life

Last year I set a pretty ambitious set of goals for myself. Some I achieved, some I didn’t. I’ve never really been one for New Year’s resolutions, but it was nice to have these goals in the back of my head as the year went on, always reminding me of the things I hoped to accomplish.  With that in mind, here are my goals for this year:

Family and Friends

• Take Caroline to do age appropriate activities on the weekends.
• Continue to Skype regularly with family.
• Go to church more often.
• Ignore my phone and computer when Caroline is awake.
• Have a date night with Jeromy at least every 6 weeks. {we failed miserably when we tried for monthly, so maybe every 6 weeks is a better goal}.
• Show our nanny how much we appreciate her more often.

Health and Fitness

• In bed by 10 pm, lights out by 10:30.
• Train for and run the Nike Women’s 1/2 Marathon in April.
• Incorporate yoga into my workouts, 2-3 times per week.
• Incorporate strength training into my workouts, 2-3 times per week.
• Remember that taking time for myself to workout is not a bad thing. I struggle with spending time away from Caroline when I’m not at work and my health and fitness has certainly suffered because of it in the past year.

Hobbies

• Share 100 recipes on The Splattered Apron. {Not all original recipes, I do have a full-time job!}
• Complete 4 sewing projects.
• Complete 6 knitting projects.
• Read 15 books.
• Continue to improve my photography.
• Volunteer. Preferably in a way that we can do it as a family.

My number one goal for the year will again be to find balance in my days, but I have a feeling that will be a lifelong goal. As long as I’m pursuing it with a smile on my face and a happy family around me, I’m okay with that.

What are your goals for 2013?

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Last year was the first time I’ve ever set out some goals for myself at the new year.  Let’s take a look at how well I accomplished them….

Family and Friends

• Spend quality time with Caroline and Jeromy.  Meaning that as long as Caroline is awake at night, I will not be using my computer.  I may not even be answering my phone.  Going back to work puts an entirely different perspective on the time I have with my husband and my daughter and I plan to use that time well. Accomplished. There were a few times where I would find myself playing on my phone after work and I would remind myself to put it away until Caroline went to bed.  Weekend time is pretty much devoted to family time, which we all love. 
  • Spend time with just my husband.  Being parents is the most amazing experience but we also need to take time to remember who we are as a couple. We did not do as well with this, mainly because I’m a bit too cheap to get a babysitter, but we did take advantage every time we saw grandparents to get a night out on our own. Including tonight!
• Introduce Caroline to as many fruits and vegetables as she can stand.  Starting her out with healthy eating habits is very important to us.  Related: prepare all of Caroline’s baby food. Accomplished. My girl will happily eat fruits and veggies over anything else. She almost never ate processed baby food.
• Take Caroline for swim lessons. Fail. But we did spend a lot of time at the pool this summer, which she loved. She is a water baby.
• Utilize Skype once a week to stay in touch with family and friends that are far away. Accomplished. Almost always Sunday mornings and sometimes more than once a week.
• Continue to breastfeed Caroline until she turns one year old in August.  Accomplished, and then some! We went until 14 months, 1 week and 3 days.
• Host four dinner parties, with different themed menus. Believe it or not, having a dining room for just this purpose was really important to Jeromy and I when house hunting.  I’m pretty sure we were born in the wrong decade. Fail. While we did have friends over for dinner, we never hosted a real dinner party.  Our house just does not have enough space in the kitchen for that sort of thing.

Organization

• Make better use of my Google Calendar.  I am terrible about accidentally double booking myself, if I used my calendar more that wouldn’t be a problem.  Accomplished. Jeromy and I even synced our calendars so we always know what’s going on when.
• Stay on top of my to do list.  Even if I can’t check something off every day, I would at least like to know the tasks that are currently on the list. Accomplished. And I even checked some things off!
• Get rid of junk.  The guys at our local Goodwill know me at this point because whenever I find something we don’t use anymore, I drive it over to Goodwill. Ongoing battle. Where does all of this stuff come from? I blame you, Target.

