Happy Chinese New Year!

This year we are not celebrating the Chinese New Year.  Our budget just won't allow it, and Julia wants to attend a birthday party for a friend. However, since I never really posted my New Year's goals (yes, I actually have some this year),  I will post those now.

1. I will not beat myself up and call this year a failure if I fail to meet these goals.

2. Read through the Harmony gospels. Ever heard of it?  I had not until I attended a conference a few years ago.  The Harmony gospels are the gospels in chronological order.  You can actually buy harmony gospels and not have to flip back and forth.  My Bible has a harmony reading plan in it, so I just marked it with a post-it and am working on that.  At the rate I am going, I may barely finish this year.  I need to kick it up a notch.

3. Finish the joy dare that I started 2 years ago.  Yes, that was a one year challenge, and I fell woefully behind, so now I really need to work on that. I would like to finish by March 2 which is the two-year-anniversary of the date I started.  However, that is unlikely unless I start coming up with five or more items a day.  I could probably do that but am trying not to repeat too much.

4. Save $1000.  I have a goal of being loan and credit card debt free in just under five years.  However, this last month combined with some known coming expenses mean a miracle must occur for that to happen.  So, I have scaled it back to at least getting $1000 in the emergency fund.  This is HUGE.  Why?  Well, I have spent about $1000 in car repairs in the last month, and the previous repairs were not completely paid off.  Just today, Andy went out and bought a dryer.  Our 18+ year old dryer breathed her last breath this morning.  It just started running cool.  Andy and I thought he could just replace the heating element and maybe the fuse.  While both items did need to be replaced, Andy discovered some singed places and rust when he opened the back of the dryer.  It really looked like fixing it was inviting a fire hazard, so the dryer must go.  The good news is that we got a lot of use out of that dryer. With four kids the dryer has often handled 60 loads of laundry a month, so we got our money's worth easily. Hopefully, the next one will be as good if not better.

5.  While this goal is not really official, I would like to exercise more.  I am off to a really good start on this one.  I splurged on a Jazzercise membership and made it to four classes just this week.  Prior to this week I made it to 2 or 3 a week, and I should be able to manage 3 or 4 most weeks.  In-services and appointments  do interrupt this plan.  I really tried to make my church's gym work, but the classes I could attend all hit at 6:00 or 6:30 which is not a good time to be away from home for a mom.  I do not do as well with solo workouts.  Jazzercise offers the opportunity to exercise right after Wyatt and Julia get home from school which gets me back home at about the same time as Andy - a much better schedule + it's just fun.  So, now I must decide if I will run/walk our city's mini-marathan.  I really want to, but I have not been running, and I only have 2.5 months left to train.

My original goal was to completely remove sugar and white flour from my diet rather than exercising more.  I realized quickly just how hard that would be.  So, I am now working to scale it back significantly and work off whatever I do eat.  I would really like to get to the point that something as sugar and flour laden as cake with icing grosses me out.  I have not had anything but water to drink for over five months now, and I think a soft drink would gross me out at this point.  I just need to get there with cake and brownies!

6. Remove something from my basement for every day of the year.  Yes indeed that does mean I need to purge 365 items over the course of the year, and I am really not doing well on this.  Having someone coming into the basement to install a new dryer and remove the old one should definitely kick start that.  I have two and a half days and will be hosting a party in the meantime.  Yikes!

I know goals are supposed to be laid out with small steps, timelines, and all that, but I am just going to try and run with these.  I can only be successful if I rely on God, and that is the biggest goal.