software will require me to learn something new!
2. Tend to our home trouble spots in a new way. This is 2023’s boring goal :) We have a number of spots in our home that eternally frustrate me. No matter how well I declutter and organize them, they inevitably degenerate into low-grade chaos after a few months.
First, I’m learning a new way of relating to these spots: I’m choosing to see them less as a failure of my home-keeping skills, and instead as a natural byproduct of a growing, active family making the most of every corner of their well-loved home. (Expectations, people! See what I did there? If I expect the chaos to descend instead of treating these as one-and-done spots, I won’t be as frustrated with each subsequent decluttering session.)
Second, I’m going to try a new way of helping these spots thrive: once I’ve named them, I’ll assign them each to a month of the year and then address them one at a time, in rotation. I hope this will be a sustainable system to keep up with – even as it reduces my mental load – and that it will minimize my frustration with any creeping chaos, knowing that it is a part of life AND that I have a plan to address it.
3. Read through the Gospels with CWM’s boxed collection. I love our beautiful Gospels set and look forward to journaling my way through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in addition to whatever we’re reading with our church’s sermon series. I’ll be following the easy reading plan provided with purchase and trust I will learn many new things along the way!
4. Secret goal. Eww, secret goal. I apologize, because I know I strongly dislike when Online People are ostentatiously evasive about things. To be sure, I could have left this goal off this list entirely, but selfishly, I’m including a marker here for posterity :) This is something that I have been wanting to develop for my own family, that I have committed to working on for 2-3 hours each week during some of my additional time away from work this year. If it turns out well, perhaps I will share it at some point in the future :)
Do Something Kind
5. Invite one family (or friend) over for dinner each month. Somehow, between COVID and a newish baby, we have gotten completely out of the habit of inviting other families into our home – last year, aside from our spring party, we did not have a single family over for dinner. When I realized that a few days ago, it truly shocked me. (To be fair, we did gather for a meal with our community group every other week, and I hosted Articles Club every other month, but to me those are in a different category.) A year with no dinner guests is not how I want us to live, and so this goal will be accountability to change that!
Since John and I are both introverts with full lives, it would be easy for this goal to quickly feel like a burden. To keep it light and fun, this goal mostly isn’t about getting to know new people – in most cases, we’ll just be inviting over people we already know, love, and want to see more of! (Though I hope to stay attuned to whomever the Holy Spirit might want to come to our table!)
6. Reach 5,000 minutes on Peloton. I ended 2022 having logged 3,964 minutes (more than doubling 2021’s 1,829 minutes!). To reach 5k, my loose plan is to workout (a mix of cycling and strength) about 30 minutes three times a week on set days, to stretch nightly, to bike June to school, and to take walks throughout the week. This goal is about being kind to my body and my future self.
7. Update our legacy box. This was inspired by PFC’s “dead box” (but legacy box sounds much nicer, ha!). A legacy box is a repository of important financial and life information for the people you love in the case of your death or incapacitation – a definite kindness to them! John and I have done much of this work already – we created our estate planning documents a few years ago – but we want to finish it out and update what needs to be updated (for example, nothing reflects that sweet Annie is in our family!). Maybe this is 2023’s boring goal…
See Something Beautiful
8. Complete our family photo album for 2015-2019. A few years ago, I decided to create a photo album for every five years of John’s and my life together. So far I’ve done 2005-2009, 2010-2014, and this year, I’ll tackle 2015-2019. I hope to complete this goal in the first half of the year and switch over to a goal to get kid memorabilia up to date in the second half!
9. Tend to our family culture. A thriving, life-giving family culture is one of the most beautiful things to behold, I think. This is a forever goal, and a bit of a catch-all one at that, but this year I anticipate it will include taking the Birds & Bees course, navigating a new summer rhythm, trying a new rhythm for kid-parent dates, our weekend anniversary trip to Charleston this fall, and potentially starting up either monthly parent-kid meetings or weekly family meetings (maybe in the fall? You know I’ve talked about starting them for years, ha!).
10. Have fun with my friends. Honestly, I could have come up with a catchier name for this goal, but this does the trick! :) I love creating fun, memorable experiences that bring together the people I love. I have a few gatherings in the works for 2023, and they all take effort that needs to be broken down month-by-month: to start, another book swap, a potluck party, and the very first Articles Club weekend retreat!!