Fitness

• Join {and use!} a new gym.  I know, I know.  Despite the fact that this is the resolution that fails for everyone else, I’m making it a goal.  It’s been over a year since I was dedicated to working out and I want to get back into the shape I was in then or better. I opted not to join a gym and work out from home. That got off to a rocky start given that I had to complete physical therapy, I will do better next year. 
• Participate in at least two races.  I’m still deciding if these will be road races, triathlons or one of each.  Fail. I didn’t race at all.
• Get outside and walk with Caroline at least four times a week, weather permitting. Mostly accomplished. When the weather and time allowed, we were out the door, which was more often than not.

Hobbies

• Knit six items this year.  {I’m almost done with one!} Accomplished! 3 baby hats, a cowl for me, 4 wash cloths and a baby sweater.
• Read ten books.  I love to read but rarely find the time to sit down do it.  Now that I’ll be commuting three days a week, this shouldn’t be too hard. Accomplished and almost doubled—I read 18 books.
• Volunteer twice a month at the local food pantry. Fail. I need to be better at time management to make this happen.
• Seek out one or two freelance writing opportunities. Accomplished!
• Post to The Splattered Apron four to five times per week. Accomplished. Some weeks were better than others. I realized that this blog is my hobby and as much as I enjoy it, I never want it to make me feel stressed out. So there are times when I just can’t get to a post and that’s okay. I’d rather give you quality over quantity.
• Go off of auto and learn how to use my DSLR. Accomplished. I took a photography class and started experimenting more with setting on my camera. I think there has been a pretty clear improvement in my photography though I have a LONG way to go.
• Re-learn how to sew. Accomplished. I even gifted two sewing projects for Christmas.

Food

• Try at least one new savory recipe per week and one new sweet recipe per month. I hope my coworkers appreciate all of the baking! Accomplished? I didn’t keep track, but we did try several new recipes.
• Eat out no more than twice a week. Mostly accomplished, with the occasional third family meal out in a week.
• Visit the farmer’s market every Saturday that we’re in town. Accomplished. We love the farmer’s market!

The most important goal I have for 2012 goes across all of these categories—find balance in my life for all of the people I love and things I want to do.  I’m guessing that is much easier said than done, but I’m going to do my best. Mostly accomplished. At the end of the day, the two people that get the majority of my attention are Jeromy and Caroline and everything else fits around them. Sometimes it means that I get a lot less sleep, but it’s worth it.

I guess I did better with my goals that I thought I did! I plan to set a few for 2013, but nowhere near as many as I did this year.

Have you set any goals for 2013? How did you do meeting your goals for 2012?

Like what you just read? Subscribe to my feed! Or you can stay in touch on Twitter and Facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram! Or you can e-mail me—I’d love to hear from you!

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I’ve tried to put something down that will do justice to how I feel about the tragedy that struck in Connecticut.  But I don’t have the words to express the anger, sadness, grief, empathy and anguish that I feel for the families that are continuing on without their children.

I am so very grateful to have our daughter sleeping peacefully under our roof.

When Caroline was born, I was struck by the fact that I could no longer protect her completely in this world. She is her own person.  An amazing and also terrifying fact.

My heart and soul ache for the families that lost their children on Friday.  For the families of the six incredibly brave adults who lost their lives protecting the children. Throughout the past few days I have been struck by the ordinary moment of doing something, or nothing, with my family and the thought that another mother will never get to do that with her whole, complete family again.  The thoughts of all of these ordinary moments add up to something that it just too much to bear.

I can’t make sense of it all. I don’t think anyone can.  I will hold the families in my heart, thoughts and prayers, I will give them my tears and I will hope that they are able to find some small measure of comfort, impossible though it may be. 

A friend of mine posted after hearing the news “Be gentle with each other.”

Please be gentle with each other and hold your loved ones close.

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