A New Year, New Resolutions

With 2011 behind us my sister and I had a conversation about the best thing of 2011. And we both agreed on this one:

I will forever be grateful for 2011!

And before I go into any new resolutions I wanted to take a look at last years thoughts and see how I did! I have to say I'm pretty happy with myself.

Things I need to continue to work on for this year include:
1.) Communication!!!

2.) Working on my Etsy site. There is so much I want to get done and get put up on there but I'm only 1 person and I only have 4 hours a night to work on my projects [and post them on Etsy which is a project all of it's own!]

3.) Giving more love to my furbabies. They (as well as DH) get the brunt of my anger. Somedays the added dogs wrapped around my feet while I have 2 kids hanging off of me just feels suffocating. But really how lucky am I to be so loved and so needed?! It's hard to think this after a incident when I nearly fall on top of a child after tripping over a dog.

4.) Finding my love of running again. I've done well this year with my awesome BOB duallie, including running a 5K with V & H, but a few things happened that stalled my running. The first was getting back to my pre-preggo, pre-trying-to-concieve weight (my biggest and only reasonable motivation). The second was hurricane Irene wrecking havoc through the neighborhood I run. And the third was not knowing the high school was getting out half day and fearing for my children's lives as we were running home (as I have to run through or by the entrance/exit of the high school). I also need to take the dogs for their morning walks beforehand and after an hour walk..... ALL excuses though, so I will be signing up for the NYC marathon lottery tomorrow which will be motivation to start training seriously again [or at least I hope].

5.) The kids/spouse/furbaby/work balance.

6.) I would like to find time to read again somehow. I'm toying with the idea of audiobooks so I can craft while "reading" in my nightly 4 hour time slot. Although I love reading and getting lost in novels so much I'm having a hard time even thinking about listening to a book. Although I like being read to.... Ugh! Just gotta bite the bullet and try it!

7.) Get my girls 1st year photobooks done by March.

8.) I've joined a photo-a-day project and I hope I'm able to keep up with it. And even blog about it which will kill two birds with one stone b/c then I can be a better blogger/writer. Because one thing I sure do miss is writing.

9.) Focus. I feel like I have my hands in many projects and things all at the same time. My eyes are too wide and the hours in my day are too short.

10.) Eat healthier.

11.) Go to bed by 1am every night.

12.) And probably the thing that will be hardest: weed out the people who do not have a positive influence on my life because one thing I had to fight really hard to keep some days in 2011 was my mental health.

I figure if I keep my list short and sweet it won't set me up for failure!
And to end on an even more positive note:

My first picture for my 366 day project (yea, for the leap year!!)

Tunnel fun!

And here are a couple more from today b/c I caught some good ones!




And H was so tired from all the playing she fell asleep eating lunch!