Hola! Remember me? I’m the girl who began this blog with a dream of turning it into a makeshift travel/fashion/faith blog and then disappears for long bouts of time. I’m back again! Where did I go? Well, I could say I got super busy with life and didn’t have time to write, I could say I took some time to focus on my family and self, I could say that I was suffering from severe writers block…but I’d be lying. Nope, I’ve just been lazy and distant. I could dissect why but we all know what it’s like when you have a plan and then get off track only to let that weaken your confidence and suddenly you’re on a cycle of enabling yourself to continue to slack. That’s the procrastinator’s anthem. The Lazy man’s lament. The perpetual slackers mating call.

Anyways…new year, new me right? Ha! No. I don’t make New Years Resolutions because as you can see, I suffer from best intention-itis and tend to plan and then not do. So, instead I want to look at the list of goals I made for myself a few months ago, reflect on how well I’m doing on working towards those goals and maybe reshape/renew some goals for 2019. A few months ago I wrote a review on Rachel Hollis’s ‘Girl, Wash Your Face’. As part of my review, I shared some serious self reflection that prepared me for a lot of ways to break promises to myself and start the lamenting all over again. I can’t say that I’ll stop wallowing but maybe, just maybe, if I re-examine my goals, I’ll get some motivation to get off my rump and do the damn thing! First my goals:

• To live by my pen
• Loose a large amount of weight and be healthy again.
• Travel both the US and the world.
• Live 100% debt free.
• Have a fourth child
• Have an organized homelife
• Give abundantly to those in need.
• Live happily!

These have not really changed actually. Obviously, I wrote them less than 6 months ago. I also realized that I would need baby steps to reach these goals so I made another list for just that. (I like to make lists) So, lets review the baby list and I will update you on the various levels of failures and “needs improvements”.

• Finish a manuscript and attempt to publish by making sure I complete at least one 
• page of  writing a day and one blog post a week. (Obviously this…all of this was a failure. BUT, I can count THIS post as a step in the right direction, right? Gotta start somewhere!)
• Drink 100 ounces of water each day and take a long walk at least once a week. ( I actually kept this up for a while and was probably the most proud of myself on my ability to drink that much water. However, After signing up on for Rachel’s Last 90 days and falling off the wagon VERY quickly, I began the cycle and need desperately to get back on. However, I can say that I do drink far more water NOW than I did before so that’s something worth a small pat on the back.)
• Start an RV Fund and plan our first big road trip for next spring/summer (I planned the trip but did not start a fund. Nor did I take into consideration other factors…more later) 
• Work a better budget to pay off debt quicker little by little (This is still a work in progress. We have been blessed with a new job for Jeremy that gives us more income but have also been met with more bills as well so still trying to get the budget thing down. However, we have been working with a great Debt Counselor for a year now and have successfully paid $8000 off our debt (minus the house). I still need to do the math to see our debt to interest ratio for the last year but it’s one year off our 5 year debt free plan so…woot. I’ve added a new goal to this front for 2019. I want to pay off 25% MORE than planned which is a tall order but doable with some hard work.)

• Have a fourth child…that one’s self explanatory. 😉 (Well, this brings me back up to the summer vacation… Unfortunately we will be missing our dream RV summer vacation, as well as the family mission trip we go on every year. We will be missing all of this because coming mid July is a tiny little human! There is some talk about maybe doing a spring break trip, but obviously we’d need to look into our finances and consider our priorities. My fingers are still crossed!

• Declutter room by room until everything has a place and unneeded things are given to someone who can use them. (Failed hard at this but taking baby steps to get there.)
• Give as God calls us and set up a blessing fund for such things. (This is something that I struggle hard with because I truly believe we are called to tithe. It hurts my heart knowing that we’ve often fallen behind on this and let our fear of financial failures keep us from giving the way God intended. Ironically, we tithed most diligently while we were unemployed and were overwhelmed with the over abundance of God’s blessing to us during the time. Then here we are, years later, way more stable and still giving into our insecurities. Will we ever learn?! This year, I hope!)
• I vow to my kids and my hubby to work on managing my hot temper. This is the most important baby step of all of them. (Work in progress…the baby mood swings definitely don’t help with this.)

I’s also like to add…

• Get my family a health makeover. This will mean meal planning, dentist appointments (which we are behind on), regular pet care (I’m the worst at making appointments. Also for dentists.), more outdoor activities and less screentime

Okay, so there is my update and I welcome all of you to lovingly hold me accountable on all of these points. I know I could use it. I have plans for this blog and I can’t wait to share with you! I’d like to start by revisiting some vacations we had the last year, share some emotional and spiritual journeys, create a thread dedicated to decluttering (Help me come up with a cute clever name in the comments) and then definitely some trip/dream brainstorming (this I will absolutely need help with).

Tell me some of your New Year Goals in the comments!

Till next time…