By the Numbers: 2018

I've been doing this post for the last couple of years and try to track the same things. It's interesting to compare! Let's get to it: 2018 in numbers!

<<< READING 
Total books read: 43 -- 16 nonfiction / 27 fiction 

Rereads: 5 (I started the Chronicles of Narnia series again and am loving it!)

Favorite nonfiction: It's not for everyone, but I devoured What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami (it is also a short little book, so that helped how fast I read it)

Favorite fiction: so many good reads this year! I'll pick Murder at Brightwell by Ashely Weaver just because it's rare I find a clean murder mystery that's not insanely cheesy

Book review posts published in 2018 --> Check these out, because I read some great books this year! ONE // TWO // THREE // FOUR // FIVE

<<< SOCIAL MEDIA
Blog posts written: 71 (I just keep going lower and lower each year, guys)

Favorite blog posts:
Favorite Baby/Toddler Products for Ages 0-2
I'm a Different Mom than I Thought I'd Be
A Beautiful Inheritance
Fragile. Handle with Care
Mothering with Open Hands
(Just realized I used the exact same photo to open the bottom two posts! Oops)

Tweets: I don't even want to spend time doing this math... I maybe tweeted 3 or 4 times all year. I used to love Twitter, but the Trump/Clinton Election killed it for me, and I have never gotten back into it since.

Instagram posts: my number on this is impossible to count because I just went through an deleted a bunch of photos. This might be a topic for another day. Anyway, I guess I can't do the math on this one either.

<<< RUNNING
Races run: 2 (Thunder 1-mile fun run in February and OKC half marathon in April)
Miles run: I didn't keep track this year. Wow, this By the Numbers post is extremely lame! I apparently didn't keep track of anything LOL. 

I ran fairly consistently off and on (did that make sense? haha.) Anyway, I didn't ever take my watch with me, so I have honestly no idea how many miles I ran. Maybe 200? 

<<< TRAVEL
US States visited: 3 - Texas, Kansas, and Massachusetts 
US States visited that I'd never been to before: 0
Trips to Texas: 10! 
Plane flights: 5

Travel posts: Boston // Liverpool, UK // York, UK // Cambridge, UK // London

<<< BUDGETING
Total spent traveling to England: $4,438 MORE ON THAT HERE
Total spent on gas (for the year): $1,509.22
Average spent on groceries each month: $357 (I actually thought this would be higher! Not too bad!)

Average amount put into savings each month: $319 (Does not include the small percentage that goes automatically from my paycheck into my Roth account or the small monthly amount we put in R's and J's 529 college savings accounts)

_____

I really do mean a huge and giantly sincere thank you to everyone who has followed along this year! I hope that even though my posts are more spaced out these days, you still enjoy reading and feel connected in some way to this little space of mine. I'm pretty much an open book and happy to answer any questions or consider writing a full post on any topic if you ever want to leave a comment or shoot me an email! Here's to 2019!

By the Numbers: 2017

This is my fifth year to do a year in numbers! I started in 2013 and have tried to track basically the same things. It's so interesting to compare year to year. Here is my 2017 in numbers.

<<< READING 
Total books read: 21 -- 12 nonfiction / 9 fiction
Rereads: 0
Favorite nonfiction: Spaceman
Favorite fiction: Dark Matter

<<< SOCIAL MEDIA
Blog posts written: 112 (The lowest number of posts in a year since I started my blog)
Tweets: 91 (I largely quit Twitter this year but I still keep it and use it very occasionally)
Instagram posts: 173
Vlogs: 2 (I posted our Branson travel video here. And I also totally forgot about the Currently Vlog I made! You can see it here. Ha!)

<<< RUNNING
Races run: 0
Miles run: I didn't keep track this year, but maybe 100-150 miles? I'm probably being generous.

<<< TRAVEL
US States visited: 3 - Texas, Missouri, Arkansas
US States visited that I'd never been to before: 1 - Arkansas
Trips to Texas: 8 (same number as 2014, 2015, and 2016!)
Plane flights: 0

<<< BUDGETING
Total spent on gas (for the year): $1,208.35
Average spent on groceries each month: $322
Average amount put into savings each month: $376 (Does not include the small percentage that goes automatically from my paycheck into my Roth account or the small monthly amount we put in R's and J's 529 college savings accounts)

________________________

Thank you to all who followed along with The Lady Okie in 2017! I felt like it was a pretty good year for me. Of course adding J to our family is THE highlight of our year. If you missed his birth story, you can start here with Part 1.

