New Years Resolutions

The end of the year has sneaked up on me again. I almost don't even want to look back at last year's resolutions to see how I did. I just want to start fresh, and go with it. That is what the new year is all about, right?

Since Christmas I have had my new years resolutions in the back of my mind, and I just sat down and typed them out. I was thinking I'd have enough to work on 1 per month, but so many of them go hand in hand that might not work so well. Here they are! (feel free to skim, I have bolded the interesting parts):

2012 Resolutions

Health/Exercise:

I got some new work-out clothes using Christmas money. (Ok, all I have so far is a new UnderArmour shirt, but I'm ordering 2 more online and some new sport shorts. No more using my middle school P.E. shorts!) Hopefully the lure of new clothing will help me along. (Maybe I should get new shoes, too...possibly later on in the year to give me a second jump-start.) I also got a gym membership months ago that I used for about a month. I need to make use of it again, and get my money's-worth out of it. (See Schedule section) I also plan on looking up and signing up for races to aid me in making goals. 

There is nothing like the holidays to mess up your blood sugar levels. I have eaten so many sweets and drunk so many sodas in the past few weeks, I feel like I have corn syrup running through my veins. I am debating giving up candies and sodas for the year. What do you think? Anyone want to do it with me? Along with that I need to eat more fruits and vegetables. (See Schedule section)

Spirituality:

I don't usually make spiritual goals. Honestly it hasn't been a very important part of my life in a while. Well that needs to change. I definitely think it will help me achieve all the other goals I have. I plan to study (not just read) the gospel regularly. I want to study by topic and I am hoping the new tools on the lds.org website will help with that. I also want to share what I learn with my mother, so don't be surprised if you get an email from me. :)

                           

Get on a schedule:

Since I quit work and Joshua was born my life has been very unstructured for the first time in my life. I think it is affecting my happiness, my productiveness, and my overall health. So here is what I am going to do about it. I plan to go to bed at 10pm and wake up at 6am every night and day, respectively (when possible).  I will get up, go to the gym (See Health/Exercise section), come home, shower (if Joshua is still asleep), get dressed, feed Joshua/eat breakfast, and get on with my day. I can work on the rest of the day throughout the year. Don't worry, I'll keep the blog updated about it. ;) Then there are the weekly events to attend regularly: outings, errands, playgroup, etc. 

Do craft projects:

I have several projects that were put on hold so I could get my Christmas stuff done on time, and now I need to just get them done so I can plan and do other new projects! Here is my list of projects needing to be done before I can do new ones (in order):

Rag rug for Christin

Hamper liners

T-shirt quilt

Fire quilt

Cardboard tube mirror surround

Other couch

Only add more when finished!

Help with house projects:

Now that Dave isn't running the company AND working a full time job, I actually get to see him every once in a while, and we have planned to tackle some more projects on the house we live in. Have I mentioned our landlords are awesome?! (In this section when I say "we" it is really mostly just Dave doing the work with moral support/unsolicited suggestions from me with bull whip in hand.) We put in a new front door before Christmas that needs to be finished up, and our bathroom medicine cabinet was torn out at the same time and is currently a hole in the wall. Those need to be finished first, but here is a list of the rest of what we'd like to accomplish this year (in no particular order):

Re-do kitchen with free cabinets from this blog (thank you!)

Replace windows (one by one)

Paint exterior

Re-do flooring in living areas

Turn upstairs hallway into laundry

Landscaping 

We have some lofty goals in this area, huh? ;)

Organize:

I have a lot of crap. Dave has even more crap. It's all unorganized all over our house. I really really really REALLY REAALLLY REALLYYYY want to go through it all this year, throw out stuff we don't need (aka: sort it, donate it, throw it), and organize the remaining items. A lot of it is memorabilia that I would like to store properly (aka: binders, scrapbooks [eeeek!], photo albums, photo boxes, etc.) so that I can stroll down memory lane when I want to, instead of when I go through my crap. It really makes me nervous that I wouldn't be able to go and grab the important things in an emergency if I needed to. Hopefully if I can get that organized, the organization will spread and the whole house will be organized and clean!

Internet:

I have been on the internet so much less this year than last year (having a desk job will do that to you) and I plan to organize and schedule my time on the internet more this year. I would like to plan a time during the day dedicated to internet and computer and organize my time on the computer to be efficient. I haven't thought through this thoroughly yet, but I'm thinking a certain amount of time dedicated to social networking (facebook, blogging, etc.) and then a certain amount of time on "making my mark" on the internet world. Everyone these days seems to have some sort of money making idea or blog idea or both on a website, and I would like to join the ranks. I have some ideas, but I'm not going to share them here.

Congratulations, you made it to the end! I hope the skimmers got the gist of everything, and that the readers didn't poke their eyes out in boredom. See you next year!

Christmas Eve Sledding

We decided to go sledding today with Joshua. I'm really happy that he got to go sledding for the first time where I probably went sledding for the first time (let's be honest, I don't remember my first time sledding). Here are some videos and pictures of his first snow/sledding experience. His snow pants were supposed to be a Christmas present, but we left them out so he could use them early. He enjoyed sledding and enjoyed crawling in the snow until he got too cold.

Christmas Lip Sync

Hey! Another post about Joshua! :)
The other night Dave pointed out that Joshua was "singing along" to the music. I tried to get it on video that night, but it didn't really happen very well. This morning, though we got him to bob and lip sync along to Jingle Bell Rock. Here are the two (ok, three) videos:

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Apparently blogger doesn't like uploading more than one video per post, (update: apparently blogger just hates that one video...used youtube) so here's another post about cars:
Over Thanksgiving, Joshua and Uncle Daniel had fun passing the car back and forth and I caught it on video! :) (pay no attention to my manly, congested cold voice)

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Joshua's favorite toys are his cars. The other day we had him in the playpen while we cleaned out our old store location to turn it back over to the landlord, and he played with the same truck for over an hour and was perfectly content just rolling it around. 

