A New Year...

It's a new year, and this new year has been marked by illness at our house.  Not fun!  I have been battling a cold (or something) since December 14, and now a sinus infection.  Poor Alyssa came home from BYU for the holidays and got a horrible cold and ended up with the beginnings of an ear infection and sinus infection.  Brie appears to finally be getting over her illness, and now Mark is starting to have cold symptoms.  *Sigh*

We had a wonderful Christmas in Georgia with our family.  We met my family at a cabin in the "mountains" (they aren't mountains...they're really hills, but people in Georgia call them mountains) and spent four days there.  It was a nice cabin and it was fun to be together, although all of the "littles" (my younger nieces and nephews) had colds, which they kindly shared with the rest of us.  I love spending time with my family, and especially at Christmas.  It was especially wonderful to have Alyssa home for three weeks.  I was sad to take her to the airport Friday to fly back out to school, but I know she'll have a great semester, and we love that she is so close to Mark's family and able to spend time with them.

I have decided not to make an New Year's Resolutions because I'm terrible at keeping them.  Instead, I've been thinking about things I want to work on this year but not putting the pressure of a "resolution" on myself.  I've thought about things in the areas of home, family, spiritual, and self.

For our home, I am continuing a decluttering challenge I started on Facebook last year.  I am hoping to be more successful with it this year.  I want our home to be a place that is welcoming and ready for guests with very little notice.  Right now I would say it is welcoming but definitely not ready for guests!  One thing I have learned is that it's much easier to keep something clean than it is to get it clean in the first place.  I did ok with the challenge last year but plan to be more dedicated this year.  Clutter and stuff seems to be overtaking my life and at times it feels claustrophobic.  So we'll see how it goes this year.

For our family, I want to focus on being present and in the moment when we are together.  So often my mind is racing off in multiple directions when we're together and I don't stop and just savor the moment.  Having Alyssa leave for school this past fall really hit me hard and I realized how much time we spent together where I just wasn't fully present and focusing on the time we had together.  We have missed her so much, and I realized that I missed out on a lot of moments because I was physically present but not mentally present.  So this year I want to work on that.

Spiritually, I want to be better about personal/family scripture study.  That is something I've never been good and I want to work on it.  Our Relief Society Presidency sent out a reading chart over the holidays and I'm going to work hard to keep up with it as much as I can.  I've tried listening to the scriptures during my commute time but I don't seem to absorb it that way.  I have found that I really need to read it myself.

Finally, for my self...I have felt my body turning to jell-o since I stopped taking ballet classes and I hate it.  I bought some ballet workout DVDs and I really need to find time to do those, at least once per week.  Brie mentioned that she wants to exercise more and be more physically fit and that is something we could work on together.  When the weather gets nicer I want to walk.  I love going on walks.  My commute/work schedule makes it hard to do things in the evenings but I need to not just plop myself down on the couch and veg out all evening...I need to be active.

So we'll see how we do this year....