I posted a lot of feelings this past year about motherhood and pregnancy and working motherhood. Sometimes I get embarrassed to think that I'm sharing so many personal feelings in this online space, but hopefully my posts can be an encouragement or help to some of you. That said, I try to not be dramatic and emotional all the time. My confession session posts are always big hits! 

I'm not going to share a list of favorite posts from last year, but I've tried to make it easy to search this blog by topics across the top menu and also with tags at the bottom of my posts, so feel free to click around any time.

Have a wonderful and restful weekend. Cheers to more numbers in 2018!

By the Numbers: 2016

Happy MLK day for my US friends! I am so thankful to be off work today and you know what that means... I get to spend all day with R and I'm one happy mama.

This will be the fourth year that I've recapped my year in numbers. I try to record the same things each time, and it's so interesting to compare year to year! If you're interested, check out: By the Numbers: 2013 / By the Numbers: 2014 / By the Numbers 2015

< READING >

Total books read: 27

Fiction vs. Nonfiction - 20 fiction / 7 nonfiction

Source - all print copies (no ebooks or audio books)

Ratings
*5 stars
Echo in the Darkness by Francine Rivers
What Alice Forgot by Laine Moriarty
Prayer by Philip Yancy
The Kindness Challenge by Shaunti Feldhahn

*4 stars
Because You'll Never Meet Me by Leah Thomas
The Lake House by Kate Morton
This Is Your Brain on Sports by L. Jon Wertheim and Sam Sommers
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
Isaac’s Storm by Erik Larson
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
The Secret Place by Tana French
Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys
City of Thieves by David Benioff
Congratulations, By the Way by George Saunders
The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith 
Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner

*3 stars
Popular by Maya Van Wagenen
Better than Before by Gretchen Rubin
Big Little Lies by Laine Moriarty
The Dark Ferret Society by Emily Humphreys
The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
Louise May Alcott by Susan Cheevers

*2 stars
The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave
The Midnight Dress by Karen Foxlee

Book review roundup posts here, here, and here.

< SOCIAL MEDIA >

Blog posts written: 125
*A few favorites from 2016: 
How Not to Grow Your Blog
5 Things That Make Me Uncomfortable
nothing quite like it at all (a poem for R on Mother's Day)
Just Yesterday (written on the eve of R's first birthday)
We Still Do (about marriage)
Idols (written in November after the presidential election)

Blog posts tagged "working mom": 15
*A few favorites: Voices, Full, Thankful for Daycare: One Year Later

Tweets: 1,531 (about 300 less than 2015)

Instagram photos posted: 160 (just about half as many as 2015)

< RUNNING >

Races run: 2 (Red Bud 10k pushing R in the stroller! & half marathon #10) 

Miles logged: 250(ish) - about the same as 2015.

< TRAVEL >

US states visited: 4 - Texas, Virginia (part 1/ part 2), Illinois, Missouri 

(Virginia travel video here // Chicago travel video here)

Trips to Texas: 8 - same amount as both 2015 and 2014! Weird!

Plane flights: 11 - all with R, earliest at around 7 months old (*pats self on back)

Number of times our plane was delayed and it was the last flight of the day so we had to wait a day and take the first flight out the next morning: 2 (having to do that with a baby is super fun). First was coming home from Virginia. The second was coming home from Chicago.

*tips for flying with a baby here.

< BUDGETING >

Total spent on clothes (for me out of my blow money): $340

Total spent on gas: $1,135 

Total spend on hair bows for R: I don't want to talk about it. (Related: my photo essay, The Demise of the Hair Bow)

Average monthly spent on groceries: $267

Average monthly savings: $510 (this is about half as much per month as we saved in 2015, sadly. But if we didn't have the cost of daycare we would have done pretty good! That $510 does not include the [small] percentage that goes automatically from my paycheck into my Roth account or the monthly amount we put in R's 529 account. We do what we can with what we have.)

< OTHER >

Birthday parties: 2
R turned 1 // My family surprised me for my 30th birthday
(Don't worry about Jordan. I threw him a surprise party for his 30th last year, and it was awesome.)

House projects: 
Mounted basket storage in the guest bathroom
Hung shelf in the master bathroom
Stained and painted shelf in the laundry room
Around the house: one-year update

Thank you so much for following along this year! On to 2017!

By the Numbers: 2015

^^^A sunset from this year. No filter.

By some miracle, I actually hit my goal of reading 20 books this year. Admittedly, 20 is not a very large number for me, but considering the fact that I had a baby in August, I'm very okay with it. My final two reads of 2015 were rereads! I am all about rereading my favorite books, and I definitely ended the year on a high note after more than a few duds (find me on Goodreads to read my reviews).

