2010

It's a new year and a new decade and it started off right with a Buckeye Rose Bowl victory. However, because I was fortunate enough to be watching the game at my parents house up in Columbus and spending the weekend with them, I didn't have much time for reflecting on 2009 and contemplating 2010 and what my resolutions/goals would be. So I spent a little time this week doing just that. I gave myself a few days to look over the list and make sure I liked it before I committed to it and shared it with the world, so here it is:

1. Pass the P.E. This is the professional engineering exam. It is given twice a year, and I will be eligible to take it in October this year. It is basically an 8 hour exam over everything that has to do with civil engineering, and if I pass it I become an officially registered engineer in the state of Kentucky and can sign off on plans, meaning that if anything goes wrong, it is my responsibility. Kind of crazy!

2. Get to work on time in the morning. I am typically 5-10 minutes late every morning, and while no one actually cares and I try to make it up by staying a little later or taking a shorter lunch, I feel like I really need to start getting there at or before 7:30 every day.

3. Run a half marathon. This is one that scares me to put into words because it means I am committing to it. I am worried that I won't have the time to train for it while working full time and doing young life, but I looked up various training schedules on line and it looks like if I can commit to running 3-5 miles 3 times during the week and doing a long run on Saturdays I should be able to do it. So I figure I can do my 3 runs on the days that we don't have young life club, and if I do them right after work, I should still have time to make dinner and do contact work on other nights. I also have no idea how I am going to run for 13 miles...

4. Pay off student loans and be debt free. If you know me you know I love Dave Ramsey and love the idea of being debt free. The goal this year is to get our one final debt paid off (besides our house, we don't make enough money to pay that off in a year). Once we get that paid off the plan is to never have any payments again!

5. Organize my house and get rid of things we don't need. Back in the fall I started a list of places in my house that need organizing. I even took some "before" pictures. I started a blog post about it, but knew that I wouldn't get to it til after the holidays, so I am saving the post, but it will be coming soon. I would like to check off everything on that list, and a big part of organizing will just be getting rid of excess stuff around our house that we really don't need. I am really excited about this one.

6. Cook 1 new meal each month. I have so many cookbooks, and I have also found many blog posts of things I want to try, so while during the week I usually just stick with cooking things that are quick and easy, I figure if I try something new one weekend a month, hopefully I can learn to make some real yummy things. I really want to try this Chinese Beef Broccoli Recipe:

7. Go on a week-long vacation with Derek. I know this seems like an easy one, but we haven't done this since our honeymoon. We have either lacked vacation time or funds, and so this year we are going to make sure that we go on a vacation together, and not just a long weekend kind of thing, but an all week, go somewhere decently far away vacation.

8. Have a personal retreat once a semester. I want to plan a day each semester when I will go somewhere all by myself and just spend the whole day with God, thinking, praying, reading, journaling, and just having time to be with God for a whole day.

9. Devote 10 minutes of each day to prayer. I have always been a pray throughout the day whenever I think of it kind of person, which I don't think is a bad thing and I would like to continue to do. But I think it would be cool if I was intentional about devoting 10 minutes each day to praying about specific things, and to see how God shows up in that.

10. Be more intentional in my relationships. This is the most vague of my resolutions and doesn't really have a quantifiable goal attached with it, but there are so many ways that I want to do this - like having more friends over for dinner, being more encouraging to people, writing notes and doing things to help them out, etc. I just want to spend more time thinking of ways I can love my friends and family and follow through with it.

11. Start and finish my scrapbook. The list was originally a nice neat list of 10 things, and then I thought of this one this morning, and figured I better put it on here. I bought a scrap book last year or maybe even the year before and have done NOTHING with it. I got a ton of scrapbooking stuff for Christmas and I went through all my pictures that were at my parents house, so now I have no excuse. I need to get on this. I feel like a year should be enough time to make a scrapbook. My friend Rachel posted this picture of a scrapbooking station and I love it so much, so I stole it from her blog. I think if I had a scrapbooking station like this, I would scrapbook all the time:

So there they are. I am glad that I have them documented. I'll be revisiting this post at this time next year to see how I did. I think now I need to make the list pretty and put it somewhere that I see it on a regular basis to remind me of all these things :)