Goals

We are just back from a week long trip to California. We arrived home Sunday night, back to work for my busiest week of the month on Monday, Cade's birthday on Monday as well, had a meeting with our designer to get 1 step closer to actual construction on the mudroom, and my parents fly in town this afternoon for Cade's birthday party on Saturday. To say that we landed back from vacation to hit the ground running would be an understatement. So, until I have a chance to post cute pictures of the kiddos from our vacation fun and put up a Cade 2 year old post, I have the below for your reading enjoyment.

I decided I would definitely not do New Years Resolutions this year. Mostly because I find them irritating to come up with and depressing as they rarely get accomplished. However, I've been inspired by others posting lists via Facebook and blogs. I think of resolutions as the usual "lose weight" or "save more money" type of statement that is vague and difficult to determine whether or not you can check it off your to do list. What I've been seeing lately that I find much more desirable is thinking of new things you'd like to do in life. I can get into that. So here's what I've come with for myself:

1) Project time. I've been trying to do this for a while and have been mostly successful with it. Mainly, since the kids are on a pretty regular bed time schedule these days, I force myself (no matter how tired) to do 1 hour of "projects" after their bedtime before I consider doing more mindless tasks (like catching up on whatever stupid reality tv show I've dvr'd). While a lot of the time this ends up being time to log some miles on the treadmill, pay bills or do other household tasks, I have been able to slip in an actual out of the norm project on these nights. I'm looking forward to a return of having this "normal" project time as, since Halloween pretty much, this time has mostly been devoted to making costumes, planning holiday and post holiday travel, doing holiday shopping and decorating\de-decorating. After Cade's party this weekend, I will hopefully return back to out of the norm projects again.

2) Organize the basement. This has been an ongoing headache. I've finally gotten my workshop mostly organized and have a plan for moving around some other big stacks of stuff (cabinetry, shelves, furniture to store) into a better spot for a nicer looking basement. It will still be a big task I don't think we'll be able to complete in a small amount of time (given that it will take 2 people and the amount of time Mike and I have with one of us not juggling kids' needs is rare) but I'm confident we can get that space a lot prettier then it is now. The harder part will be getting my lovely, organized challenged husband on board with actually keeping it pretty.

3) Take a welding class. Just under 3 years ago, I bought a Groupon for a day long welding class. I've always thought it would be a great skill to learn as there are art and construction projects in my head that require melting metal together. Pretty soon after purchasing the Groupon, I found out I was pregnant. Somehow I didn't think it was a good environment for a preggo so I delayed taking the class. Then there was the last 2 years of having little to zero time for myself. Mike and I are in a much better place (somedays) in regards to being able to balance the kiddos and other things in our lives. I think within the next 6 months or so I'll be able to figure out a time to cash in that class certificate.

4) Get the mudroom revamp done. This was on our list for last year. We wanted to have it done before winter arrived so that we could have an organized space to stash all that winter gear we constantly use. Unfortunately, not being able to see our old NH condo put a kink in that plan. With a new year comes new money (due to my odd payment structure), so we can now move forward with our plans. Our cabinetry order might be completed by the end of February. We still have some work to do hiring folks to get the other facets of the project done (demo, tile, finish work, electric rough in and finish) but this one will hopefully be checked off the list early in the year. One more room in our house that will be nicely organized. I love it!

5) And in regards to that NH condo, we need to get it sold! We've had bad luck in this area. At the beginning of our last 2 vacations (NH in September and CA last week), we found out that the contracts we had on the place fell through. Now we're trying to figure out our next steps as our relationship with our realtor took a bit of hit with how the last contract fall through was handled last week and our listing contract has expired. I suspect there will be some talk of how to handle this over the weekend when my expert realtor Dad is in the house.

Between working, kids and life in general. I think these extra projects and project goals will keep me quite busy and out of trouble, don't ya think?