A Toast, To Continual Progress

At year's end and year's beginning, I love to celebrate the achievements and progress of the past year and make lists and lists for the new one.

So first, a celebration! Major achievement of 2016: I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Maggie Grace, and pretty much had a dream birth with no pain interventions, in which the gender was a surprise, and we had a fun little birthday party for her with my two older kids, and several other loved ones. Other achievements: I did some awesome traveling. Went to Banff, Jasper (for the first time), Glacier, Yellowstone, Dinosaur museum in Drumheller AB, Writing on Stone, AB, Greenville, TN, and up to West Virginia, to Zion NP a couple times, Bryce, and of course MACHU PECCHU in PERU!!!! I went on my first trip out of the US or Canada! We also finished updating our basement in 2016. Wayne built some beautiful wainscotting, we did some nice paint and got some really nice carpet in. I love it! And professionally, I've been able to start tutoring students in math. It's been fun, refreshing, validating, and has helped us earn a little extra cash. There have been other great things from 2016, but that sums up the things that come most to mind.

Now we look to 2017. Some curmudgeon people think that there is no special change from righting a couple of different numbers for a signature date; nothing that should warrant more effort than what one could do on any day of the year. But I say, take advantage of every new beginning you can. On a daily basis, yes. Even on an hour to hour or minute to minute basis when you feel the urge. We should be continually striving for progress. But everyone needs road marks to take time to reflect and I find the beginning of a new year to be a refreshing opportunity.

Still some people poo poo on new years resolutions simply because so many are broken so soon, which just leads to discouragement. How many times will a person commit to losing ten pounds before they just give up forever? While I support making measurable, strict goals as many times as it takes or as long a person has the will, I have decided to make goals that, while specific, will be counted as successful if I make any sort of progress from the previous year. I don't want to be harsh with myself, heaven knows I don't need any more guilt or self punishing thoughts, and so I am choosing "no guilt." I will strive for progress for the sake of my own happiness, but I will not let the goals themselves make me unhappy if I fail at them at times.

The reason I'm writing my goals in a post is first, to get it all written down and saved, because that's the best start to any serious goal. And second, to hold myself to some degree of accountability knowing that some people may read this. I commit to writing at least two times during the year to give an honest update on my progress.

My goals:
Health:
Me and my family need more vegetables in our lives. While I could choose many ways to improve my eating habits, I am not ready to give up chowing candy and downing cold cans of Dr. Pepper. I take too much comfort in sugar. However, I think I can really embrace more vegetables in my diet. So I am making a rule of thumb to always fill up two thirds of my dinner plate with vegetables. Each dinner that I prepare will include two vegetable dishes. So far this week I've only prepped three solid dinners (it's only Thursday) and I've made delicious baked cauliflower, African spiced carrots, salad, Mediterranean lima beans, more salad, and an Indian flavored mish mash of garbanzo beans, ham and cabbage. I'm looking forward to baked sweet potato fries, breaded zucchini fries, grilled asparagus, broccoli with cheese sauce, and so much more. I can't wait to fill my recipe box with wonderful vegetable recipes, scrumptious ones and simple-to-make ones.

My second health goal has to do with exercise. I'll be honest, I hate most forms of exercise. I like to believe that I'm not alone in this and that only people off their rocker really enjoy going to the gym every day or taking a daily jog, like taking a daily needle to the butt... that lasts 30 minutes. I believe that the key to a healthy life, besides torturing yourself with running, is finding a form of exercise that you enjoy (most people have one or two) and making it a priority. Believe it or not, there are exercises that I love. I LOVE to dance. I love to water ski. I kinda like to weight lift. I like to bicycle. And I LOVE to hike. Perhaps I will take up a dance class soon, and I hope that I find opportunities to water ski, weight lift and bicycle this year, but my goal for the next 52 weeks is to get in some good hiking. I'd like to go out once a week if I can. It will be hard to do with three kids at home; hard to get away or else hard take them with me. But I am going to make an effort anyway.

Spirituality:
I have been trying to make a habit of scripture reading for years and years. I can remember the spirit telling me multiple times that I needed to read my scriptures habitually. One time was a year or so after my mom died and I was riding on the back of Wayne's motorcycle, coming home from his sister's house. I was feeling particularly sore from missing my mom and crying and praying. Then it hit me pretty hard, almost as a scolding, that I could find healing in scripture study and that I had been ignoring God's promptings to read my scriptures regularly. That was a particularly poignant feeling from the spirit, but it wasn't the only time I've felt God's will for me to read my scriptures daily. And yet even after all these times, I still haven't made it a habit and I still have to put it on my new years list. And so it is. I am happy to say, on the one hand, that this past year, I have read scriptures more habitually than ever before in my life, as pitiful as it was. This coming year, I hope to raise the anti even more and make scripture reading a priority in my life. Today is January 5th, and so far I can check off 5 days in a row so that's something.

Personal Development:
I'm learning Spanish. Duolingo is my tool to learn it, and I am trying to make a habit of doing two little lessons on it every day, right after I read my scriptures ;-) I've recruited my husband to learn it with me and hopefully I will be brave enough to try and hold some conversations with him and others I know that are either learning or are fluent in Spanish. My little kindergartner son is in a dual Spanish immersion program which helps to make it a whole family goal.

I need to be a better mother to my little Mollyanne and not only help her get prepared for kindergarten, but spend more time with her doing a variety of activities. I am making plans for at-home preschool activities that we can do on a daily basis. Hopefully I can get prepared for each coming week on Saturdays, but on days that I don't have plan or preparations, I will try to do at least one little learning activity in which I give her my full attention. Maybe that just sounds like bad parenting to you expert mothers out there who spend all their time being perfect parents, but this is going to require big efforts for me.

Cleaning habits. ugh. I've never been very keen on cleaning, and the more children I have, the harder it gets, the more tired I am. But there is a marked difference in attitude in our home when the house is mostly clean compared to when it's a wreck (the usual). It affects my husband's attitude especially, which largely affects my attitude, which affects my children's attitudes. And aside from my husband, I feel much more stressed and discouraged when my house feels out of control. It leaves me no time for other ambitions or leisure time with my family. So I am working (I realize it may be a long fight) to create habits and methods for making my housework a non issue. I want to stop having to be embarrassed when visitors show up unexpectedly, and I want to stop feeling like a bad wife, stop feeling stressed about having enough time get my house in order, etc... I just want to be able to stay on top of the housework; have the dishes done at the end of everyday, the floors, table and counters clear, and my clothing all put away. If anyone has any lifesaving cleaning hacks they want to share with my, I am all ears.

Last but not definitely not the least, is that I will found a charity organization this year. My sister and I are already on our way to doing so. #penfriends

I know this is a lot to bite off and chew, but as I said earlier, I will count myself successful if I have made ANY progress towards each of these goals by the end of the year. I am not looking to punish myself for failure, but to celebrate myself for any progress. And I am excited to be using my new planner that I got for my birthday in November! It sounds geeky, but it's everything I've ever wanted in a planner and more! If you're the type who likes to write out your goals, lists, and schedule, look up the law of attraction planner. It will change your life. Seriously. Also get some frixion pens from Amazon. Another game changer.