Past, Present, Future

Past year:

This past year has been a whirlwind! So many major things have happened in our lives. It really seemed to fly. Here are the highlights!

1) We went house hunting. I really enjoyed this, I love looking at other people's houses and I love to decorate, so the decorator in me loved the first few months of this year!
2) We went to Italy, what could get better than this? We will never forget our trip to Italy, with all of its crazy, mixed up events and the wonderful people we went with! We really enjoyed seeing the universality of the Church and it really molded our faith in a very good way!
3) Bought a house! We closed on our house the week we got back from Italy, talk about a crazy week! We absolutely love our house and do not ever want to move. I frantically worked to make it look finished and achieved that in about a month. (Now I kinda wish I would have slowed down, cause there's nothing for me to organize or decorate now :-))
4) Went to California! Neither one of us had ever been there and it was a very cool experience. We went for David and Stephanie's wedding and Jeremy was the best man. We had a blast going with friends and although we were in "podunkville U.S.A" (really, there was NOTHING there), we really enjoyed our trip and what a beautiful reason to vacation!
5) Bought a new car! We did this the week before California. We seem to always do major purchases right before or after a major vacation! Our old car bit the dust big time and we bought ourselves a nice car that we got a great deal on!
6) Spent a lot of time with family and friends over the summer. While I won't pinpoint one occassion, we really have spent a LOT of time this year with family and friends. We are very busy traveling and hosting people and we love every minute of it. Our friends and family are so important to us and the tough points of this year are so much easier when there is a group of support around you at all times. Thanks friends and family, we LOVE you all!
7) We took my family and my parents to Starved Rock, Grand Bear Lodge, for their 25th wedding anniversary. We had a blast playing games and cooking dinner and having a special blessing Mass. What a blessing to have two parents who are such great marriage role models and take their committment to each other as priority each and every day!
8) We found out that we will not be able to have kids of our own. While this may not seem like a highlight, it was a huge relief to at least have an answer for our infertility. This brought us hope as we can now move forward in our future for our growing family. God has great things planned I am sure!
9) Took a trip to Minnesota to see our most wonderful friends! We love our visits with them and it is a major struggle to leave everytime. Their kids make us smile and we can't believe how much they grow in just a year! We got to go to Mall of America with them and celebrate our own little Christmas, a few weeks early. We did our annual Christmas cookie decorating (and licking) fest and helped them decorate their tree as the kids insisted they wait till we get there! I think we enjoyed our visit so much, we might have to go up there twice this year!
10) Began (unofficially I guess) the adoption process with a visit to Catholic Charities. We had all of our quesitons answered by a case worker and were given a one inch stack of paper to begin filling out (we were told this is the first of many trees we will kill). We will hopefully have our first classes at the end of January and by June be put on a list to wait!

Present:

Well, yesterday ended my job at the day care, as I work to pursue my dreams as a teacher. It was a hard day, lots of tears shed, but lots of smiles as well. It was great to enjoy my babies as they had a wonderful day and I got lots of hugs! I will really miss coming in each morning and having two of three of them (who are really really attached to me) wave and smile at me as I walk in the door. Then they usually fuss while I take my coat off as I can't get to them fast enough to give them hugs!

I will begin my new job on Monday, well, maybe... I am going to be substitute teaching, so I may have a few days off as not many teachers take off the first of the year. A few days off will be nice, I could use a little time to do some scrapbooking and card making!

As for today, we will go to Mass in an hour, then we are hanging out with my good friend Annie and her boyfriend, Mike. And I believe I was challenged to a snowman making contest by my hubby! I told him we may have to wait until the temperature gets above 20! We shall see!

Future:

Here are some of my goals for this next year. With a new job, a new year, and a new routine, there are some things that I would like to work towards.

1) Be a great substutite teacher. I really am hoping to enjoy my time in various classrooms and with lots of different students. It will help me know what classes I like best and what grade levels I am geared towards!
2) Work on my scrapbooking and card making. I loving doing it, but since we have married, we have spent a lot of time moving and rearranging. It is the one that that I do not have organized the way I would like it. So with the potential for more days off and more time in my evenings since I get off earlier, this is one thing that I would like to really work on and do more of. It is such a relaxing thing for me and such a nice quiet activity to do while Jeremy is studying hard.
3) Jeremy says one of his goals this year is to pass another Actuary Exam! With that would come a bonus and a raise that we really could use!
4) Save more money! Isn't this always a goal? Well, with the house and furniture and car and bills and medical testing and you name it, we weren't so good at this as the year progressed last year. However, this year we have a goal in mind. Adoption is not cheap, so we HAVE to continue to save more and more in order to have a baby. So we are working on tracking every dollar we spend in a month and only using Jeremy's paycheck (which we currently try at, we just use a little bit of mine every month at the end when we realize his wasn't enough). We can do it as we write out our budget with everything, we just need to be more careful and have less impulse buys with big things. So this is an achievable goal, we just need to stay on top of management for it!
5) Lose weight! Honestly, I have really let this be one thing I slacked at this past year. I stopped exercising because I was just too busy and while we still eat fairly healthy, there is more that I would like to do there too. So now that my job has changed, I am going to form a new routine and fit this in daily. I also learned this past year from my doctor about how exercise affects my PCOS. What I didn't know about it is that it is actually a result of how my body uses and over uses insulin. My body produces way too much insulin which in turn causes me to break down sugars too fast and since they are not broken down correctly, they are stored as far. So with exercise, it is actually worse to do aerobic exercise because that increases your body temperture and insulin production and will actually cause me to store my food as fat faster! Yikes, no wonder I had no success when I did exercise! So I am supposed to do a lot of walking and strength/core training. So for Christmas I received weights and a walking DVD along with a pilates ball. So first on my new years agenda is a work-out plan!
6) Eat better! Again with the PCOS, the more carbs I eat, the more I crave apprently. So we will be significantly reducing those and increasing fruits/veggies! I look forward to the challenge!
7) Hopefully get a baby in the year 2010! While this is not up to us, we hope that it will be this year and it is one of our goals to prepare as best as we can for our adoption and parenthood!

That was longer than I expected, but it helps me to write it all our, I can see how many blessings we have been given and it is so nice to see our hopes and goals for the future!

Happy Feast of the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God!