22 Things

It's New Year's Eve, Chad is at work, and the kids are asleep. I can see and hear the neighbor's fireworks through our upper windows. I didn't have the energy for a New Year's Eve "party" with the kids this year. So here I am with my mug of cocoa and my laptop. Party of one. Time to look back and look forward.

I'm chalking this year up to a lack of focus. I was busy, but didn't always choose the best things to be busy with. Moving was stressful for me, and threw a wrench in some of my goals for my 31st year, and I had to change a few of them to accommodate unforeseen issues. But I have discovered that I am totally okay with not having done several of the 31 things on my list. It's been good to evaluate and re-evaluate. And the 22 things I did accomplish feel good.

1. Organize my recipe binder
2. Make ricotta cheese  Attempted and failed. That counts right?
3. Make a pumpkin roll  I made one for Chad's birthday. It got a bit dried out. Oh well. Next time.
   
4. Can butter
5. Give sweet rolls to someone  I dropped some off with a new family in our neighborhood. I had never met her. She and her husband looked very confused. I felt like a crazy person.
6. Donate blood
7. Finish 2011 blog book
8. Reupholster dining chairs  
9. Organize and consolidate my old half-filled, half-finished scrapbooks
10. Complete the "ABCs of Me" challenge
11. Assemble bug-out bags for the family (extreme 72-hour kits)
12. Move
13. Index 20 names a month, for a total of 240 names
14. Attend the temple or Family History Center at least eight times (I honestly lost count here. I know I didn't make it eight times, but I came close.)
15. Reconcile my parents' books of remembrance with familysearch.org  What a cool website.
16. Read the Book of Mormon 
17. Establish a chore routine for the kids, with allowance Need to revisit this one. It got established...and then forgotten.
    
18. Take the family hiking (So easy to do. We are so lame.)
19. Go camping in a place we've never been (We're a little farther from campgrounds now. We'll have to get creative.)
20. Establish a daily schedule for the family, including home-school, preschool, and therapy
21. Play 12 different board games with my family (Made a valiant effort here. We played Dora the Explorer Memory, Dinosaur Train Make a Match, Candy Land, Yatzee, Disney Trivia, Up-Words, Skip-Bo, Big Picture Apples to Apples. We probably played Sorry! too, but I couldn't remember if that was with Chad or not, so it doesn't count. The family got a few new games for Christmas, so we're going to keep working on this one.)
22. Go to a baseball game with Chad
23. Remain at or under my goal weight for longer than one month (Ha! I still haven't gotten back to what I was in January.)
24. Do 20 real pushups with good form (I think the best I did was 15)
25. Learn to draw a cartoon person, worthy of a children's book illustration (nope.)
26. Finish painting Christmas village
27. Read 52 books (I got to 49. So close. I definitely need to watch less TV.)


Megan's bookshelf: read






















Megan's favorite books »
28. Watch a documentary  I watched "The Perfect Human Diet" which was interesting, but not necessarily credible. I started watching "The Dust Bowl" but it was taken off Amazon Prime after I watched the first hour. I would have much preferred it.
29. No TV or movies for one week  I did this at the beginning of November, and it was a great week. I got stuff done around the house, and I finished my 2011 blog book. More importantly, I reevaluated the shows I had been watching on a weekly basis, and decided that 90% of them were not worthy of watching. So my Hulu queue has undergone a major overhaul. No more Vampire Diaries or Bachelor. I'm keeping Master Chef, because, you know, cooking is a vital part of motherhood. And Bob's Burgers...don't ask.
30. Eat Brazilian food  Brazilian steak house. Pretty sure this is not how your average Brazilian eats, but nevertheless delicious.
31. Send flowers to someone  In this day of emails and texts, there is nothing like an actual IRL bouquet of flowers on your doorstep.