Though they won’t make an appearance in my monthly goals posts, I also consider the walks I plan to take with individual friends in the spirit of this goal. I already have three in my calendar for January – to chat with one about kindergarten, to chat with another about church, and to chat with a third about retreat activities. It is beautiful to get to prioritize this time with the people I love, enjoying each other’s company and figuring out life together.
Thank you, friends. Sharing my goals here, year after year and month after month, is quite possibly the most potent factor in any progress I’ve made, so thank you, as always, for being kind, listening ears! :)
On that note, I’ll be back with my January goals post and my 2023 book list soon. I’m also considering writing a much shorter post on our family goals for 2023 – what they are, how we come up with them, how they differ from my personal goals. Would that be of interest? Please feel free to let me know in the comments, or let me know if there’s one of my goals that you’d love to hear more about as the year goes on! (I already know I have more to say about goals 5, 7, and 10!). OR, tell me what YOU have planned for 2023! Have you set goals yet? I’d love to cheer you on.
This is my tenth year-in-review post. My first came in 2012, which was certainly a good year to start: it was the year we were married, the official beginning of the life of our family. Each year together since has held its share of joys and pleasures, sadness and disappointments. Looking back in intentional ways – marking the time with reflections like these – has helped me to take what I can from each year, to appreciate what it had to offer, to learn what it had to give, to acknowledge the hard and appreciate the good.
I read recently that our lives are what we give our attention to. These posts are my way of giving a little attention to the year of my life I just lived. Thank you, as always, for indulging me!
We kicked off the year by celebrating our best six year old with a day trip to the beach – it’s not often we get to celebrate a January birthday with 70-degree weather! Annie tried solid food for the first time, we got enough snow to go sledding, and we persevered through ridiculously-low temps for an outside Articles Club in the midst of another COVID wave. On the blog, I shared my 2022 goals and reading list as well as our top ten meals of 2021, thanks to my record-keeping neuroses.
In February, the COVID wave crested in our house when our littlest brought it home from daycare and we all fell one by one. Thankfully, our cases were mild, but we suffered through the awful cascade all working parents know well, of sick kids and sick parents, and days missed from school and work. We did manage to make some cute valentines in the midst of it, though :)
March saw our triumphant return to Duke Gardens after COVID restrictions were lifted, and that visit was emblematic of spring springing as a whole: my camera roll shows lots of time outside this month! March was also the month I surprised John with tickets to see Nate Bargatze, a date night that tickled me to no end. On the blog, I shared about our first weekend away as a family of five (to Black Mountain!) and the other names we considered for our children (I think this post might win for most comments of the year!).
April was a delight, and many of its pleasures were captured in our first filming of Annie in April: strawberry picking, a return to Jekyll Island for spring break, seeing our beloved babysitter in her senior year musical, a spring flower party, celebrating Easter with our church. John also buzzed his hair for the first time and Cultivate’s acquisition talks began, both momentous in their own way.
In May we finally made good on two Christmas gifts: an overnight girls’ trip to the American Girl store in Charlotte, and a train trip to Durham! Annie was dedicated at our church, Shep had his first playdate ever with his very best friend, and – in less exciting news – the drive belt on our Telluride failed, kicking off a six-week period without our family car. On the blog, I shared six favorite parts of my evening routine.
Off to the mountains! We celebrated ten years of camping with the Rays in glamping style, a highlight of the year. I got to volunteer at June’s field day before wrapping up her first year (and beginning her first summer) of elementary school. Kristin and I assisted Lisa for the day at her big Maylis shoot and I spoke about “everyday magic” to a hundred local moms. We celebrated Juneteenth with a visit to Hammocks Beach State Park, a local treasure that had been on our NC bucket list since we moved here. And on the last day of the month, Cultivate officially changed hands.
July was bookended with trips: first to Michigan, with 33 Thomas family members and Annie’s first birthday, and then to Maine, with a Sunday service led by me. Both were as golden as always (it was nearly impossible to narrow down these photos). In between, we tucked in birthday peach cobbler for John, a camping-themed birthday party for Shep, and Cultivate’s biggest photo shoot of the year. Unsurprisingly with all that action, I eked out just two blog posts in addition to my monthly goals, including my mid-year goals review.
