Keeping Up With...2019 Goals (December Recap)

Wow, I can't believe the year is over!  2019 was a weird year for us with lots of changes.  We had a pretty good year, until this last month.  In December things tend to get a little off course but this year they went really left.  We had at least one sick kid almost every day this month and had everything from a stomach bug to pink eye to a horrible cold that lasted for a week for each kid.  We lost two appliances between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  And then the real shock was when my Uncle Tony unexpectedly passed away right before Christmas.  I tried really hard to see the good in all of that, and there was some, but it was really hard!!

Our winter break didn't go as planned either and we missed quite a few fun things we had planned for Christmas since there was like 10 days that we couldn't leave the house with sick kids.  The boys were upset to have missed some of our traditions, as were Adrian and I, but we are pitching the idea that they will feel that much more special next year when we get to do everything.  We did have a lot of downtime over break which was great, I slept a lot, ate a lot and played a lot of games.  It wasn't what I planned but may have been exactly what I needed.

I tried to stay focused on my goals this month, but it was really hard.  I fell behind on just about everything around here and am just now pulling my head above water.  Even this post is later than I wanted it to be by about a week.  And I haven't written about what my goals are for this year, although I'm hoping to get to that tomorrow.  Overall I'm very pleased with how this year went.  I accomplished a lot of my goals and made progress on almost all of them.  I think the only one I didn't accomplish anything on was going camping with our family, but we got a dog instead so that put a bit of a wrinkle in our plans for that.  We are hoping to get back to that next summer though!

Here's how I did on my goals in December and some thoughts on how I did for the year as well:

• Lose 50 30 pounds - Lost 0 pounds this month, and actually gained 1 more pound this month.  However, I'm down 19 pounds this year and I am thrilled!!  The past few years I have gained each year so I'm thrilled to see a loss this year and hoping I can ride that momentum into next year and continue losing.
• Exercise for 20 minutes every day - I finished the year working out 340 days out of the 365 days in the year.  I really ran out of steam this month and there were a lot of days that I did not exercise.  I was just really worn out from the holidays and all of the stress, plus eating a little heavy makes me not want to move.  I'm proud of how many days I exercised this year and I'm going to try again next year!
• Read the Bible in a Year - DONE!!  I fell behind here and there during the year but I was able to finish on time.  It was a challenge but I'm glad I stuck with it.  I enjoyed reading it and feel like I know the Bible better.  This is my second time reading the whole book and definitely not my last!
• Read 100 Days to Brave - DONE!!
• Read "Be Still and Know" - DONE!!  I also fell behind on this book but it was easy to catch back up.  I enjoyed this daily devotional and have another ready to go for 2020
• Read 20 books - I read 18 books for the year.  In December I finished "A Hero's Guide to Deadly Dragons" and "Escape from Mr Lemoncello's Library" both of which were quick reads.  The Library one was a recommendation from Daniel because he read it in school and really enjoyed it.  It's a series so we may read the rest of the books together too.
• Read the 12 How to Train Your Dragon Books - 6 books done this year.  I really like these books and plan to finish the rest of the books in 2020.
• Read "The Beauty Myth" - DONE!!
• Write 45 meal plan blogs - I did 33 blog posts this year which is pretty good, although short of where I was hoping to be.  I did plan almost every weeks, just didn't always have time to blog about it.  
• Write 52 weekly summary blogs - I wrote 50 summary blog posts this year, I missed only 2 weeks.  One is from the summer when I fell behind which I will just not be doing.  One is the last week in December which I'm working on now and will be publishing sometime this week.
• Write 12 9 goal recap blogs - 8 blog posts so far this year including this one.  I'm really hoping to do better with this one next year!!
• Pay off $3,000 of credit card debt - DONE!!  We actually paid off $3,800 this year, but we did buy our new refridgerator on 6 months same as cash.  I'm hoping to pay that off in one month, but we'll see how our finaces from this month shake out, it was an expensive one!
• Renovate the living room - DONE!!
• Watch 40 50 movies - We watched 50 movies this year!! In December we watched: "Klaus," "Elf," "Home Alone," "Home Alone 2" and "Rise of Skywalker."  I am so proud of us for sticking to watching at least one movie each week most weeks.  Some of them were movies we had seen before but they still counted.  We are excited to try to do this goal again next year!
• Go on 12 dates with Adrian - 14 dates for the year, yay!!  We are loving life now that we can leave the boys home here and there on their own.
• Sub 70 days in the schools - 67.5 days for the year.  I was so close to hitting this one and I had to call out multiple times in December because of sick kids and craziness.  I'm really enjoying subbing in the school and will be continuing next year.
• Do one group fitness training - DONE!!  I'm officially licensed to teach Aqua Zumba now.  I'm super excited to add this license to my resume and that I am teaching one class each week at the Y.  I'm hoping to add a few more this summer at their outdoor pools.
• Go to 6 Zumba jam sessions - 11 jams attended so far this year - Yes, another goal completed for the year!!  I went to 3 jams in December and loved them all.  I am convinced that's why I didn't gain more weight this month with all of that exercise.  And so much new choreo for my classes, yay!
• Clean out master bedroom garage - DONE!!  We decided to wait on our bedroom and instead clean out our garage.  We spent about 2 hours one morning and got the whole thing cleaned out.  It looks awesome!!
• Clean out play room - DONE!!  The boys did great helping out in the play room and we got rid of a ton of things.  I'm super proud of them!!
• Have 12 family board game nights - We've had 10 family game nights so far this year, including one more over winter break.  The boys aren't always wanting to play with us anymore so we didn't do as many of these as we would have liked.
• Play Pandemic Legacy with Adrian once per month - We played all 12 months and won the game!!  We did have to play December twice, but we played once and lost and then played right away and won in less than 30 minutes.  It was a fun game and I'm glad we did this!
• Have 6 nights out with friends - DONE!!
• Go on an awesome spring break vacation to Florida - DONE!!
• Do 100 fun family things (one thing each week during school & one thing per person each week over the summer) - We did 95 things this year which is pretty awesome!  We missed a few weeks due to sickness, including some of our Christmas traditions.  But we had a pretty fun year and are looking forward to doing more fun things in the new year!
• Go on 2 family camping trips - none planned so far and now it's too cold here in Ohio.  This goal will not be finished this year for sure, but we were just talking about possibly going next spring so it may be back on the goal list next year.