Vacation's Over

This morning I was talking to my mom and she, in her wisdom, may have hinted that I've been taking a break long enough and need to get off my duff and start living my life again. She didn't say it like that, but I got the picture pretty clearly enough. My initial reaction was that my baby is only four weeks old and I still have plenty of "vacation time" left before I have to get back to a normal life. Well, I was thinking about it for the rest of the morning and I decided that my mom is right. It's high time I start getting into a productive routine. I decided to make a list of goals for myself to get back into a healthier life. Before making the goals I made some qualifications: they had to be only about my well being (the house can wait until later), they had to be achievable in my mind (so no mini triathlons). Here are the goals I've decided on so far:

• Do at least 30 minutes of physical activity daily (notice I did not say exercise, since I for sure wouldn't stick to it if that word was used)
• Get up for the day when my husband does
• Make the bed when I get up (this may seem like it's about doing housework, but really making the bed is a literal way for me to say to myself, "OK I'm starting my day productively")
• Find a sewing project to work on just for fun
• Do at least 20 minutes of scripture study/gospel reading daily
• Read the Sunday school lessons before class each week

The list isn't complete though. I decided that I need to add some mental exercising into it, but I'm not sure how to do that. Should it be that I need to read some non-fiction book? Should it be that I learn something about a new topic? I'm not sure how to proceed in that direction because my learning has been so structured from the outside up until this point in my life. I would love it if it had something to do with music, but lately I've just been so frustrated with self-directed learning in that area. I feel that I need a teacher to really be successful. I don't think that everyone needs a teacher, but I think that I definitely do.

Also what I need is a way to check my progress and reward myself. This may seem silly, but without a reward I'm pretty sure I wont stick to these goals (even if they do seem easy right now). My only problem is that I'm not sure how to reward myself. I don't want it to be food related since part of my goals is to be healthier and my food reward would be something like cinnamon rolls. It can't cost very much either so I can't say that I'll buy something for myself. Perhaps I'm just not creative enough, but I'm having a really difficult time coming up with a reward. Any ideas? I'll just have to think about it longer I guess.