Things I'm Looking Forward to in 2024

I have officially decided I don't think I like the idea of calling these resolutions. I do like to think of goals I have for the year, but when I think of a goal throughout a year to add, I don't like to put it off until the next January. As Larry (semi) puts it (I'm paraphrasing): if you want to become a better person, why would you put that off? If you want to be better, start right away!

So here are things I'm looking forward to this year:

-Family Vacations: Our Disney Trip and maybe one more? 

-My surgery. I'm FINALLY going to get my abs repaired from having so many kids so quickly (and how big I tend to get!). I'm beyond excited for this!

-Larry finishing his Masters and his graduation day! He should be done by end of February and graduation will be in March. Yay!

-Staying productively busy. We have plans to have the kids start tumbling, going to the Home Depot workshops, definitely adding library visits to our calendar, reading more with the kids, signing up for swimming lessons, practicing said lessons and riding bikes in the summer, sledding in the winter. Anything and everything we can do, take advantage of our time together.

-Less social media time around the kids. I absolutely HATE when I am on my phone and look around and Larry is on his and the kids are either just playing by themselves or they are also on their tablets. It drives me nuts and I'm going to put a stop to that this year.

-Stop the cussing. I have a terrible habit of saying bad words and I really need to stop. And not just cussing, but replacing them with the same type of words. I need to talk more positively around my kids.

-Saving and spending goals. I want to make sure I'm not spending money on just anything. It needs to be worthwhile and I need to be putting more away. I don't think this one will be too hard for me.

-Purging! This one has a few parts:

• Monday nights I've had to pause my puzzle nights to start clearing out the house (again/still). I've just had such a hard time doing this during the kids waking hours (because they are messy AND I want to do things with them when I have the chance, not just be clearing out every nook and cranny). I know I'll have to do their rooms when they are awake, but that's a small part of the house. I started this one in November and I started with the Master bedroom. I am surprised how much crap we have in there and that's the only room I've been able to do so far. I had to put a pause on it for the holidays (to wrap and do other things), but once this blog gets caught up, I plan to start that up again.
  
  
• I need to get back into updating my recipes onto actual recipe cards like I had planned to do last year. As I stated, I'm still in the "weeding out my really good recipes from just the so-so recipes" part. Once I do that I can transfer them to the cards I have.
  
  
• Clean the house more/better! I'm embarrassed to say how bad I am at actually cleaning my house. And I don't mean like picking up the toys and crap the kids leave around (though it's a hit and miss on if that's done or not each day), but the actual scrubbing and wiping down of my house. We have this beautiful, big house that I always dreamed of having and I'm TERRIBLE at cleaning it. I used to leave one weekend a month where I'd clean basically the whole weekend. However, Larry likes to treat me to dinner when I clean and so I'd clean everything but the floors on Saturday and tell myself I'd finish Sunday, but then we'd go out Saturday and it's like I got my reward so I didn't feel like I needed to finish. I've been trying to find a new cleaning system to make it better/easier, but it's been such a trick. I think I have an idea coming into 2024, but hopefully by the end of the year I'll be saying "yes! I figured it out and we have a nice, clean house all the time now!

-Bath nights, One Wednesday a month. I used to not care for baths, but I've found out how I do like them and I end up looking forward to them each month..

-Game/Date night Wednesdays. Once Larry is done with school we plan to pick up our One Wednesday a month date/game nights. Another thing I used to look forward to (I have ideas on fun ones I want to incorporate like a Lego night, a make a new recipe together night, maybe a candlelight dinner night, a paint night...so many good ideas).

-Get inside home projects done in the winter and outside home projects done in the summer! I have a whole list of things I want to do for the home and I really want to get a good chunk crossed off this year.

-Reading tracking! I absolutely loved reading more this last year and found some really good books. I used to only be into romance, but I've really gotten into mystery and thriller types. This year, I plan to track how much I read.

Not a hugely ambitious list, mostly because I know I can accomplish all of this. But I still look forward to crossing things off and seeing how I do at the end of the year.