Wanna come check out the new digs? Swing on by!

Here we are…teetering on the brink of 2010…(Boy, does it feel weird to type it out that way.)…all goodwill, anticipation and full power resolve! I love January, and resolutions and clean slates and starting over and self improvement and all the great empowerment that comes from planning a new tack for success. Ah!

 

So…here we go….before I share my next batch of resolutions, first a little recap of what I tackled last year and how it all worked out for me. There are always successes and a few areas where I can polish up my plans…that’s the way goals work. I know lots and lots of people who think resolutions are an annoying waste of time because they never are accomplished and I find that as long as I make my resolutions practical and achievable, there are always some brilliant successes…and I can take a little failure alongside some genuinely inspiring improvement. This is the real stuff of life. Last years were: (responses in highlights)

 

• To truly de-clutter (I'm selling my magazine stash, getting rid of most of my stored baby clothes, and taking the pack n' play off to Goodwill....HELLO SPACE!!!!)  I did this one! Boy does purging feel good!
• To begin playing the fiddle (my mom gave me the family instrument and A bought me a video lesson series...its in the mail.) Less successful....didn't play much at all...am a poor self motivator.
• To record the myriad books I read this year (GoodReads...here I come!) DID IT!!! And wow did it feel great...I read a lot of books and its great to be able to share my reading with other people and record it for posterity.
• To live more greenly (specifically: get a recycling bin, replace our mommy and kid toiletries with healthy, natural alternatives, recycle all our plastic grocery bags and eliminate paper towels) I did lots here too!! I bought better toiletries, drastically reduced our grocery bag use because we switched to cloth bags, and got a recycling bin for indoors and then a curbside plastic box for actual pick-up too)
• To spend one night a month working on sentimental records: journalling, the babybooks, our photo collection...etc. This one didn't happen. I should have set a reminder in my phone to make sure I remembered.
• To write my dad a letter a month for the next year (this was my Christmas gift to him this year) I did a great job at this until about May or June when my major crisis hit and I forgot all about writing letters
• To teach Reuben to brush his teeth in the morning (in addition to his normal nightly brushing) Oops. Forgot completely about this one.
• To shop for a house!!! (A's ready to settle, of his own volition, and our plan: shop 2009, buy 2010) Right.
• To set into place family routines (bed routine, weekend routines, holiday routines, morning routine...etc.) I have some of these now....bedtime is firmly in place and mornings have a nice rhythm...
• To go deeper with friendships. Check.
• To pray more (more earnestly, more frequently, more ways) Not sure I changed much here.
• To eat three colors of produce at each meal. This was pretty highly successful actually I wouldn't say I have been terribly hard-core about application but we eat produce at every single meal now and usually more than one....that feels like the real goal I was shooting for.
• To have snuggle time (for kisses and stories and closeness) and outdoor time everyday with the boys. I wouldn't say I'm perfect here but I do work consciously at it now and we hit closeness time every day and outdoor time quite often.
• To have company as a family at least once a month. You'll see this one again.
• To re-paint the living room/dining room with no-odor, no VOC paint in a color I love. Check! Yay!
• To keep a dream journal next to my bed. Drat. Forgot this one....even though it would be really cool to do. Might revisit it...
• To learn to make my own pasta from scratch (particularly ravioli!) Blast.
• To write four new poems and four new visual art works. I wrote two poems and did a little visual artwork although I'm not sure I pulled off four.
• To sew something for each boy this year. Heh. Nothing there.
• To get away for at least one overnight alone with A. We did this!
• To read up on anthropology and genetics. Hm....did a little bit of reading on anthropology but not any genetics.
• To attend one birth. These things have to kind of fall in your lap. I didn't hit it this year. Oh well. Points for good intentions.
  
• To re-pot all my plants in soothingly cohesive terracotta. I did it and its so wonderful!

And now for a whole new batch….

 

Resolutions 2010

 

• Spiff up my blog (this involves a multitude of changes including: switching to a new host, blogging 5 days a week, doing all my own photography, focusing my content a bit more….etc.)
• Take fiddle lessons (I’ve got my own instrument and have wanted to play for years while attempting to self-teach but to be perfectly honest with myself I haven’t the drive…I think I need external motivation.)
• Organize the kids clothes storage
• Find regular practical ways to incorporate music and prayer into my kid’s lives
• Attend more homeschool social activities with the local group I discovered this year
• Attend some of the mushroom forays with the local mycology club (kids invited!!)
• Take Reuben horseback riding (he wants to go in the worst way)
• To do at least part of the packing for our next move (built in organization and purging!) which I think might happen sometime in the next year.
• Make pasta from scratch! (Argh! I will not be beaten!!!)
• Start working out in the mornings with A (as much as I can while pregnant)
• Work in a few small practical ways to avoid being a bitter person
• Ditto for being a less sensitive person
• Try to get my potted jasmine to bloom
• Do some reading about proper, grown up make-up application
• Knit one sweater (baby sweaters count!)
• Have someone for dinner once a month (certain themes are re-occuring)
• Read more about homeschooling/unschooling

 

Have really begun to seriously mull over my New Year's resolution ideas, what happened this year good and bad, personal and international and how my resolutions for last year went over. I hope to do a full re-cap of 2009 and extensive posting on my resolutions for the upcoming year once Christmas is over but for now I'll just leave you with the teaser thought that, I have lots of ideas and am very excited about a whole new 365 days!
 
Yesterday was laundry day, today is packing day and tomorrow is tie-up-the-loose-ends-and-put-it-all-in-the-car-so-that-we-can-go day. Its starting to sink in that we're really going...I dug out all the spare mittens and gloves to pack yesterday and am working on getting all my gifts wrapped (and finished! Eeep!) so that they can just pop in the car and be all ready for distribution when we arrive. Packing presents has always been a bit of a crazy ordeal but this year I think I've hit on a brilliant solution. I bought two big rubbermaid tubs and will wrap A's family with one kind of paper and my family with another and put all the gifts for the two groups in their respective tubs...easy to tote, close-able via lid, and a handy way to haul home gifts we receive (another tricky packing issue). Then when we get back here after all the melee I plan to put all the Christmas decorations into the tubs and put them in the attic all labeled....so lovely! Am very proud of myself and can't wait to see how execution works.

I am trying to get all vacation minded...I have a book on tape in the car (for the slow parts of the drive when everyone else is sleeping), a four-pack of frappuccinos, knitting project directions all printed up and sticks loaded, a little writing paper, a few books to read and the laptop for blogging from hotel rooms. Seems like I'm covering all the bases. Now I'm just hoping the kids sleep, nobody gets sick and A and I don't get into any sticky discussions on the drive. Please, Vacation, ease me gently into Christmas!