The last two books I read were rereads, but everything else was new. 

Of the 18 books I read this year for the first time, here are my two favorites:

All the Light We Cannot See. A-mazing. I know some people who didn't like this one, and while normally I'm all about personal preference, I just don't get how anyone could read this and not love it. It's so good.

The Husband's Secret. This one is a good travel book for reading on a plane (which is exactly where I read it). It was interesting but not super intense, so it didn't need a lot of concentration.

Here were my top two duds:

The Girl on the Train. I'm sorry, but I could not handle this one. I know it was all the rage, but just no. I literally wanted the main character to get HIT BY THE TRAIN so the book would end and I could move on with my life.

Faithful Place. This is one of Tana French's murder/mystery books, and it was by far my least favorite of the four I've read. I found the story pointless and just kind of wished I hadn't wasted my time.

see what I read in 2014

Last year I logged every single mile I ran in Daily Mile. This year I didn't do nearly as well logging miles, and I ran a ton without my Garmin watch, so it's hard to say exactly how far I ran this year. I logged officially over 200 miles, and then there's a bunch that weren't logged, so maybe 250 miles this year, I'm guessing. Not too bad! I ran consistently until 24 weeks pregnant (and ran 2 half marathons at 10 and 18 weeks!), and then I took a break until 6 weeks post baby. I've blogged about post-partem running here and also some here if you're interested.

In 2016, I have one race lined up so far: the 2016 Oklahoma City Half Marathon in April. This will be my 10th half marathon! I also would really like to run a few local 5ks, and there is a 10k in early April that I might do as well. I hope to find a way to fit running into my schedule but also be realistic about it, and I plan on keeping you updated on any progress!

Blog posts written: 129 
That's the lowest of any year since I started blogging in 2010.

Here are a few favorites:
Why We Tithe
An Elbow to the Face
Then the Cops Showed Up
He Saw Us
5 Things I'm Obsessed With
The Fear
R's Birth Story

Tweets: 1,867
Fun fact: that's about 1,000 tweets less than each of the previous two years!

Instagram photos posted: 300

US States visited: 3 (5 if you count layovers)

Atlanta (on a layover), California (on a layover), Illinois, Texas, Utah

Trips to Texas: 8 (same as last year!)

Stamps in my passport: 1 (Bahamas)

Jordan got 2! He went to Nicaragua on a missions trip and the Bahamas

So, I actually totally forgot about our Bahamas trip until I was putting this recap together. 

How could I forget this happening?! 

You can also see more pics and read about our Atlantis adventures here.

Spent on gas: $1,070.45

Spent on clothes (just for me): $222.63
Average monthly spent on groceries: $275

Average monthly savings: $1,113.21* 

*Our monthly savings is a bit lower than last year, but we did have a baby, so there's that. Our savings will be even lower next year now that we have to start paying for daycare, so we will see what happens!

compare to 2014

30x30 list items completed: 3

I am really excited about this! 
I didn't think I crossed anything off this year until I was looking at my list. 
Here's what I did:

-Buy a bedroom dresser
-Organize my recipes
And the big kahuna: 
-BUY A HOUSE. That happened.

Also....

I cannot forget to mention the fact that I spent the majority of this year pregnant. From announcing Baby Bum on the blog to sharing a few baby bump updates to writing out her birth story, it's been a heck of a ride. Everyone talks about it, and I've discovered for myself that it's cliche but true: you just cannot imagine the love you feel for your baby. I look at her and cry because she's so beautiful and she's for me to keep! I still can't believe it.

I'm looking forward to settling in a bit, both with our baby and in our new house and in our new routine with me back at work. I have been so incredibly blessed, and I am so thankful for all God has entrusted to me.

Thanks for sticking with me this month as I took some time off from the blog. I hope to get back to posting 2x a week in 2016. I realize that I can't expect you to keep coming here with such sporadic posting, and I definitely do not want to just pop in once a month with an R update. My plan is to try and post every Tuesday and Friday, just so you will have some idea of when to check back for new material. Of course, my time with R will become even more precious once I'm not hanging out with her all day every day, so blogging will not be my main priority. However, I do love it and want to continue to share pictures and happenings. It's fun to look back on for me, and I hope it is fun for you to read!

