Only 8 more days of work!!

Only 8 more days of being away from my sweet baby girl!!! August 9th will be my last day of employment with the Federal gov't. I can't wait to be home with Miss Clara every single day!!! I think its going to help Clara a TON to have a consistent schedule every day with the same routine. We've had melt downs the last 3 nights starting around 5:30 till bedtime mostly because she is tired and life is hectic. Several people have asked me why I decided I wanted to stay home with Clara and of course there are a lot of reasons but two main ones. 1) I want to be the primary influence in my child's life. When Clara is all grown up and leaves home I want to be able to say that I did everything possible to help her grow, learn and know the love of Jesus. For the past 2 months I have seen Clara for approximately 2.5 hours/day during the week. How can I be the primary person influencing her life when she only seems me for such a short amount of time each day! And 2) I don't want to miss a single moment! When I first went back to work, Brian told Kristi, our babysitter, not to tell me if Clara did a new milestone while in her care because it would probably break my heart. As far as I know, I am the first person to ever see her roll over and if thats not really the case, I'd rather be ignorant of it. I don't want to miss any of the firsts! I want to be the one there to see her and cheer her on. I want her to know how pround I am! There are also other less important reasons like: our house is total chaos all week, I'm stressed out, Brian is stressed out, we are both sleep deprived, we both feel guilty for not spending enough time with her, the house is a mess because we are both too tired to clean, we are eating junk because I don't have time to cook and I definitely don't have time to prepare and pack lunches. When we do have free time right now, it is spent doing one of the things I already mentioned rather than spending time with each other and keeping our marriage strong. So for all of those reasons and more, Brian and I have decided that being a stay at mom is what is best for our family. I think he is as excited about it as I am! I've been keeping a couple of lists of some of the things I want to accomplish once I'm a SAHM and I thought I would share my list to keep myself accountable and not get lazy or too caught up in the day to day things.

Day to Day Accomplishments
1)Have a consistent daily quiet time
2)Get back to couponing to save our family money
3)Go have lunch with Brian once a week
4)Serve others in our church and in the community
5)Have a healthy dinner on the table when Brian gets home from work at least 3 days a week
6)Do age appropriate activities with Clara at least twice a week
7)Do some form of exercise at least 3 days a week
8)Clean one room in the house each day (we have 6 rooms so that means I get Sunday off)
9)Play board game w/ Brian 1 night each week rather than watching TV

Bucket List
1)Cook new recipes that I have never made before and that are increasingly more difficult
2)Crochet some new projects (starting w/ another baby cocoon since I sold my old one)
3)Do some of the things I've pinned on pinterest
4)Do some crafting projects - felt flower hair bows for Clara
5)One more attempt at using my embroidery machine - if successful, complete baby shower gifts that have been half way done for 2 years, and if not successful, sell machine.
6)Do a photo shoot with Clara every couple of months
7)Become a photoshop expert
8)Make something with my sewing machine (which hasn't seen the light of day in a few years)
9)Organize drawers, closets, cabinets, bookshelves, etc.

Goodness, just reading that list makes me exhausted. Speaking of, here's a picture of sleeping beauty.