A few weeks ago, I wrote a post talk­ing about turn­ing thirty and feel­ing a lit­tle bit unsure of what that meant.  When I was 25, I felt sim­i­larly.  I was no longer a stu­dent, and I was mov­ing out into the real world.  Now that I’m 30, I am actu­ally moved out of my first house and back into an apart­ment.  We do, how­ever, own both of our vehi­cles out­right and have very lit­tle other debt.  I am now eat­ing as well or bet­ter than any time in the past.  I feel more com­fort­able in my par­ent­ing beliefs and prac­tices than I have any time before.  I think part of the rea­son that I felt like I was going to have issues with being 30 is that it seems like you are no longer “young.”  I’m no longer in my care free 20’s.  I’m now a real adult.  I have real respon­si­bil­i­ties, and I am get­ting older!  Also, I have heard sev­eral peo­ple say, “I want to be done hav­ing kids by the time I turn 30.”  I never wanted that.  But, some­how, as I got closer to 30, I started to feel more pres­sure to hurry up and be done hav­ing kids even if it was going to be a bit past 30.

I had also been look­ing around our apart­ment lately and think­ing about all the things I had either started and not fin­ished or intended to do but had not done.  I decided that one thing that would help me to feel bet­ter about this year was to be able to look back on it and feel good about what I’ve used my time to do.  So, here it is, my list of goals for my 30th year.

My 30th year goals

Decem­ber — Kit­ting — I recently learned to knit.  I took a com­mu­nity edu­ca­tion class.  Orig­i­nally, I’d hoped to learn to knit a sweater by Christ­mas time for either my mom or Jason’s mom.  Unfor­tu­nately, that seems to be too hard and too time con­sum­ing for me right now.  My goal is to make a dif­fer­ent Christ­mas gift.  I’ll (hope­fully) post pic­tures after the hol­i­days are over!

Jan­u­ary — Fin­ish K’s quilt -  When I was preg­nant with K, I started a Noah’s ark quilt.  I got most of it fin­ished dur­ing the sum­mer and fall before he was born.  He was born about 4 weeks early, and after that my progress on the quilt stalled for the next 4 years!

Feb­ru­ary — Going to bed by 10:30 and get­ting up by 6:30 — I would like to take a month to prac­tice get­ting to bed ear­lier and get­ting up about 30 min­utes ear­lier than I need to be up and going.  I’d like to take that time to do a reg­u­lar quiet time and pray for the upcom­ing day.

March — Read -  I love to read.  I love to read.  I love to read.  In the midst of every­thing else I have to do or get done, I often feel as though I miss sit­ting down and get­ting lost in a book for hours.  I love dis­cov­er­ing new authors and rush­ing to the library to get the next book in a series or a new book by that author.  Because so many of my goals for this year will take time away from read­ing, I wanted to make sure I take time to focus on some­thing I enjoy so much.

April — Exer­cise –Right now, I exer­cise irreg­u­larly (usu­ally the min­i­mum of 3 times a week) at Curves.  It’s fine, and it’s nice to get a full body work out in just 30 min­utes.  I’m hop­ing to use this month to incor­po­rate more car­dio into the work­out.  Hope­fully it will coin­cide with spring???  Dare I make that wish?    Ide­ally, my goal is to work­out at Curves 3 times a week and do car­dio 2–3 times a week.  If I end up doing the 5k in May, I’ll need to be run­ning that often anyway.

May — Run a 5K — I know!  Those of you who have read this blog for a while know about my strug­gles with asthma, run­ning, cough­ing, and the frus­tra­tion that comes with those things.  I would love to run (yes, run the whole way) a 5k.  If I want to run the Fargo 5k in May, I would attempt the Couch to 5k plan again.  This time, I have a new plan of attack.  Instead of leav­ing myself 1 or 2 extra weeks, I want to start in Jan­u­ary and do each week of the plan twice.  That means if I get sick, I’ll have a buffer.  If I have trou­ble with a week, I’ll have a buffer.  Hope­fully…    Hope­fully, Jason will be run­ning the half marathon again and I’ll be run­ning (yes, run­ning the whole way) the 5k.

June — Doing new things as a fam­ily — Because my boys are young and close in age, I some­times make excuses for not tak­ing them places or try­ing new activ­i­ties with them.  We haven’t gone to the state park that is about 2 hours east of here.  Many of our friends have reported back about how great it is.  We haven’t even gone to the park that is 30 min­utes west of here with them.  We also have not taken a fam­ily vaca­tion nor have we stayed in a hotel room since A was born (not with the boys any­way).  My goal in June is to do 2 new things each week.  One activ­ity I would like to do as a fam­ily and one dur­ing the day when I’m by myself with the boys.

July — Orga­nize clos­ets and stor­age unit –Before we moved, our house was neat, clean, and orga­nized.  We got rid of a LOT of stuff we no longer needed.  Once we moved in here, we put things where they seemed to go.  We put the rest of the stuff in a stor­age unit.  I can see we don’t need much of what we kept.  Dur­ing July, I want to go through clos­ets and cup­boards and get rid of what we no longer need or want.  I also want to spend some time at the stor­age unit orga­niz­ing that and mak­ing sure every­thing in there is some­thing we will want or need at our house when the time comes.

August — Orga­nize pho­tos and make photo books — I am ter­ri­ble at this.  I have done noth­ing since I met Jason.  We have a wed­ding album, but that’s it.  I think my mom put that one together.  We have a drawer of pic­tures and thou­sands of pic­tures on the com­puter.  I want to make photo books for the boys (like the ones at Snap­fish or MyPub­lisher) and put together one for our fam­ily, too.

Sep­tem­ber — Noth­ing — After hav­ing goals for the entire year, I want to relax.  I want to sit out on our deck and read if I want or sleep if I want or do noth­ing if I want.  I want to round out my 30th year by think­ing about how great it was.

As if I didn’t have enough going on, I have a cou­ple other goals I want to make ongo­ing.  I want to do bet­ter at tak­ing pic­tures.  Jason’s sis­ter par­tic­i­pates in a photo project called Project 365 where the goal is to take one pic­ture each day.  I’m not sure I want to com­mit do doing that, but I would like to think of some way to get bet­ter and more con­sis­tent pho­tos of the boys and of us as a fam­ily.  Lastly, as if I hadn’t sched­uled every moment of my life from now through next Sep­tem­ber, I want to con­tinue devel­op­ing my idea for the Inno­va­teND com­pe­ti­tion.  Maybe some day I’ll even be able to share it!