A Year in Review - 2013

2013 was a good year. It was full of challenges and successes, but overall I can say it was a year during which things were looking "up".

A year ago I wrote a list of "Sarantees" for the year, things that I wanted to accomplish by the end of the year although I refused to make them official resolutions. So, how did I do?

1. I will strive to be a better wife and mother. I am constantly working on this one. Even yesterday this proved to be a struggle as my sweet, sick little boy misbehaved in every way possible for the last couple of hours before finally falling asleep. It's almost as if sleeping for nearly 48 hours straight makes even the littlest amongst us less desirous of sleep. But I always need to be better. I need to put my phone away more, play with them more, and talk with them more. I did much better this year and being done with grad school has definitely helped! I've also been better about date night, making it a priority in our monthly budget to ensure that I can't say to my husband "we don't have money for a date." But this is something I will always have to work on.
2. I will work on my spiritual life. And this is another thing I keep working on. Last year I described my struggles to find a church home after moving. We finally joined a church here and we're working on it, the introvert in me is still struggling to make church friendships. I need to read my Bible more and I'm hoping to find a good Bible study in the next year. It is one of thoe things that will help me spiritually and personally.
3. I will get to my pre-baby weight. I did that and then some! The holidays have been a little bit of a trial (I've put on somewhere between 3-5 pounds) but I'm back to tracking on My Fitness Pal and plan to beat my last tracking streak, which was well over 200 days. Hopefully with my husband renewing efforts for the yearly contest at work we can get the junk back out of the house and start doing better.
4. I will continue to work to cultivate new friendships here, and I will be better about communicating with old friends. Another constant work in progress. Again, it's that whole introvert thing; I just don't get out there very easily. But I'm working on it.
5. I really will try to blog once a week. I did a fantastic job of it last summer and then school started. I had this great idea that I could blog every day and have a separate teaching blog. Yeah, that fell through in no time. Something about actually being good at my job meant that I didn't have time to write about doing my job.
6. We will finish the living room and at least one other major house project. Living room is mostly done, but the last blog post is waiting for a clean room, a rarity. The next house project is waiting for cash, which brings us to the next goal...
7. We will pay off credit cards and pay for things with CASH. House is refinanced and we are working on paying off the debt. As of this writing we have closed and cut up four credit card accounts and we should be down two more credit cards by the end of January. We made two huge purchases this year (the trailer and new windows) and while we don't regret either purchase, they put us behind on the pay-everything-off goal. The biggest change we made was taking the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University class and it has turned things around. For the first time ever we actually have a plan on where we want to end up and how we are going to get there. But more on that in a future blog post.
8. And here is the life goal that I will work towards in 2013, but if I don't get it done this year, I will keep working towards it: I will get published. I submitted my first ever article to English Journal and while I got rejected, I will continue to work on it. I have an idea for my next submission and plan to rework my first submission to make it more publishing worthy.

And now it is time to get to grading papers. I will work on my goals for 2014 later tonight!