With the tail end of our trip to Maine and a week in Connecticut, my camera roll was almost entirely blue and green in August. Looking back on the photos, I can’t believe I didn’t name the week in Maine one of my favorite trips of the year – it was packed with such sweet memories. And Connecticut, with a visit to my family’s farm and a particularly memorable date night in Mystic, wasn’t far behind. We also bought paddle boards and took them for their inaugural spin before we celebrated the first day of school. In the midst of it all, this was by far my most challenging month at work as we weathered some of the rockiest aftermath of the acquisition. (I also transitioned to part-time, which was unrelated.)
On the blog, I shared my first year baby gear picks after three kids (I promise part two is coming in 2023!).
September! Work finally kicked off on our kitchen refresh (in the works since January!); the first phase happened while John and I were in Mexico (notBermuda). Our tenth-anniversary trip was a forever memory we are so grateful for. Around the edges, we moved things in and out of our kitchen cabinets and enjoyed a really awesome soccer season for the older kids. On the blog, I wrote about family movie night and how we handled summer as two working parents.
Sickness struck again in October, as June, I, and John fell in succession to the flu. Absolutely brutal. Thankfully, the two littles, who had already gotten their flu shots because of when their well-checks fell, stayed strong! (Let this be a lesson to us all to get our flu shots early and often ;)) On a positive note, our kitchen refresh crossed the finish line (praise!) and our mountain trip to Highlands was a delight. On the blog, I shared everything we read in Articles Club this year as well as part one of my working part-time series.
We celebrated a (chilly!) major milestone for our church in November; this felt like the sweetest cap to our first year in the community. We headed to Virginia for Thanksgiving with the whole Thomas crew for a turkey trot, lots of card games, and cousin time, then snagged our tree on the way home. A few days later, Annie and I spent much of the Duke Chorale Christmas concert outside, since she could not hang in an echo-y chapel :)
I ramped things up on the blog towards the end of the year, sharing parts two and three of my work series (part four was in December) and what to include in a college care package.
December, like much of this year, was full. Honestly, when I detailed month after month for this post, the pace felt somewhat relentless – I had several moments where I had to double-check dates to make sure all that I was describing actually happened in the same month. The most beautiful thing, though? The pace of our life almost never felt relentless in the moment. Usually, it felt rather slow, ordinary, and yes, full. For that, among so many other things, I am grateful.
Friends, I know I’ve said it before, but I am SO excited for what we’ll discuss here in 2023. Thank you for being here, and for sharing so generously with me! It’s one of the delights of my life. Wishing you a healthy, happy, and abundant new year. My 2023 goals are just about ready to share, so I’ll see you soon! :)
I hope you’ve all had wonderful holidays, friends! We are laying low after a stretch of extended family visits, and it has been sweet. I’m down to the wire to squeeze in the two final blog posts of 2022 – this one and tomorrow’s year-in-review – but I wouldn’t miss them. They help me count the fruit from another precious year, and that’s an opportunity I’ll fight for even in the midst of these full, chaotic, slow post-holiday days. I hope they can serve as an opportunity for a little reflection on your own 2022, if you haven’t had a chance for it yet! In the comments, please share a few of your best memories, finds, and favorites from 2022, if you’d like. As always, I can’t wait to hear!
Best adventure, travel, or trip: Our tenth-anniversary trip Mayakoba in Mexico is an obvious frontrunner here, but our Fourth of July week in Michigan was near perfect. We were so happy to be back after a five-year hiatus and to be with so much dear family. Just looking at the photos makes me grin. We also took an unexpected day trip to the North Carolina coast for June’s January birthday since it happened to be 70 degrees, and I feel like it’s a memory we’ll be talking about for years.
Best book: I read 21 books in 2022, a bit lower than my usual, and that included a higher percentage that I was ambivalent about and one I didn’t finish (rare for me!). Still, there were gems: Hunt, Gather, Parent and The Common Rule for nonfiction, and The Evening and the Morning for fiction (with an honorable mention for my favorite read-aloud with June, The Penderwicks!).
Best TV show: The second season of OMITB was as good as the first. (Steve Martin, I will never quit you.) We also thoroughly enjoyed The Mole, a delightful, clever reboot of the early-2000s cult classic. Severanceand Reacher get honorable mentions.
Best movie: After a movie-theater drought, John and I saw Top Gun: Maverick on opening night and it did not disappoint.
