2014 Goals

So, now that it's the last day of January, I felt it was an appropriate time to actually get around the listing my goals for 2014.

So then I can get to work on completing a few more that were on my list for today :)...

1.  Lost 15 pounds by June.  This is the rest of my baby weight.  The pounds I put on because I like food, not really because of a baby...  Anyway, my broken down goal is 3 pounds per month...  January is done, and I can say I managed to lose 2 pounds.  But I've decided that I am just going to keep at it and keep my head up.  I can do this :).

2.  Improve my prayers.  Just felt like my prayers are sort of routine and lacking.  I know they need to be better.  So I'm working on it.

3.  Read 20 books for pleasure.  I love to read.  Didn't do it as much as I wanted to, but that's because I let other things get in the way.  Like facebook.  Haha...  So I've actually read 3 books so far.  But my 4th book choice is Don Quixote de la Mancha and that's almost 1000 pages.  It's going to slow me down!

4.  Make Lynnaea's "I Spy" quilt.  And I tacked on making one for Vivienne, since I might as well, since I'm already cutting all the hexagons anyway!  Plus she's young and will enjoy it.  One of these years I'll make quilts for the other 3 kiddos who didn't get one, but it probably won't be this year.  I'm happy to report I have all hexagons cut out and about 1/4 of the triangles.  So, on to the sewing!

5.  Finish Christmas ornaments by October.  I like to cross-stitch Christmas ornaments for all the nieces and nephews (on both sides) who are still in school.  And usually I'm scrambling in December.  So I'm setting this goal to avoid that.  And so far, I'm almost done with the 3rd!

6.  Go back to the Temple (every 2 months).  After having Lynnaea, I took a break for a while.  Now that she's older, I knew it was time for me to go back. 

7.  Be grateful every day for something new and blog it.  I'm doing that.  It's called rockinthenillalife.blogspot.com ;).

8.  Look for a miracle each week and write it in my journal.  I believe there are little miracles all the time.  Much more often than only weekly.  But sometimes I'm not awesome at recognizing them...  And I want to be better at it.  And I want to document them for my posterity.

9.  Get involved in a community group.  Our Stake President has encouraged us to do this...  I'm not sure where I will fit, so I'm needing to look into it.  I would love to volunteer at a soup kitchen or something, but that may not be so feasible, because of a certain adorable 8 month old ;).

10.  Start knitting again and make something useful.  I think it's pretty self-explanatory.  I haven't picked it back up since Lynnaea was born, so I need to.

11.  Write in my journal weekly.  I'd set this as a goal once before and accomplished it.  And then life happened again and I stopped.  So I wanted to do this again.  I think it's important for me document life.

12.  Look outward more/serve more.  I easily focus on myself, and I am prone to feeling all "woe is me."  I think, as I focus outward on others more, there will be a lot less of the woe is me stuff.

13.  Cook one binder recipe a week.  So... I love food.  Love to cook.  Love to try new recipes.  And so I have collected a binder-full over the years.  And they haven't been organized at all.  Just stuck in there.  So I'm going through and trying out a new recipe each week to see which ones are "keepers" and which aren't.  And some of them are likely to be featured at Monday Meals whenever we do it :).

14.  Floss daily.  I'm like the world's worst flosser.  And every time I go to the dentist, they berate me for not flossing daily (even though I was really good about flossing every other day ;)).  So I'm trying to do it daily by just doing so in the middle of the day.  Because at night, before bed, I simply don't want to take the extra time.

So, there's the majority of my 2014 goals.  Here's hoping that I make some good progress!!!