Happy Anniversiday!

We pushed our anniversary party back this year because we were both exhausted in December, so we made it an anniversary and birthday party. We had SO many people come, I was amazed, and it seemed like a huge success! I can't wait for the future, but if we're going to keep having this many people show up we'll need a bigger house for SURE!

Conference!

This weekend I'm going to a conference for after school providers-- I'm SO EXCITED! This is my first professional conference and the topics are right up my alley!

They're talking a lot about cooking, gardening, and setting kids up to have lifelong habits that will help them be better people. There's also a section about combating the sexualization of young girls in the media (Less is Not More) and setting up staff evaluations.

I know it's geeky, but I'm so stoked. I hope that it's a stepping stone to the next phase of the program in which I introduce things like back yard chickens and growing enough that we are able to make meals (like Thanksgiving Dinner) with only a little bit of supplementing from Publix!

Here I go with my research... woohoo!

2013

I don't really make resolutions for the new year, I tend to make goals. This year, I want to do a lot of things, and just in the past four or five days I've gotten a lot done to accomplish these goals!

1. Pull our house together. We've been living here for about a year and a half, but have been too poor and too busy to do much decorating. With some of my trust money, I went out and went on a decorating bender at Target and Ross yesterday! We put up a bunch of the decals I bought in the hallway, and now there are PICTURES! I got floating shelves for the living room wall, a shelf to put over the drink cart that will store our wine glasses and growler jugs, and some fun little round mirrors to put around and bring some light in to the place. I also got drawers to put in the closet to organize them and an etagere for the bathroom and some new towels. All of our towels are from my freshman year of college, nearly ten years ago! We have a lot of room in the tops of our closets that is going to waste right now, so I'm focusing on getting things properly stored up there to free up space in the rest of the house.

2. Get healthy. I've been trying to do this for a while, but I've been sick for a long time and then in 2012 work was way too tenuous for me to take much time off. Part of this get healthy goal is to take my sick time and vacation time when I want/need to. It helps that Jimmy (my AD) is super awesome and great at his job, so this year I'm really going to take advantage of the decent amount of vacation I have and the ridiculous amount of sick time I have stored up! (I'm about to max out at 95 hours, so I have to use it otherwise it stops accruing!) We're talking to some friends about the YMCA up the street and if I cut back on my clothes budget (which shouldn't be hard, I'm not going to let myself buy any more clothes until I've lost 30 pounds!) and we are better about eating in, that should cover the membership easily!

3. Get back on top of my businesses. I really ignored Agape and Lemongrass in 2012 because time just got away from me, but I'm going to be setting time goals for each week to work on the website, products, and Etsy shops. There's no reason I can't dedicate an hour and a half per business each week-- I love doing both and three hours isn't that much!

4. Mail all these packages... I have a lot of packages sitting in my living room! Some of them are returns, some of them are gifts, and there are even some from BEFORE WE GOT MARRIED. Yes, I know!

5. Organize my past. I have so much stuff sitting around waiting to be put in shadow boxes, scrapbooks, and scanned in to files that I've got to get it all taken care of. I've decided that three days out of the month will be dedicated to taking a box of stuff, deciding if it needs to be kept or thrown out, and then either organizing it in a scrapbook/shadow box, or packing it for storage to be put out when we have a bigger house.

These are my goals for the year. They're ambitious, but I feel like I'm off to a really great start! I'll post pictures of the improvements soon, but only if you'll keep your fingers crossed for me!

2012

The upside of these picture round ups is that I remember the good things that happened in the year. 2012 was overwhelming for us, and I think that most people had that same experience. We struggled a lot, and continue to struggle but 2013 is a new year and as long-time readers and friends know... I'm all about a new year. I'll write more about my goals for the year later, but for now... 2012 in lots and lots of pictures that are totally not in any particular order.

I got better at doing my own hair this year! 

I got to see my big sis get married in the beautiful NC mountains!

Some of the lovely women of my AAC -- Lauren (in white) was married in March and just had her baby boy a few weeks ago. She'd just found out she was pregnant when this picture was taken!

Adult Prom!

I have pretty friends...

Iggy and Fletcher

Fletch is our guy -- sometimes he'll insist on saving part of his meals for Jeremy!

I got to meet Erica

And Lindsay in real life! 

This is Detroit from the Canadian side-- I got to visit TWO other countries this year!

Jeremy attempted his first ultra marathon with the Pine Mountain 40. He only made it 26 miles, but from what I can tell it's widely regarded as one of the toughest trails in the Southeast. 

The crowd before the race -- I was very impressed with the number of women there! Girl power!

At LI I made a lot of new sister-friends and had my first ever bowl drink-- it was delicious!

India and I both have panda phones-- and there was a panda!

I played a lot of Arrested Development Hangman with Jimmy and Sarah

Jordan tried to get us to let him drink coffee

Nakayla tried to do Sarah's hair

I made my first batch of preserves with pretty decent success!

Jimmy and I rocked the church staff retreat

I spent a lovely evening at Six Flags

I got to meet The Bloggess-- one of my favorite writers and a real inspiration to me!

We got to visit the Botanical Gardens, which are my favorite

Orchids

Atlanta Skyline from the Orchid house

We attempted a garden with moderate success-- it got WAY too hot and we couldn't keep the plants hydrated, so better luck next year!

We even had a corn stalk taller than me!

I got to see Michelle, my best friend from growing up, whom I haven't seen in over 10 years!

I got some neat shots - right place at the right time

I made new friends on the AAC 

I saw Judah and Nikki and had a BLAST!

Mom got a new dog after Belle passed away. Maggie is a big baby, we love her!

My girls did SO well at recruitment!

We had live goldfish in the centerpieces

and we have an ENORMOUS chapter now!

All in all, there were a lot of highlights to 2012. I think that Jeremy and I really rocked it out as best we could and I'm proud of what we accomplished. 2013, here we come!