Ring out the old, ring in the new!

Another year has gone by.  2008 was a very exciting year for us.  January I turned yet another year older.  Photodad and I went through 2 months of pre marriage classes through our church.  February through June we were house hunting, and house buying.  God’s timing was perfect and blessed us more than we could have imagined.  We rented our old house to a lovely family and they have been ideal tenants.  Photodad turned another year older and I surprised him with a trip to NYC to eat at The London Gordon Ramsey’s.  April we welcomed a new addition to the family.  During the spring we were finishing up our wedding plans.  We moved/unpacked and ten days later got married, and had the most amazing wedding, took a honeymoon and went back to work.  July, I joined a neighborhood ladies Bible Study, which weekly has been a blessing to me (we went through Boundaries).  I became a full-time mom.  June through September I was training for Tugaloo Olympic Triathlon and BigBrother announced they’re expecting again.  August crazyMike moved to Wisconsin.  October my cousin got married, BigBrother took a new job and moved his family to North Carolina.  November and December was full of family, holidays, sinus-yuk, baking, crafting, sewing and relaxing, we even snuck in a date.

2009 is just around the corner and hubby and I have been talking about this upcoming year.  Through the pre marriage classes we started listing some short and long term goals, a few we were able to cross off this last year (buying a new house and moving to Marietta).  A big goal for us this year and next is finances.  We are ready and set up to start paying off our debts.  I’ve been working the last few months getting things organized so we can stick to the snowball plan.  The first step was paying cash for our Christmas gifts, and we have our 1K emergency fund set up.

During those classes, I’d listed developing my hobbies, but the first half of the year I stressed about NOT having a hobby.  Finally, in late September I started getting in to crafts more and in October started teaching myself to sew (on my Grandma’s machine).  I hope to learn more about sewing clothes in the new year and with two new babies arriving this year (BigBrother and my cousin) I have a focus!

I want to continue staying in touch with friends and family, which honestly facebook has helped a lot with.

I’d hope to be able to start my Ph.D in 2009 but might need to delay it another year.  I have everything ready, but my GRE scores where they need to be.  I’ll have more time this year to prepare better for that test.

We’ll continue to develop our family traditions (Friday night dinners) and hubby and I are going to make our date night a priority.

No babies of our own planned for 2009.

I want to complete the ING half marathon in March and possibly a Fall Olympic Tri or marathon.

Hubby is going to start making money with his photography and wants at least one paying client this year.  I have a feeling he’ll be surprised! We want to put our over 1,000 wedding photos together in an album.  He’ll explore making our wedding site or his photography site a CMS (content management system) where we could possibly sell the template.  He wants to add a few more dishes to the signature list.

We made a list of house improvement, which even if it’s pricing out how much it’ll cost we could start to budget for things.  My priority would be to fence the backyard for Mags and making our house more energy efficient.

For the kids, we’d like them to continue developing their hobbies and possibly get more invovled in school or outside activities.

We’re looking forward to another exciting year, full of many more blessings!