Happy New Year!

Is everyone getting back in the routine yet!  I hope so, we are struggling here! Daddy finally went back to work, it feels like forever since he worked a full week.  It was nice to have him home and get to spend so much time together! 

So who has already broken their New Year's Resolutions - Anyone?  haha  I've never been big into resolutions, mostly because I'm not too good at following through with those sort of things.  But this year I'm making some Changes!!  No, I didn't make a resolution, but I did sit down and make a list of goals for this year.  I've started following this website Money Saving Mom, and no it's not one of those extreme couponing sites.  There's that, but there's more too, other financial advise, activities to do with kids, free printable stuff, I love it!  Anywho - She posted about her goals for 2012 and gave a tutorial on how she determines the goals and worksheets to get started yourself.  (Here's the post if you want to see) And I thought "I could do this!!"  There's so many things I want to incorporate into our lives, or my life, and this would be a good way to hold myself accountable.  So I used the goals setting worksheet she offered and made a list of 6 priorities, broke those down further into focus areas, and then wrote 1-3 tangible, measurable goals for each focus area.  It was really invigorating!!  I know what your thinking, Man, that's a LOT of goals to accomplish in 2012!  And when I look at my finished list of 37 goals it looks a bit daunting!  But I can be anal about certain things (not that you would think by looking at my house!) so I got SUPER organized so that I can accomplish all these goals.  Some of the bigger one I broke into smaller ones.  For instance, one of my goals is to study 3 books of the Bible in depth this year.  So instead of it coming to December 28th and me going "Crap - I haven't done this one!", I broke them into smaller goals: Get my list of books compiled by March 31, and then I gave myself 3 months for each book, Each with a deadline.  Other goals are things to work into my life on a daily/weekly/monthly basis.  Example: one goal is to do a craft with the boys once a week.  So I organized a spreadsheet/checklist of all of those goals so that I can Check them off each Day/Week/ Month and it's hanging on the refrigerator.  I also think I'm going to print off a new checklist each month so I can add the longer term goals in there too.  I'm a visual person.  So in short, some goals are small and easy once I get into the habit - like praying purposefully every day for my family, and others like Hike 4 14ers this year will take a bit more planning and practice to accomplish!  So I'm really excited about my Goals for 2012.  I thought about posting them all here for you to see like the blog lady did, but some of them are a little more personal than I would like to broadcast all over the internet.  So Instead I'll tell you about the bigger ones when I accomplish them.  Sorry! 

Anyways - NEW YEAR!!  I'll back up a little now and tell you how our new year went!  We decided to let Riley stay up for the ball drop this year.  (which we've done in the past when we were in Indy but that's actually 10:00 our time, so this was his first year staying up til Midnight.) I didn't realize they would show the ball drop live at 10 our time or I would have planned that a little better.  Oh well.  But he and Daddy played games to keep him awake, Sorry, Wii, even Trouble I think.  And he was going strong until about 11:30 when he started fading.  (I think the Cherry coke we gave him at dinner helped with that!)  But he perked right up when we brought out the Silly String!!  Yes, Mommy bought silly string to spray when the ball dropped.  It was a nice alternative to noise makers with a sleeping 1 year old!!  And it was a hit!  We may do this every year - well, most likely outside next year - cleaning it up wasn't as much fun!  Anyways, here's some pictures from Riley's first New Year's:

Things are going good here, not too much excitement!  I have my first "paying customer" for a crochet project.  I'm not too thrilled about the project (it's a steelers hat - I can't believe I'm making a hat for a team other than the Colts!!!) but she's paying so I guess I can't be too picky.  I'll post pics when I'm finished - it's coming along nicely.  Speaking of crochet projects, here's a pic of my niece that I think is Hilarious!  You can see the shawl I made for her Mom (my sister-in-law) in the previous post, along with the way I thought it was supposed to be worn.  However, Vanessa has discovered that it's actually Rapunzel's Hair!  Too cute - and that's totally Vanessa!!! 

Well, that's it for now.  I'm heading to Indy in a few weeks to help out with some things for my mom, so those of you in Indy who want to meet up - Just give me a call or email and we'll try to work something out!  See you all soon!!!