2015 Goals

On Sunday the talks in Sacrament Meeting were all about Goal Setting. Monday for my personal scripture study I read a few things about goal-setting from LDS.org and from other non-religious sources. For Family Home Evening that night Chris and I talked about what we wanted our individual goals and family goals to be for 2015. We both wanted more time to think and pray about what our goals should be, but it was a great conversation and the perfect opportunity to discuss what we want 2015 to look like!

I have several goals for 2015 and tried to pick some from different categories.

Spiritual:
-Study Preach my Gospel as my personal scripture study
-Attend the temple one time per month (either with Chris or on my own)
-Index 10,000 names

Physical:
-Exercise at least 3 times a week
-Try several different group classes at the YMCA (more on this later)
-Eat clean
-Give up soda
-Lower my cholesterol without needing medication (more later)

Educational:
-take one class from BYU (Children's Literature)

Personal:
-Read 24 books from my "to-be read" list (make sure Book Club books are added to that list)
-Always have my toe nails painted (silly, but I LOVE this)

Family Goals:
-make 72 hour kits
-start making emergency prep purchases (we've been setting money aside each month for like 1 1/2 years now...)
-more regular date nights (we decided we're going to start hiring one of the YW from our ward instead of always trying to swap with someone else).
-clear clutter out of our house
-get Emma off bottles (whoops! that should've happened MONTHS ago)
-get Emma off pacifiers

Emma is 19 months old and I still weigh just about what I weighed when I went in to the hospital in labor. I don't really care what the number on the scale is by the end of the year, I care more about how much fat I'm able to burn and how my clothes fit. I have few pants/skirts/dresses that fit. I don't want to buy more clothes in the current size I am. My cholesterol also shot up this year. When I had my physical in November my dr was shocked by how high my cholesterol was. She told me to eat better and exercise more.

This past month Chris and I have really been researching gym options because I've found it is just hard to exercise at home with Emma. I was looking at first for something just cheap- like Planet Fitness for $10 a month, but they don't have childcare so I would have to either go super early or go after Emma went to bed. I wasn't crazy about that idea. By 7:00pm I'm exhausted after chasing Emma all day. Then I looked into another option that was $20 and that included childcare, but it was hard to tell from the internet whether this place was super legit or not. They also had limited group classes.

I knew I really wanted to join the YMCA. They have a pretty great class selection plus cardio and weight machines. A bunch of girls from my ward go there so I would be able to see them and Emma could have friends she knows in the childcare area. It sounded amazing, but the price was a little much. Yesterday Chris spent most of the day looking over our budget seeing where we could make some cuts, and spent a ton of time on the phone with the company that does our auto insurance. We were able to make some changes across the budget that will end up covering a decent chunk of my gym membership, and the rest will just come from the money we normally put into our "house downpayment" fund.

By getting a gym membership at the Y my hope is that I will be able to go in the morning while Emma is awake, which will free up nap time for me to be able to do cleaning or meal prep or scripture study or all of the above. That will allow me to hopefully use my evenings a little differently- like to work on school and spend more quality time with Chris. I'm also hoping that it will help give me more energy, reduce my migraines and relieve some of the stress that I have.

Chris's big goal for the year is to get his health back under control through exercise and diet. He has learned that when he exercises regularly that he doesn't feel the effects of his chronic illness very much. So in 2015 our family is really focusing on health!

Last year I didn't post my goals somewhere I would regularly see them, so this year I'm typing up my goals, printing them out and putting them up on the wall in my room or on the fridge so that I can regularly see them!