Here's to 2016! I hope you have a safe and fun New Year's.

p.s. By the Numbers: 2013 / By the Numbers: 2014

By the Numbers: 2014

Books read: 30
Pages read: 10,868

Book reviews written on the blog: 4
//Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
//The Paris Wife
//The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains
//Gone Girl

*Check out my favorite and least favorites of 2014

Miles ran: 582

Number of workouts: 140
Time spent running: 88 hours and 8 minutes

Donuts burned while running: 370
Pounds burned: 19

Races completed: 4 
(10k [6-min PR!], 5k with my mom, Tough Mudder, Electric Run 5k)
New pairs of running shoes bought: 2

US States visited: 8 <-- Double from last year!
California, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Texas, Oklahoma (Tulsa x2), Utah

Trips to Texas: 8 = 2,976 roundtrip miles = ~88 gallons of gas = $265. 
Worth every penny.

Stamps in my passport: 1 (Nicaragua)  **See all Nicaragua posts here.**

Blog posts written: 135
Tweets: 2,864 (Fun fact: In 2013 I tweeted 2,860 times. I find that very strange.)

Most Popular Posts
1) How to Cook Fresh Green Beans
2) Blog Talk #1: How Do You Get So Many Comments? (Pretty much all my Blog Talk posts were popular ones)
3) 5 Other Things Other People Like That I Don't
4) Tips for Running Long on the Treadmill
5) The Process of Blogging Shown in GIFs

Spent on gas: $1,645.13
Spent on entertainment (date nights): $1,418.59
Spent on clothing/shoes/jewelry/misc (for myself): $421.78
Spent on race registrations: $200
Average monthly savings: $1,689

TV seasons watched on Netflix: One Tree Hill seasons 3 & 4 (don't judge me; I already judge myself enough), Gilmore Girls seasons 6 & 7, Psych, New Girl seasons 2 & 3, The Mentalist season 5

30x30 list items completed: 4
1) Host a dinner party
2) Organize my recipes
3) Run a Tough Mudder
4) Do 3 unassisted pull-ups (click for video proof!)

*In case you're interested, 2013 by the numbers

By the Numbers: 2013

Books read: 25

Pages read: 10,676
Book reviews written: 4

The Poisonwood Bible | The Forgotten Garden | The Distant Hours | Name of the Wind

Miles ran: 860.8

Time spent running: 133 hours + 16 minutes = 5.55 days

Donuts burned while running: 571

Races completed: 3 5ks | 3 half marathons | 2 full marathons | 1 25k
New pairs of running shoes bought: 2

States visited: Illinois, Texas, Minnesota, Missouri

Trips to Illinois: 3

Trips to Texas: 10 = 3,720 roundtrip miles = ~106 gallons of gas = $330
Trips to the lake: 2 | Hours spent sitting in mega hammock: too few

Blog posts written: 206
Tweets: 2,860
Number of times a tweet of mine has been displayed on the OKC twitter billboard: 2
this one + this one

Most Popular Posts (according to page views)
Easy Crockpot BBQ Chicken (14,500)
10 Reasons Running a Marathon is Like Having a Baby
How to Start Running: Part 1
How to Cook Fresh Green Beans
Love Bingo: A Bridal Shower Game

Most Popular Posts (according to number of comments)
An Exciting Life Announcement Unrelated to Pregnancy (82)
5 Things Other People Like that I Don't (63)
Hello, Short Hair (51)
5 Blog Posts I Usually Skip (49)
What Makes All the Difference (42)
When You Decide to Love Anyway: jordan + amanda year 2.5 (41)

Spent on eating out: $1,200 | Average of $100/month
*Does not include gift cards and ONLY includes eating out for dinner, not lunch
Spent on clothing and jewelry (for myself): $245.48*
*This number is based on what I wrote down on my monthly budgeting sheets. Does not include things I bought with gift cards and birthday money
Spent on race registrations: $262.74
Average monthly savings: $985 ( <-- not too bad considering I didn't have a full-time job for 8 months of the year!)

TV seasons watched on Netflix: 13

Downton Abbey season 3 | The Mentalist seasons 3 & 4 | Sherlock seasons 1 & 2 | Alias seasons 1-5 (you might say I binge-watched this one) | Heroes season 1 | One Tree Hill seasons 1 & 2 (I'm only a little ashamed)

Other TV seasons watched that I own: Top Chef*, Friends, Castle, New Girl
*Any other Top Chef fans out there? I am currently obsessed!

Resolutions completed: 4 (Read about them here)

Number of times I thought I lost my engagement ring: 1
Number of times Jordan thought he lost his wedding ring: 1
Number of flat tires: 3

Jobs held: 5 (2 full time and 3 part time)