Best album, song, or artist: “King of Kings” and “All Glory Be to Christ” struck a chord with me this year in the way the best worship songs do. The Arcade Fire is inextricably twined into the narrative of John’s and my relationship (Funeral was the exclusive soundtrack of our first months of dating); their newest album We was on repeat after its May debut. And “Dance With Me Tonight” is just a fun bop that was my pick-me-up song this year.
Best new podcast listen, newsletter subscribe, or blog follow: I subscribed to Laura Wifler’s newsletter earlier this year, and it’s been a once-a-month delight ever since. Laura is the co-host of the Risen Motherhood podcast, and her newsletter is meaty and packed with things she’s learning about life and faith, book recommendations, and parenting insights. I also rediscovered Erin Loechner’s blog, Design for Mankind, and though she only posts a few times a year, it is worth it to me to subscribe to make sure they land in my inbox. Her writing is elegant, poignant, searing. I love it.
Best kiddo milestone: Annie walking and “talking” has been a delight. She loves to move purposefully around the house, her hands clasped behind her back, making earnest burbles and gestures to each of us, and it does not fail to crack me up.
Best faith grower: This one is probably obvious, but joining our church. It has stretched and grown and deepened our faith even as it has renewed our faith in the local institution of the church.
Best beauty purchase: I mix one drop of these tanning drops into my moisturizer every other night and love how they even out my skin (which can sometimes run a tad too rosy) without makeup.
Best friend memory: I’ll always remember our backyard “spring party” as a sweet turning point in our friendship with two dear preschool-friend families. There’s just something about inviting people into your space that deepens relationship.
Best new tradition: This is a nascent tradition, but I can already tell it has legs: Saturday board game nights. Now that family movie night is well established on Friday nights, we thought it might be time to introduce a second themed family evening. And you know I’ve been waiting for this one! Ocean BINGO has been our most successful game so far when we include our non-reader – the illustrations are beautiful, and it really is fun for everyone to play.
Best habit you created: This isn’t necessarily a new habit, but perhaps a renewed one. I had fallen out of the habit of biking with June to school, but with the start of her first-grade year, we picked it back up and it has been the sweetest bookend to our days. We biked well into November, and look forward to getting back at it once the temps rise a bit!
Favorite blog post written: This post with tips for the fourth trimester is dear to me, because it contains hard-earned wisdom I’ve been grateful to pass on to many friends offline, and am now glad to have it recorded here, too – and while it was fresh. Any time I’m able to capture my love and gratitude for John is a privilege. And this four-part series on working part-time as a mom helped me process a big transition in my life. I’m sure it’s a series I’ll be returning to for years to come.
Best life or mom hack: For years, I’ve used the monthly calendar in my PowerSheets as my sole planner. Our family’s life together is pretty simple, and, combined with my trusty Word to-do list, it got the job done. This fall, however, I’ve started to transfer the contents of each week to CWM’s weekly notepad on Sunday, and it has been so helpful to have more space to see each day’s happenings at a glance and to jot reminders and to dos in one central place as they pop up. I just wish the notepad included full columns for Saturday and Sunday but (spoiler alert!) the next version we print should include them!
Best mama moment: There were so many favorite moments, remarkable in their ordinariness and preciousness, but our girls’ trip to Charlotte and the American Girl store is a very sweet memory. I love spending time with our kids, and love seeing who they are becoming.
Best home improvement: Another obvious winner here: our kitchen refresh, which was a decade in the making and has transformed our entire downstairs. I am beyond grateful and still somewhat in shock that it’s complete. But if I could pick one small detail that has sparked a surprising amount of joy, it would be the wall clock we added in the midst of the renovation. I can see it from anywhere in the main room, and it has smoothed out a pain point I almost didn’t notice: having to reach for my phone whenever I wanted to check the time. Adding the clock has made it so that I can go phone-free more often, which I love.
Best little luxury you’ve enjoyed:Fairlife chocolate milk. John turned us onto it after reading that Katie Ledecky drinks chocolate milk in the cool-down pool after swimming a race, and so naturally we’ve adopted it as our post-Peloton reward of choice. Yes, I’m saying we’re basically the same as Katie Ledecky.
As always, I’m ending the year so grateful for the delights, big and small, that filled our year. I’ll be sharing more in my year-in-review post coming tomorrow, but in the meantime, please do share: what are some of your “bests” from 2022? Can’t wait to hear!
