Hello, there 2012. Nice to meet you.



Willa's Aunt Joy picks out some pretty amazing gifts.  Table tennis is a blast and with a glass table, even Stickers is entertained!

The New Year is upon us!  For some reason, I always get excited about New Years Eve.  Not necessarily about the parties (I worked this year, 3 nights in a row.  So I was no party animal.)  Mostly I enjoy the feelings I get of gratefulness for the previous year, I like to take some time to think over the things that have transpired.  2011 was a pretty big year for the Van Boening's!  We sold our first home, after making some renovations.  We moved to the country.  We grew a garden.  Our baby turned into a toddler (who thinks she is in high school.  She told me that today.)  We lost Luther.  We gained Stickers.  We took our first family vacation.  We (Brad) built a dirt bike track.  We (I) grew my cleaning business.  I ran the half marathon.  We did lots of fun stuff with friends.  We celebrated Brad's 30th birthday with a surprise party and a trip to St. Louis to see Travis Barker and Supercross.  All in all, it was a pretty great year.  Except for losing Lu.  I don't think I will ever get over that.
The other great part of the New Year is thinking about all the things I am looking forward to and all the things I want to work on in the coming 365 days.  I thought I might share a few things I'm thinking about.  Not because they are interesting or anyone will even care, but this way I can go back next year and see if I blogged about accomplishing any of the things I set out to accomplish.  Maybe I will set a goal to be more interesting so next year people will want to read my blog:)

I think the biggest area that I need to improve upon are our finances.  I won't go into any specifics of dollar amounts or anything weird like that, but I do have certain dates laid out that I would like to have certain debts payed off.  And dates by which I would like to have certain amounts in various savings accounts.  There are also several home improvement projects that I would like to fund this year, including (but not limited to) building a play structure, finishing off the fire pit, making over the flower beds to give them a more modern feel, replacing the mail box and landscaping that area, completely redoing the spare bedroom, and maybe replacing the flooring in Willa's room. 

In the area of health, I need to change my thought process on exercise.  See, a lot of the time I skip working out because I feel like I don't have a big enough chunk of time to devote to it.  Then it just doesn't happen at all.  I have started to do little mini-workouts (from Bodyrock.tv) and if I only get one in a day, that's fine.  I don't beat myself up over it.  If I have time later in the day, then I get some cardio in.  I think that will work out a lot better than trying to find an hour or more per day to work out.  That NEVER happens.  Ever.  The other big thing is making sure to have groceries on hand to pack a lunch on cleaning days.  That gets tricky because it has to be something that can be eaten easily, quickly, and without any warming or preparing.  And sandwiches, especially as a vegetarian, get old fast.

A few other things on the list...find an activity for Willa (swimming?  gymnastics?) to introduce her to the social world.  Not having ever gone to day care, I don't want to completely shock her when it gets to be preschool time!  Take another little family vacation.  Maybe even to Colorado again.  Go on a trip that requires a passport.  I have one in mind, but we'll have to see how that plays out:)  Hire more Purely Maid employees.  Which means we need to increase our client load by a few, also.  That never seems to be hard.  Find a new office space downtown.  Find something to do, within the year, to use one of my creative skills to make money.  How vague is that?  Gonna need to do some thinking on it.  Read more.  I think I say that every year.  Spend lots and lots of time with Baby P, starting by throwing him a rad baby shower.  More on that later this week!  Do a better job with my garden, composting and recycling.  There are more, but if you can believe it, most of them are even more boring than those were.  If I weren't at work right now, I would toast my goals with a little glass of wine or something.  Oh yeah, that was another one.  Drink more wine.  And champagne.  And whiskey.  From pretty glasses.