Here's to 2012 and a retrospect on 2011

OK, so I took a blogging hiatus because I felt like I didn't have anything worthwhile to blog about and/or I was too busy to blog about it.

I would like to say I will blog more in 2012 but I can't make any promises.

Looking back at the last few months since I posted quite a bit has happened.  My last post was in October 2011 and it was brief to say the least.  I will just tick off a few things that have happened in those months to get you up to speed.

- At the beginning of October, the 9th to be exact, my son turned 2.  He has been 2 for three months!  It's flying people and I am afraid I might miss something.

- Nothing super significant happened in November other than Thanksgiving.  It was good.

- The beginning of December my husband got laid off from work.  That was earlier than usual because it normally happens for the month of January but hey he got called back to work on January 5th.  He was off a whopping 3 weeks! Upon return they made him salaried instead of hourly and now he will get paid once a month instead of weekly.  That will take some adjustment on my part since I pay the bills.

- Christmas was good if a little hectic.  This year my son enjoyed the opening of the presents a little more and I must say having a huge family pays off because little man made off with a bunch of toys this year


Now that we have looked back at what you missed (I'm sure there is more) in 2011 let's talk about 2012.  I am not a big resolution kind of girl.  I know I won't always follow through.  This year, however, I have a couple of goals.

First off my husband and I have been looking at the finances and are going to try to get a lot of stuff paid of this year.  This calls for a tighter budget, rarely eating out and other things to curb the unnecessary spending.  To accomplish this I am going to get back to meal planning.  I used to make a meal plan weekly and then shop based on the meal plan.  I have gotten out of this habit.  Now that he is only getting paid once a month I am going to have to do monthly meal planning (pray for me :) ).  Also, I am going to try to get back to doing the envelope system.  Taking out cash each month for gas and groceries is where I will start.  And each of us will get an allowance.  I will be more likely to stay on budget if I have that money in hand.  These are just a few things to accomplish this goal.

Another goal I have for 2012 is to do more journaling about my son and to take more pictures.  We have a group at my church that meets once a month called Mission:Motherhood.  Today we met and one of the things we discussed was keeping memories and passing them on to our children.  Being able to look back and either tell our children about them or remember for ourselves.  A lot of the moms keep a notebook of cute things their child said or did, milestones their child hit etc.  Some moms are big scrapbookers so they do that.  One mom has a calendar for each child and writes down in each date one thing that happened for the day.  There were about 20 moms there and everyone did something different.  So for me I am going to carry around a notebook and write down those memories I want to cherish.  Like instead of saying yellow he says wehwhoa.  Take those pictures I want to remember like when he gives his little cousin a big kiss and pats his cheek.  He is only 2 but I look back and because I haven't kept very good record I can't remember when some of his milestones were and that makes me a bit sad.  But I am not going to dwell.  I'm just going to move forward.

Lastly, and this isn't really a goal, I would like you to pray for me if you are the praying kind.  I might face returning to work for at least a year.  I am not sure yet what this looks like, if it's part time work or full time, days or evenings.  This hurts my heart.  See I never planned to be a stay at home mom.  I always thought I would be a career mom.  I had my son though and it ached to think of leaving him to go back to work.  I was going to do it though.  I thought I didn't have a choice really.  God took it out of my hands though and my position was eliminated due down-sizing while I was on maternity leave and we made a go of it.  I love nothing more than staying at home with my baby.  I haven't missed much of his life.  To think that I may have to return to work for even a short time hurts a lot.  I pray that I see God's will in this situation.   I realize that if he wants me to stay home still He will provide.  I also am looking at this as a short-term thing too.  If/when we have another child it will be too costly for childcare.  But until then just help me in praying that I make the right decision.

Enough of my rambling I hope some of this made sense.  Part of this is an attempt to capture a snap shot of our life as it is now.  I can't promise I will blog daily or even weekly but I will try to at least once a month!