Reflection and Looking Forward

We have really enjoyed 2010. We settled into our house, the kids got way bigger and are soo fun, we lived through several busy seasons, traveled, and had a great time.

2011 is going to be the year to get on top of our lives. I've set some weight loss goals and a plan to make it happen, plus we are kicking off the year by going through every room in our house and completely cleaning it out. Now that we have been here just over a year I feel like we can go through everything and figure out what works and what doesn't. I went through the kitchen yesterday and got rid of a bunch of things and reorganized again and it feels so nice! Plus I feel like I am more motivated to be there with less around in general.
One big reason I want to clean everything out is so we have less to clean up. It seems like even though we work hard to keep things clean, things pile up. If everything is clean...then I can craft! I just got the Silhouette for Christmas. SO excited. If you don't know what that is, it is like a CriCut, so it cuts vinyl, paper, cardstock, magnet sheets, photo paper, etc. and it connects to the computer so you can buy an image or anything you have saved on your computer will work in it. I am excited to play more with it! I've also been collecting vintage top sheets and want to quilt them. I haven't touched any of them since I was waiting for things to calm down after the last few crazy weeks! Once the house is spotless I can feel like I can work on stuff during naptimes :)
Speaking of a busy few weeks, I think Zach saved the terrible twos for right now. He has been throwing lots of fits and is easily triggered. He hasn't ever been like this (luckily for us) and can snap out of it after a few minutes usually, but man is it exhausting. There has been so much going on (Thanksgiving in Utah, cruise 3 days later, kids zone on the cruise which apparently traumatized him for life, my parents moving here, Christmas, hardly being home from visiting everyone so much) I think he is overwhelmed. He doesn't do well with change, obviously. I am hoping this busy season- I mean winter season- we can have more quiet days and get back on schedule. I like to hibernate during the winter anyway, so we can kind of re-group, clean up, work on projects, and catch up with life! We have a few goals for being more thoughtful this year as part of feeling like we are ahead of the game, so I'm excited to accomplish that too.
We want to continue spending lots of time with the kids. More and more we like just staying home and being together with our family. Earlier in the year I was trying to figure out a good hobby for John since I wasn't sure what it was he loved to do. Then I realized, he loves being with us. We are so grateful for our many many blessings, especially for our family. We are excited for the upcoming year!