Here's a short video of him rolling around his car and making his car noise. I posted it because it also has "the face" at the end that people suggested I document. ;)

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Joshua's tricks! These are the tricks that Joshua has down. We're still working on high five, fist bump, and some others. He's got a great wicked laugh ("ah ah ah ah"--think the count from sesame street) that I want to get on camera, but haven't yet.

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THANKSGIVING!

 Uncle Daniel came to visit and he had such a cool toy that played music!

 He also played with Joshua on the floor with his new car toy.

 Joshua had so much fun!

 On Thanksgiving day we went to Opa and Grandmas.

 Joshua got to play with 4 of his cousins.

 They all had a blast.

 Nathaneal was being a bit camera shy.

 Joshua got practice stealing his younger cousin's toys. :)

 And to celebrate black Friday Joshua had his first ice cream cone....

yep, just the cone. :) Here's a cute video of him enjoying the cone:

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HALLOWEEN!

 I made a skeleton out of milk jugs for the trunk-or-treat this year, and then hung it on our door as decoration as well.

 I decided last minute that I would spiderwebify our porch again. I think it looks more spiderwebby than it did two years ago when I did it.

 Who wouldn't love walking through those to get to the candy!?

 And then we left and went trick-or-treating in a different neighborhood. :) We got 0 trick-or-treaters. Our street never really gets any. Everyone goes to nicer neighborhoods.

 I made Joshua a pumpkin costume for Halloween this year.

 We took him to Opa and Grandma's house for some pictures.

 He loved the Sugar Babies the best because they made a great sound.

 Candy!

 Here is a full shot of his costume. The orange fabric was free off of Freecycle, I spent about $2 on the rest of the costume (the green fleece).

 Ok, I can't put captions for all these pictures, so just here are some selections from the photo shoot:

Floating elephant!

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Mid-October we took a trip down to St. George to fix some computers for one of our clients. I think we got them a new server and some new/used computers for their office. Here are some pictures from that trip:

 Here is Dave's "work station." We go on vacation to work in our family.

 This is Joshua's "work station." He put in a lot of hours on these bad boys.

 "Don't interrupt me mom, I'm hard at work."

 We even went swimming a little bit in the pool. It was plenty warm enough for it. We were both getting over colds though, so we didn't swim long. Ok, actually I just sat on the edge of the kid pool, and Joshua sat on my lap splashing away. He had a blast.

 Drying off and warming up.

 "Please, no pictures."

 "Ok, actually I just want your camera." As you can see, now that he is more mobile, it wasn't as safe to leave him on the chaise longues...soooo...

We finished drying off in the grass.

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Here are some pictures of Joshua and his daddy. These are from October. Captions are below each picture.

 Joshua got all bundled up in his marshmallow coat to go outside with Dad.

 We read a bedtime story to Joshua every night. Sometimes Dad gets a turn to read.

He loves story time, but it's hard to sit still so long sometimes. I love Joshua's expression in this one. :)

Spring in November

Today I decided that Christmas decorations would look so much better in a clean house. So I started cleaning...which turned into a spring cleaning type endeavor.
I moved everything out of the dining room, even the rug, and vacuumed and mopped. (Joshua's hands have been turning black from crawling around--it was way past due.)
I had leftover mop water, so I figured I'd clean the baseboards while I was at it...I don't think they've been cleaned in a decade (literally, that's my estimate). I know *I* have never cleaned them in the last 3 years and the people who lived here before us never cleaned _anything_ based on the state of the house when we moved in. Plus the house was vacant for a while.
Anyway...to give you an idea, I made it about 5 feet before I had to change the water. It was gross.
But now it is so clean!
Ps: Joshua has been SO much easier to take care of now that he can crawl (I've always heard it is the other way around usually). He keeps himself occupied and therefore content until he gets hungry or tired. Yes, I have to still make sure he doesn't get into anything dangerous, but that is easy.
I was able to do all of my cleaning while he was up and about! Such a relief!

Break time is over, time for decorating!

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Joshua is going to be a break dancer when he grows up (this is from September). I swear he was going to learn how to jump from his back to his feet before he learned how to crawl.

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This is from August as well. Joshua loves music. Here he is dancing in his car seat. :)

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Joshua likes to "sing". Here is a video of him "singing" in the high chair.

Joshua Overload 1

I just realized how lacking this blog is. It's lacking in Joshua pictures and videos. So for the next while, I'm going to be posting a TON of pictures and videos of cute little Joshua! :) He's my favorite! (Translation: I finally got around to taking pictures and videos of my camera, and now that my house is somewhat clean I don't feel guilty getting on to blog. Joshua is my favorite!)
Here is the first gem of a post. These are from August. Captions below each picture:

 Joshua loves bread.

 Maybe he just likes tearing apart the bread. Usually I just give him pieces, but I thought it'd be fun to see what would happen with a whole piece.

 Josh-o-lantern.

 How'd this one slip in here!? Sarah-o-lantern :)

 Joshua playing with his friend Spencer at play group in the park. They were "sharing" Joshua's Tonka truck.

 Whoops, Spencer fell over trying to crawl away.

 Henry comes over to play.

Joshua can look up to Henry and say "ok, in 3 months, I can do that, too" They're best buds.