2019 New Year Resolutions

I love New Years and fresh starts. It’s a great time to reflect on the prior year and a chance to grow and create a new habit. I normally think of my New Year Resolutions well ahead of time but with the holidays and the hustle and bustle of everything it completely slipped my mind until we attended the first Church service of the new year. So here it goes….

Get organized – I am SO excited about this. Since we are living in a rental at the moment I do not want to spend money on organization, so I am waiting to do the majority of the organizational items until we move. However, I will start organizing the fridge, freezers and car! Being organized makes me oh so happy. I have dreams of Khloe Kardashian’s pantry. It’s a 30-year-old woman’s porn…. A little much probably but boy have things changed.

Lose weight – Ever since kids I have struggled with losing weight. Since Chad and I are in-between having kids this is the prime time to focus on myself and my body. “Selfcare is not selfish”

We have some financial goals as well. We have been blessed to be debt free for years. I am the type of person that cringes at the thought of having debt, so we have some very specific financial goals that we would like to meet this year as we build and move into our new house.

Start a life group – This has been on my heart for a while. I have discussed this with Chad and he is all for it. However our current living situation doesn’t allow much room for entertaining so we are thinking about starting one up when we move (hopefully in the summer)

More Audible Books – I would love to actually read books but the only time I have to sit down and read would be around 9:30 at night and I know I would just fall asleep. So I listened to “Girl wash your face” to and from work last year and I honestly do not know why I haven’t listened to more.

Dang a lot of these are the same from last year. We are so looking forward to this year and the exciting things that are about to happen for our family. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again 2018 was an amazing year. We had some extreme highs but we also had some lows but at the end of the day I strongly believe that no happen who you are lows are going to happen, it’s all in how you respond to them.

2018 - Year in review

2018 was a year for the books. Chad and I were at a crossroads and really needed change in our lives, so we devoted 2018 to the year of “change” and boy did it not disappoint.

January:

We started off the year a little slow. We made our new years resolutions as we always do and just sat back and waited, in the meantime Audrey and I came down with the flu and we completely disinfected our entire house

February:

February came and went in a blink of an eye but it was another month of Audrey being sick. She did turn 6 months old and Grady became obsessed with the show “Spirit”

March:

We celebrated the arrival of our niece Kamrie! I got offered a new position at work. And we took our first family road trip to Kansas City.

April:

We celebrated Easter. Chad found out that he was going back to school! Grady got potty trained and I celebrated my 29^th birthday. Oh April was an exciting month

May:

Chad and I vacationed in Cozumel, Audrey got dedicated, oh and we officially put on house on the Market.

June:

We welcomed another precious baby, our dear friends had baby Mila on June 10^th. We spent the rest of the month focusing on our Summer bucket list. At the end of the month we got a contract on our house.

July:

Chad turned 30 and we went to Boston for a Red Sox game. We packed up the house and moved completely out at the end of July. 

August:

We officially sold our house on August 1^st. Grady got a “big boy” bed. We made an offer on a piece of property and it was accepted. Chad had his last day of work and his first day of school. And our baby girl turned 1.

September:

We went to our last baseball game of the season. Finalized our floor plans. And took the kids to the gathering place for the first time.

October:

I got in a car accident on my way home from work totaling my car. Chad purchased Bruno Mars tickets and we finally went to the concert. Grady and I had some one on one time. And we celebrated Halloween with the Little Rascals

November:

We took Grady to his first Movie theater and watched “Small Foot”. I completely messed up my ankle by simply walking. We celebrated Thanksgiving, purchased a new car and went to Dallas.

December:

Grady turned 3! And we had the perfect party to celebrate him. We took him to go see Paw Patrol Live. We broke ground on our house. And had 3 Christmas'

Holy cow… I’m exhausted just writing this! It looks like 2019 is going to be another exciting year and I cannot wait to see what all it has in store for us.

Christmas 2018

Christmas is over, and I couldn’t be more excited. Don’t get me wrong I love the idea of Christmas and everything that involves Christmas, but it wears me smooth out. We always have a very ambitious bucket list for the month of December and we are normally busy every weekend and I’m normally wiped plus the kids are normally over it as well by the end of the month. 

We decided to not do Elf on a Shelf again this year. With everything going on I feel like my head is barely above water so maybe next year when I have my life more put together we will attempt it. Instead I really wanted to wrap a Christmas book for each day of December but that also didn’t get done so luckily our friends in Dallas got us an advent Calendar of chocolates and it was the highlight of our evenings when we could open a piece of chocolate.

This year was amazing. We did all the Christmas activities. My favorite thing to do during the Christmas season is bake goodies and hand them out. Grady was very involved last year, and I was so excited for him to help me, but he wasn’t as interested this year. We did make some fudge, trail mix, and toffee and handed them out to our neighbors. Since we are renting at the moment we haven’t gotten to know our neighbors, so it was the perfect time for us to introduce ourselves.

We always so Christmas Eve with my parents and then Christmas morning as a family and Christmas evening with Chad’s family. I tried Joanna Gaines Biscuits and Gravy for Christmas morning and I don’t think I will ever make biscuits and gravy any other way. It was heaven.

We kept the presents pretty low key. Chad and I discussed that we wouldn’t go overboard with the gifts from Santa. They would be small and the big gifts would be from us. I mean Santa can’t get all the credit here. They got presents from Santa, us and we did stockings. Our parents also go over and beyond for the kids so we really don’t spend too much on the kids.

Chad and I decided last year not to do presents to one another and instead we would go out to a nice dinner, however we would still do stockings. Well I asked Chad if I could do my own stocking this year and boy am I sure glad I did, I got some socks, earrings, slippers, etc. The week after Christmas we went to a restaurant in downtown Tulsa called Bull in the Alley and holy smokes. It is easily my favorite restaurant in Tulsa and we are looking for a reason to go back. 

I was off the rest of the week which I was so thankful for, both the kids and myself really needed the break. I was hoping to catch some after Christmas deals but didn’t get around to it. Maybe next year!