2009 in review: furloughs, family, and faith

The great thing about a blog is that I was easily able to go back and read some of my previous entries from bringing in the New Year.

2006 – this was a transitional year in many ways.

2007 – this year I met the love of my life.

2008 – this year we tied the knot.

2009 – I celebrated my 30th birthday

It was fun to go back and re read some of the entries. So lets see how well we did in 2009!

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

Well if you’re a facebook friend you’ll know that I love connecting with friends and family! It has been a great way to stay in touch, support and encourage those who are important in my life!

2) 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.

No progress. Honestly I’m not sold on the program I’ve been considering and haven’t figured out how to get my Ph.D in a field that I don’t have to take master’s classes in first!

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

We were pretty consistent the first 1/2 of the year and the second 1/2 was a little more sporadic due to cutting back in our budget.  Hubs was good about making a special dinner on the weekend that was always better than you would get out to eat.  As far as our date nights, we missed a couple months but hope to get back in our regular monthly date soon!

4) No babies of our own planned for 2009.

No babies here, except for my Evie (who’s snuggling up against me as I blog). BUT we had a couple new additions to our larger family and I’m so excited to watch them grow up!

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

I was registered, trained and about a week before the half marathon I came down with a stomach bug which left me down for the count for at least a week or more.  I did get in a Sprint Tri and couple 5ks which seem to be more my speed lately!  Although my training buddy and I are considering ING ATL again this year.

6)  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 definitely had more clients this year, but worked more on building our portfolio! We have yet to frame or print any wedding photos! I guess that’s the downfall of digital prints you don’t have to develop them to see them!

7)  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.

Well…Mags passed away on July 31 so there is no need to fence in the backyard.  And due to the flood of 2009 we spent our house improvement funds on fixing my craft room and added some improvements to it in the process.  I’d still like to insulate the house better and we have a few other ideas on the list!

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

Neo is joining ROTC and school sure keeps Muzikchik busy.  My hope it that she’ll be able to find something to be involved in at school!  Neo shaved his head for ROTC, so we’ll see how he likes this involvement!

9) Finances

We did awesome the first 1/2 of the year, but due to furloughs and our rental house being a little uncertain we had to halt paying stuff off, but we’re back on track and I hope to pay off a lot in 2010.

10) Learn to Sew

I sure did! I’ve made some cool stuff and have really enjoyed developing this hobby.  I even had my first paying client and hemmed two pair of pants from someone else!

More highlights…celebrating our 1-year anniversary downtown with Dane Cook and experiencing my first earthquake. What will 2010 have in store!

Happy New Year’s Eve! Hope 2010 is the best year yet for you and yours!