New Year, New Goals!

Wow, January is already gone! It was a whirlwind of a month. Over the week of new year's, I got the privilege of staying home with the kids for an entire week while Dustin was at work. I got to take them to tennis camp, out to lunch for burgers, downtown to let Caden drive his off-road RC truck at a BMX track and just hang out with them. I'm not going to lie, there were definitely challenges, but at the end of the day and week, we had a blast. I'm so very lucky to have those two kids in my life. Dustin passed a huge milestone at work, he just had his 15 year anniversary which is hard for me to even imagine. But at the same time I'm getting ready to pass my 5 year anniversary. It really is amazing how fast time goes.

January is a time to reflect on the past year and make a plan for the coming year. I realize it's already February, but I thought it would be good to at least put into words what our goals for the coming year are.

• Work on getting fit again
• Refining our budget and sticking to it
• If things work out as planned, my student loans will be 100% paid off by the end of the year!!
• Come up with a real savings goal to achieve by the end of this year
• Making our house feel even more like home
• Keep up the flower beds better this year to keep our house pretty
• Come up with our official plan to expand our back patio
• Work on a deeper relationship with God

One of the things Dustin and I really have enjoyed doing together is road biking. It's a great way to get outdoors and get great exercise. Over most of last year, life just kind of happened and we didn't ride much. In 2012, we rode a 52 mile ride, and also had no issues signing up and finished a 43 mile group ride. We were riding anywhere from 3-4 days a week and would routinely ride 25 miles on the weekends. We've ridden 3 times since the beginning of the year, 21 miles, 14 miles and 16 miles. We are still quite a ways off from what we were doing over a year ago, but you have to start somewhere.

I would talk about budget stuff, but giving actual numbers would be a bit tacky. The main theme here is to work more on meal planning, eating at home most of the time especially when we have the kids, only taking the toll road when absolutely necessary and be conscious of our buying decisions.

Our house. I love our house. Dustin picked it out and had a contract on it just before we started dating. Thankfully he has great taste and it's an awesome house. We are lucky in that it's already pretty landscaped and doesn't require much work unless we want to change something. But, the one thing I dislike is pulling grass and weeds from the flower beds. I'm going to do a better job at keeping this up this year! The other thing with our house is the inside. While we painted a bunch last year and bought a few things, I definitely want to work more on this so we really make it ours and feel like home.

One of the big things Dustin and I have in common is enjoying the outdoors. I've always dreamed of having a beautiful sort of entertaining backyard and Dustin shares this dream. We've started discussing and throwing ideas around. I'm not sure what time frame we'll realistically be able to get it built, but I would love it if we can pin down exactly what we want out there so we can start planning to make it happen.

Lastly, the most important of them all is God. We do attend church regularly, but, I am setting a goal to get more engaged into it. Right now I have a real bad habit of going to church on Sunday and not digging in the Word more than that. This is one thing I want us to do as a couple. I hope to start reading the bible together and hopefully have some great discussions on what we are reading. Sometime this year, I hope to actually find a bible study to join. I have a strong desire to get more connected with people about God, I have just really struggled to make it happen. This will be the year.