Happy New Year 2012

I can't believe that the new year has already arrived! The older I get, the faster time seems to fly. Add four little kids and a puppy to the mix and I barely have time to breath! As I seem to do every year, I'm hoping to kick off the new year with some resolutions to improve myself during 2012. Here are a few that I hope to work on this year:

1. Daily Prayer and Scripture Study (as opposed to Scripture Reading)
2. Go to bed earlier and wake up earlier
3. Write in my journal at least weekly (the blog counts!)
4. Eat better and add weight training to cardio (running the dog every morning)
5. Better (wiser) money management
   

These are listed in no particular order and if I can tackle just one of these this year, I will be happy, but I hope to hit a higher percentage of success.

Now, when it comes to "resolutions", many think that they are silly and not meaningful. I must disagree. I think there is a lot of power in the concept of "self-improvement". It means a lot to me when I can tell myself that I'm going to change something for the better and then to succeed (even if I only succeed once). It helps me to feel "free" to choose for myself what I do on a daily basis. Especially in my current phase of life, when everything is so busy and I barely have time to breath. Being able to take control of my life and make positive changes goes a long way to helping me deal with stress and life in general!

Okay, one of my resolutions is already at risk (go to bed early), so I'm going to close. I hope to post to this blog very often and as I do so, I plan to catch up on things. It has been a while since my last official journal entry, so I have a lot of catching up to do. I also want to report a bit on this past holiday season. It was a blast and I really love my kids. Now that I've been off work for about 10 days, I'm finally starting to relax a bit. I have 3 more days of vacation this week and I'm very excited about it!

One last thing before I succumb to exhaustion --> I will be joining my brother in law in an exercise meant to help capture my life's history this year. Each week, he will send out a topic and I will write against this topic in this blog. This week, the topic is "Where and when were you born and what was it like then?" I plan to address this topic tomorrow, but I will need to do a little research on this first.

Cheers!