And Away We Go!

2011 is taking off.  I mean, we're already a good 9 hours into the day and I've done nothing but sit and watch TV with Faith and eat a fiber bar.  That's how I like it, though.  Take off s l o w l y as to not spin myself into a dither.  If I'm still sitting her tomorrow then we'll call it a problem. 

My resolutions for this year were a little more thought out than last year's, I don't know if that's good or bad.  We will see in a year, I guess.   Here they are:

1. Make something and give it away once a month. This could be food, a thing, whatever. Something to make someone else feel loved, and to get me outside of myself.

2. Learn to knit and/or crochet. Why? I want cute hats and don’t want to pay for them because I never wear hats when I buy them.  With the instructional DVD and needles my sister got me for my birthday (and through the amazing wonderment of youtube) I think I'll get it all figured out. 

3. Work out 3 or 4 days a week. I feel like in my push towards being healthier, this is the next step. I have a few options I’ve been thinking over- walking on my NEW TREADMILL (thanks, Santa!) doing Couch to 5K, restarting Insanity or Hip Hop Abs.

4. Get our pictures into scrapbook/albums. This is really more for TJ. Bless his little heart, he just gets furious that our pictures aren’t in albums displayed gloriously for all to see. So I will bless his little heart and just do it.

5. Contact every immediate family member on their birthday. Birthdays in our family aren’t huge deals. But now that I have a little one, I really am rethinking that whole idea. I mean, what other day should we really celebrate to let someone know you love them?  So I really want to make an effort to contact everyone on their birthdays and tell them I’m thankful for them and happy they were born. The downside is that I know I’ll inevitably forget someone and hurt someone’s feelings. I’m not going to let that stop me though, I’m going to give it a try.

6. Continue losing weight until I reach/go beyond my goal then maintain my goal for the remainder of the year. I did maintain my weight from Thanksgiving through birthday parties and Christmas.  I ended up FINALLY making my 25 lb. loss.  It took long enough.  I hope to lose realistically another 5 or 10 lb, but we will see.  I know that this is going to be something hard for me to do-maintain a weight loss.  I'm gonna give it heck, though.  I'm not giving up without a fight.  I know it will be really hard at times, really easy othes. Life is a journey through mountains and valleys, and I’m not about to give up just because it gets hard for a while.

7. Enroll Faith in some kind of MDO. This probably should be on a to-do list and not on my resolutions, but it’s that important to me. I have ridiculously high expectations for a MDO program. And I live in the middle of nowhere.

8. Read more. I mean, I’m an adult and adults read, right? I will not read Eclipse, but if you have any other suggestions, please send them my way.

9. Engage somehow (read Bible, journal, sing praise, etc.) with Christ on a daily basis. I know, you’re thinking I’m a major sinner for not already doing that, but sometimes I just don’t. But when I do I feel like such a dork for not because God always speaks amazing things to me. I just want to fill myself up with Him, not crap.

10. Scout out and purchase some kickin’ furniture for our living room. Our furniture is a bunch of worn out hand me downs and cheap, out of necessity purchases. Our hand-me-down couch arm is broken from having 10 youth at a time sit on it. Our recliner was the cheapest in the whole store, so the quality is just second to none, and has spit up and breast milk stains (did I just say that?) that will never come out. Our glider rocker is a stylish hunter green with white star design that just screams Amanda and TJ. Our end table is one of those circle tables from Wal-Mart that is like $5 and it has a broken leg that we’ve rigged a good 10 times. The good thing is I can be patient until I find exactly what I want. That’s also a good thing because I REFUSE to put furniture on credit and need to save the money for it. I don’t like matchy-matchy things so I can get a piece at a time and be totally fine with it. I should take a before and after picture so you can see just how amazing the transformation will be.

So that's the 10 for 2011.  This should be a fun journey for me since last year was a pretty successful year, as far as resolutions go.  And just like last year, I probably won't pick all of them up right away, but I WILL work on all of them throughout the year, I promise myself that.  As for the 2010 resolutions that didn't exactly scream success, I will be meeting back up with those occasionally.