2016

I love New Years. We don't ever do anything spectacular (especially since we have little kids that need to be home in their beds at 830pm or they are a wreck for a few days). We go out to dinner and then come home with Ben & Jerry's for the adults in our house. We usually rent a movie and try to make it to midnight. Last night I failed at that miserably. I fell asleep on the couch at 1030 and hubs finally sent me to bed at 11. I was totally fine with that. It's been a long week after a busy 3 day long Christmas and then heading back to work and we have a few projects this weekend that we intend to tackle/complete so off to bed I went.

Back to why I love New Years...
I love a fresh start, change, goals, lists, plans, promise, hope. I love having things to look forward to, to work towards and I love the feeling of accomplishment when you get to check things off that list.

One of the things that was on my goal/resolution list last year was to begin blogging again. I just didn't get there. I had a long list of things I wanted to make a priority and I checked almost all of them off and this one just wasn't top of the list. I am totally fine not accomplishing every single thing on my resolution list. It's all about prioritizing the things you'd like to see yourself get to and starting at the top.

I love sitting down on New Years Day with hubs and talking our family goals, plans for our house (project list), travel goals/plans for the year, marriage goals, personal goals/plans, and planning our year together. I love sitting down in December and looking back and reflecting on the past year and checking things off our resolution list from the past year.

There are rough spots in each year. I know there have been days throughout 2015 when hubs and I have looked at each other and about wanted to cry, or run away, or crawl in a hole, but when you sit at the end and look around at all you have and how healthy you are & what you have accomplished for the year it's hard to focus on the rough days. It's so much easier to focus on the growth and progress of the year and all the blessings you have been given.

My personal focus for 2016 is JOY. I want to spend a few min each morning praying that I see the joy in the day and a few min and the end of each day reflecting on all the blessings from the day. There will be hard days (we have a 4 & 2 year old for heaven's sakes) but when you make it a point to focus on the good, hopefully the attitude will change about the tough parts.

My personal goals for this year are:

1. Health- focusing on making better/healthier meals for my family & making exercise a priority and consistent habit
2.  Quality Time- putting the phone down and engaging with my family/friends/housework etc.
3. Mindset- I am a tired working Mama and most days I come home from work and make dinner and feed the family and I'm DONE. It's a mindset not a physical restriction. If I just keep going I won't focus on it. Keep picking up from the days mess so it doesn't get out of control throughout the week, keep moving and get my daily work out in before sitting down etc.
4. Marriage- our marriage is awesome, but I'm guessing that's the case for most people until the wheels fall off. I refuse to be that couple. We are going to really focus this year on growing and improving our marriage. In this phase of life/parenthood it's easy to just go through the motions and fall in bed together each  night and say "we survived another day" and move on to tomorrow. We want to beat that feeling of mundane and stop waiting for the next little getaway to relax and recharge and enjoy each other.
5. Sleep Less- we enjoy sleep a lot around here and I think that's been our issue with "I don't have time". We need to slowly start training our bodies to require less sleep and still function appropriately.

I am not blogging as much to remember moments of our family, but more for me to be able to write and process and reflect. Sometimes I read Facebook posts or articles and I have all these thoughts about them but no place to filter these thoughts. This may become this place.

-M