New year's resolutions

I've never been good at keeping new year's resolutions.  I tend to make them because it helps me get excited about the new year, but I have a hard time following through on them so this year I'm working on making resolutions and then breaking them down into smaller goals that will be easier to keep track of.

Fitness/health

• Work out more than I don't work out.  This plays into my competitive side.  If I track the days that I work out against those that I don't work out, then I can clearly see which one I'm doing the majority of the time.  I plan on tracking this month by month.  That way if I have a bad week and don't make it to the gym much, I can still feel like I'm able to achieve my goal and actually get extra motivation to do that.
• Take a multivitamin daily.  This should be easy enough to do.  I used to take multivitamin, but got out of the habit.
• Drink water.  I never drink enough water.  In past years I've tried to set a goal to drink a certain amount of water, but I never end up doing it.  So my goal is simply to drink more water.

Relationship with God

• Always be reading a devotional book.  This goal is simple.  When I finish reading a devotional book, I'll simply start another one.  This may even be my year to get through some of those that I've started, but never managed to finish.
• Attend church and Sunday school.

Relationship with Andrew

• Continue reading books with Andrew.  Andrew has a huge problem actually getting through a book.  He's fine reading magazines, the newspaper, or the occasional article online, but for some reason he always falls asleep when reading a book.  I've attempted to remedy this by reading books with him.  This is the perfect solution because I get to read the book aloud, which I love to do, and we get to share what we're reading and discuss it as we go.
• Plan out things we want to do together at the beginning of each month.  Andrew and I have never been the couple that plans out date nights.  We have a tendency to do what we want, when we want.  But with his schedule getting busier with the new job and classes starting up again, I think it'd be nice to plan out some things to do together.

Cleaning

• Work through the 2012 Declutter Calendar.  I downloaded it from here.  While they have it set up so you do specific tasks on specific days, I think I'm going to work through it in my own order and just keep track of which ones I've done.

Cooking

• Cook more often.  Last year, a friend and I challenged ourselves to cook on Crockpot meal a week.  The year, I think I'm going to shoot for cooking one recipe a week.  That gives me four recipes a month, which is totally doable.  Andrew and I have a tendency to cook whatever is easiest, which means we eat a lot of frozen pizza and other things that are not that exciting or inventive, so this will help us to eat some new things.

Art

• Catch up on scrapbooking.  This means I need to set specific, achievable goals for my scrapbooking so I don't get overwhelmed by everything I want to get done.
• Start a new knitting project every other month.

Starting the new year off with a bang...

...literally!

Andrew and I were on our way over to my parent's house to spend the night with them, my sister, and her fiance.  We had Schmoo with us so that he could play with the other dogs while we hung out.  About two miles away from their house, the back left tire started sounding strange.  I thought, well we're almost there.  We can just keep driving on it until we get there and then figure out what's going on.  But we didn't manage to make it that far.

We went through the last light before my parent's house and then the whole car started shaking so I put on my hazards and pulled to the side of the road.  We had a nice couple pull up beside us to make sure that we had a phone to call for help.  We called my parent's and told them that we needed Justin, my sister's fiance who's really good with cars, to come help us.  After that, we had a fire truck pull up behind us and one of the firemen got out and asked us what was going on.  I told him that we had blown out our tire and that we had help on the way.  He said that he would have a police car come pull up behind us while we were dealing with the tire and then he started directing traffic.

In about two minutes, Justin and his brother, Kyle, came to help us.  Andrew took Schmoo and walked him to my parent's house, which we could see from where we were, to get him out of the way, while I watched Justin and Kyle put on the spare tire.

As I told my parents when I got the car to their house, when I do anything, I do it well.  I think the pictures make that obvious.

The nail and screw that we found in the tire when we took it off probably had something to do with it!

At least I know that 2011 can only get better from here!