Happy New Year!

I'm back!

Well, technically- I still feel like I'm in the "between holidays fog",
but I am posting, so that's a start.

Hopefully you have a fun New Year's Eve planned- it's sounding like we're going to be ringing in 2009 in a very laid back and quiet style 'round these parts.

But, that's okay too.

Have you made your New Year's Resolutions yet?

We have!
That's become a tradition that I like- even if half the time at least half the items on the list never make it to completion.

In the last couple of years I've tried just picking one or two things
to work on for the year. I think doing that helps me
actually meet my own resolutions better.

Here's what a couple of our main goals are for 2009:

1.) Finish last year's goal of getting the entire house organized.
This got a good start in 2008, and we're hoping to finish up in 2009.
The biggest accomplishment we saw towards this goal in 2008
was that we really pared down our "stuff." I have to admit, I was
the worst culprit when it came to having too much stuff- most of
it was piled in our basement (to the point we couldn't even walk
through it all!), and most of it was preschool/daycare related.
I hadn't used any of it in the five years we'd been married, so
I "bit the bullet" so to speak and did my best to just let it go.
Half of it was thrown out, and the other half was put on the
annual daycare garage sale. A lot of what went on
the sale was bought, so this summer I'll try
getting rid of the rest of it-
if it doesn't go it's getting thrown out.
Anyway, to complete this goal has turned into more work
than we expected. We thought we realized, when we
bought our house, that it didn't offer much for storage.
While working towards this goal in 2008 we realized
that the no storage problem is much worse than we
originally thought. So, in order to finish this one up, we're
going to have to find ways to creatively come up with
better storage from what we already have, or buy/build
better storage solutions. In order to have an organized home
every item needs a place to be kept. We don't have many "places"
at this point. Because of this, our organizational goal
leads into a kind of "sub-goal": finishing the remodeling
that we've started. Our kitchen, for example, has been
unfinished since 2004. And we've been waiting to build
medicine cabinets since, hmm, 2006? I don't know exactly-
it's just been too long.
Ideally this organizational goal will be met by the
time we finally have our first child.

And,

2.) Create a much healthier family diet.
Both Pete and I have slowly gained a bit of weight over the
last five years. Well, first I lost a lot, then gained some back, so
I'd like to get back to that weight that I felt the best at. We
found a site that calculates your BMI, and discovered we're
not as bad off as we'd feared- but we are still setting
goal weights. I'll admit, I'll probably end up doing most
of the work on this one- smaller portion sizes, smaller
serving plates, healthier meals will end up being up to
me as the family "cook" for the most part. But we've also
decided to find a way to commit to exercising (anything from
running to walking to an actual work out that will get our
heart rates up) 30- 60 min. a day, five days a week.
We both got miserably sick the day after Christmas and
were couch bound for three days, so what did we do?
Watched "Super Size Me". We made this resolution
immediately after. Need I say more?

Obviously, one of the most important goals we have
(but don't have a lot of control over) is:

3.) To have our first child.

Wish us luck this year. :)

Here's wishing you and yours a wonderful year in 2009.

Happy New Year!