Chinese New Years Resolutions!!

Happy Chinese New Year Everyone! It is the Year of the Dragon! I am sure that you are impressed with my knowledge of Chinese culture considering I have absolutely no Chinese in my genetic lineage (although Anna did look Asian as a newborn...so maybe there is something somewhere.) :-) However, I am not that well versed in Chinese culture (other than the fact that I think their food is delicious), but I have mad skills when it comes to googling something. :-)

Anyway, you may be wondering where I am going with all this Chinese New Year stuff. I have found that it is helpful to me if I publish my New Year's Resolutions/Goals on my blog as a way holding myself accountable to the throughout the year. However, we are already 23 days into 2012 and most people have already given up on their resolutions and I haven't even started or articulated mine. There are plenty of good reasons for this including being sick with a sinus and ear infection since January 2.... on top of the fact that we had house guests and a funeral in the midst of this 3 week illness. If I had tried to blog about my goals during that time, the goals would have been something like:

• "Make sure to have tissues, Advil, Mucinex and cough drops on your person at all times"
• "Take a nap"
  
• "Invest in Kleenex corporation"

So, I decided to hold off on the blog until I felt a little better. While I am still nowhere near 100%, I finally feel like I am beginning to recover from this crazy bug and can begin to formulate and work toward my goals in this area so I am declaring them my CHINESE NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS for 2012: The Year of the Dragon:

1. Exercise at least 3 times per week-This will probably be a goal for me every year for the rest of my life. I was doing well with this in 2011 until the holidays hit and then I got sick. Definitely need to get back into the habit.
2. Develop a will-With the hundreds of millions of dollars that I have, I really should allocate where it should go. Seriously, we don't have much and have the proper beneficiaries listed on things and have talked to who we want to care for Anna in the event of our untimely demise...just need to make it legal (and I realize this should have happened already.) :-)
3. Organize/Improve My House-I was not blessed with the domestic gene so I am very challenged when it comes to decor and home organization (which is weird because I think I am a fairly organized person overall.) However, I know I don't like any space in my house right now so hoping to rectify that. I do not have a huge budget for any major projects, but I know I can do some things like paint, organize closets and spaces, and pitch/purge/sell things we don't want/use/need. I also want to convert our junk room, I mean office, into a playroom so that every room in the house isn't overrun with toys.
4. Read 100 books-Last year, my goal was to read 40 books and I far exceeded it so going to try to challenge myself on this one.
5. Complete 2 digital scrapbooks-I have not started on Anna's 2 year old scrapbook and she is almost 3 so I want to finish Age 2. I also have several recipes that were my grandma's that I want to make into a cookbook (if you are related and want a copy I will post the link when it gets done...even more motivation to finish it.) :-)
6. Unplug-I love my electronic devices!! However, I have found that there is almost never a time in my life when I am not using something electronic and I am not sure that is healthy. I had jury duty a couple of weeks ago and cell phones were not allowed in the courthouse and I think I might have been twitching a little by the end of the day because I was away from my phone. :-) Because of this, I want to make a commitment to unplugging from everything for at least 1 hour a week (and it cannot be while I am sleeping.) :-) I also want to take at least 2 days where I unplug for the entire day.
7. Read through the Bible in a year-I love YouVersion as tool to do this.

I also have 2 more areas that I want to work on but I haven't quite figured out the details on how to make it happen yet.

1. Some sort of Sugar Fast-I don't struggle with things like alcohol or recreational drugs, but sugar is my drug of choice. I need to fast from sugar at some point. I am not sure if I give it up completely, fast one day a week or do something like a lenten fast. Still trying to work through this.
2. Financial Goals-I want to figure out how to spend less and save more. We do an OK job at this, but I want to do better. Not sure if that is through couponing, eating out less, selling non-essential body parts, or some other manner.

I think that is it!! Happy New Year and enjoy an egg roll in honor of the Year of the Dragon!