New Year's Resolutions

Well my resolutions are a mix this year of things to do for myself, my family, my man and my children.

First of all I will get to the most imporant.

I want to work on continueing to be a more patient mom and in not yelling at all. My new's year's resolution in this area is to find time each night to do one small special thing with each of my kiddos. Also to spend time with Andrew doing a daily devotion and to read at least one story per night to the two kids. I want a strong family and I want to work on teaching my children strong values. I also want to be able to make it to church when Andrew is home at least every time that we are here in IL and not out of town or on vacation. I also want to make it a point to take a family vacation and to take a day away with Andrew alone to have some special time with us, we are thinking that this will probably be to St Louis to Six Flags so that we can ride the rides with him and such.

I want to work on my relationship with Shane to continue to improve my trust in him as I was in a place where I could not trust anyone fully when we met and now I feel myself moving on so I want to work on being able to trust him more. I want to work on being able to give him back something more as I feel like sometimes it is as though he just gives and gives and gives and because of where I have been I feel like there are times when I continue to take rather than putting things into perspective and giving back. I want to work on us trying a little experiment prompted by a book I saw where a woman wrote about what she learned by having sex every day for a year. So we are going to attempt this one but there will be days that we miss when we are apart and not together mostly. I also want to work on planning a wedding for the two of us and being able to have a wedding where we can fully express our feelings and beliefs and for it not to be overrun by traditions or values that are not imporant to us.

I want to work on being a better sister to my wondeful little brother. I want to work on being more supportive and kind towards him as he is so wonderful at being an uncle and a brother and he is always thinking of others. I also want to work on appreciating my parents more and becoming closer to both of them.

Now onto things that I would like to do for myself. I would like to reach a healthy BMI and be in good physical shape. I am vowing to work out on a regular basis and to keep a food/exercise journal as this seems to really help me. I am enjoying working out with the new Jillian Michael's Ultimatum that is available for the Wii and Wii Fit. I also am going to be getting the My Fitness Coach which will be nice so that I can switch things up a bit between them and the Wii Fit disc and hopefully not become too bored during any of this. I am not looking to reach a specific weight but rather an overall level of health and fitness and nurtrition. I am wanting to further explore becoming a vegetarian. I know that it is hard, I did it for a few months in the past and there were times when it really sucked but I also know that my body felt so much better and that I was so much stronger in how my body was working with things that this really seems like something that is going to better myself physically. I also want to learn how to sew. I am planning on grabbing my mom's sewing machine one day soon and going to Wal-Mart to buy a pattern for an easy sundress for Althea and to attempt to do something on my own. I am hoping that I can learn to sew now and eventually learn to sew well enough to be able to make myself skirts, patchwork pants, apron tops, and all other kinds of things that I think are fun and cute and look at and think, wow I could make that and it would cost so much less. I am going to also make a conscious effort to go to my grandma's more and to finish up the sundress that we started together last summer prior to Althea being born. I also want to work on journaling on a daily basis, blogging on a daily basis, keeping an exercise and food journal to help keep me accountable to those issues and I would like to start and finish a book over the next year. Not sure what type of book I am going to start to write about first but I would like to eventually write for a living which would be so awesome!!