I said "Yes"

Five years ago tonight, I made a choice that changed my life forever.  Now, as we all know, there are few things in life that we have control of, but in this instance-I was asked a question and had full control over the answer.  Now, at that moment, I wasn't really thinking through every detail of my life and how it would be affected by my answer, but I just knew what the answer was going to be.  Five years ago tonight, Kevin asked me to marry him, and of course, my answer was YES.

Now here we are in 2012, spending our New Year's at our new home, with our two daughters sleeping upstairs, two dogs sleeping on the couch, and I will most likely be asleep before midnight while Kevin watches the ball drop by himself--but I (and hopefully he) would have it no other way.  In the grand scheme of life, five years isn't all that long, but for me, it has been the best five years of my life and I can only hope that God blesses us with many, many more wonderful years.

New year, new blog!

I know, I know.  Like I have said before-I really try to maintain a blog and then life gets in the way and the blog seems to go by the wayside.  But as I sit down to reflect on 2012 and make some new goals for 2013, I am really going to try to maintain my blog and then hopefully by the end of the year, I can have a nice scrapbook of the year that I can make into a book (just for me and my family).  I think that has been the problem in the past, I said I was writing for me, and then I got sidetracked by how many people did or didn't read my blog and I got a little "who cares if I write today" attitude.  But, I have come to realize that it doesn't matter if anyone reads this--one day maybe my girls will come across it and they will have this amazing scrapbook of their lives and for me that is enough.  Two readers, years from know is enough to motivate me to really try to keep it up.

So I kind of have a love/hate relationship with New Year's.  Things I love--I got engaged on New Year's 5 years ago, I love making new goals and starting anew, I love new calendars, basically New Year's is like the ultimate Monday--you know how all good diets, goals, etc. start on  Monday.  Things I don't like about New Year's--staying up late (and yes, midnight is late to me), I don't like feeling like a failure when I don't meet my goals or break my diet.  So, of course this year, I have a laundry list of things that I am going to try to improve on so instead of this year listing out my resolutions--I am just going to have a couple of words to live by for 2013.  My words of the year are Improvement, Calm and Energy or ICE. 

Improvement--Things like staying organizing, meal planning, keeping up with my cleaning schedule, keeping up to date on blogs, emails, setting up get-togethers, dates, etc.  All the things that have seemed to fall by the wayside when I don't remain. . .

Calm--I have a tendency to overschedule, get frustrated, get stressed--I hate to say this--but basically I'm not a very nice person the more stressed I get--so this year I am going to try to maintain a sense of calm.  Hopefully some of the things I am trying to improve on will aid in me being more calm--or at least when I am getting stressed I can just repeat ICE, ICE, Baby--and if that doesn't make you smile than I don't know what will :)

Energy--and of course, I must have some goals related to weight loss and exercising.  I certainly want to lose weight before our summer trip so therefore, eating better and exercising are a must.  I have some fitness related goals this year, but in the same sense of maintaining a sort of calmness, I want exercise to be fun and not feel like a chore.  I want to enjoy running, so I plan to just sign up for races with friends and have it double duty as girl time.  Hopefully, I can find some girls that are on board. I also need to give some yoga, pilates, zumba a chance.  You know, really just switch it up so I don't get bored.

So there you have it--the word for the year for me is ICE.  Do you have a word for the year?  I would love to hear it.