anyway. long story short. i'm a procrastinator when it comes to goals. ironic much? yeah. but here i am. setting goals for the new year. and i'm actually really excited about it. you see, i may have thought about the whole picture thing last minute, but i've been mulling around some other goals in my head for a few days now. i didn't want them to be the same goals that i make every year though. you know the ones - "oh, i want to eat healthier this year" or "i really want to workout more" and those lame generic kind that are only about losing weight. yes, i do have a goal of working out 3 times a week {gotta put my gym membership to use. those things are expeeeensive!}, i would love to lose 25 pounds {don't you dare tell me that's too much. i've had a few people say that already and to them i say that's a bunch of poppycock. i know what my body is capable of and i know it has 25 pounds to lose.}, and i want to eat a serving of vegetables at at least one meal a day, {yeah, it's that hard for me to remember to eat veggies that i have to make a goal out of it.}, but i also wanted to try to do some things that were actually meaningful to my soul. so, after much thought and pondering, here's what i came up with:
5 - make thursdays laundry day. back when we were living in santa maria, zach and i were talking about household chores and i told him how much i loathed doing dishes. i think i was forced to do them one too many times growing up and now i can't stand it. not just the loading/unloading either. i can't stand the smell. nothing makes me want to dry heave more than a waft of warm, ranch dressing smelling steam, blowing in my face. blech. it gives me the shivers just thinking about it. anyway, i digress. i told him i hated doing dishes and he said, "that's funny, because that's how i feel about doing laundry!". {really, i think he hates doing laundry because he has to fold everything perfectly to air force standards, so it takes him an hour to fold one basket. it's okay though. i think it's kind of cute. ;)} so, we made a deal that from then until we die, i would be in charge of laundry if he would be in charge of dishes. it actually works really well! besides me having to do the part where i clean and fold the laundry - you know. the main part? i'm so bad at it. it drives me crazy. so, i've designated thursdays as laundry day. really, any day could be laundry day, i guess. i am a stay at home mom, after all, but for some reason thursday stuck out in my mind. chances are, i will forget, so since i'm telling you, feel free to send me a gentle reminder. my husband will be ever so grateful. ;)
4 - send a birthday card to every member in my immediate family {sorry extended family. i love you, but that's just so. many. people.} i've wanted to do this for years, but always end up accidentally forgetting someone and then i think that i can't keep sending them to everyone else because that person will think i don't love them, but i can't send out a card late because they will know i forgot and that won't make them feel very special either, so i end up bagging the whole idea and by the end of the year, i kick myself because i know how much it means to me to get a card on my birthday and i want other people to feel that special too. whew. longest run-on sentence ever. basically, i would love to send a gift to everybody i know for their birthday, but when you add up the gift and postage and times that by like a hundred relatives? talk about expensive. so, birthday cards will have to do. i'm determined to make it happen.
3 - plan a budget for every single penny that comes into our bank account and stick to it. to say i love budgeting is an understatement. i looooove it. i've always been the money manager in our marriage. zachary is still a part of it and i bounce ideas off of him frequently, but finances stress him out a little bit more than they do me, so i've been happy to take charge. i've written a budget for 99% of every paycheck we've ever received {i think i missed one} and it has helped us so much in reducing debt. my only problem is that i write the budget, pay the essential bills immediately, and then kind of shove all sticking-to-the-budgetness out the window. {let's just say that retail therapy is real and i've fallen victim to it multiple times.} each paycheck, zachary and i get $30 each that is ours to spend on whatever the heck we want. my goal is to pay off the bills and rather than seeing left over money that's free game to supplement my 'fun money' for the new pair of pants i've had my eye on, i have to save up for as long as it takes to buy them with my 'fun money' alone. it's sounds like an easy concept, right? i'm terrible at it. we'll see how it goes.
2 - going along with that, i'd really like to bump up our savings. i saw this picture floating around facebook last week and i immediately saved it:
isn't that amazing?? That's almost $1400 without breaking a sweat. I figured that if we do that along with what we already have allotted to go into savings each month, we will be set.
and finally,
1 - blog more here and less there. okay, maybe not so much less there, considering i've posted like twice in the last two weeks, but when i sat back and thought about it, my ultimate goal is to make it so adelaide only knows my work blog exists because i tell her it does. not because she sees me working on it all the time. there's something you should know about me: i'm kind of an addict. to all sorts of things. junk food. sleeping. cheesy netflix shows. you name it. and as much as it pains me to say it, i am also addicted to my computer. i have a tendency that when i'm working on a blog post, i immerse my whole self into it until it's done and when something interrupts me, i tend to get a little bit annoyed. that something has been my phone, copper, zach, adelaide, or heck, even needing to eat! it's a little out of hand. so, i told myself that i can only blog when addi is sleeping or when zachary is home, so he can play with her. and even then, i have an hour {unless it's saturday, then i get two} where i can work as hard as possible and whatever i get done is great, but once the clock is up, the laptop gets closed. i'm sick of wasting so much time on my computer and i look forward to days when i can fully focus on adelaide without feeling guilty that i haven't written a post or made a recipe. oh, the joys of being your own boss. i'm actually the most excited about this resolution. the last thing i want is to put my family second to something that is just going to bring in a little extra income = satisfy temporary happiness. the whole point of me working from home is to be able to spend time with adelaide. it kind of defeats the purpose if i'm working for 8 hours and ignoring her anyway! my reasoning behind wanting to blog more here though, is because this blog has been like a journal to me. we have so many good times shared on here and i'm a little bit sad that in looking over the last year, i only have a handful of posts to read. especially since it's been such a life changing year. my goal is to blog so much that it probably annoys the crap out of people, but at least i can have every moment documented and then i want to print it out and make a book out of it. so, sorry in advance for the bombardment of posts. i'm sure you'll get over it.
so, there you have it. my top resolutions for the year. i've never been good at keeping resolutions, but i want 2014 to be the year for change. wish me luck!
-the mrs.
p.s. feel free to share your resolutions! i love hearing what people are working on. sometimes it motivates me to do things i wouldn't have thought of otherwise!
