New Years Resolutions

I've never really believed much in New Years Resolutions. I haven't made very many of them in my life, and it always frustrated me a lot to try and think of which thing I wanted to work on for a whole year, and how to remember it, and how to tackle it. So as I went away to college I completely quit making them.
Last year, 2007, was my husband's and my first new years together and I found out that he felt similarly. That was a relief.
Now I'm not saying anything against goal setting. DH and I have weekly planning meetings, and we review our goal sheet at least monthly. But a year seems too long and there doesn't seem to be anything particularly special about Jan. 1st.
Or is there? As we were talking the evening of 1/1/08 we realized that with my break from school and all our time together we'd been trying to change a lot of things to improve.

A Clean House

The thing I'm most proud of is our new cleaning schedule. In Rexburg we were able to keep our tiny apartment clean by working together 15 min. a day after dinner. I mostly did the dishes and he picked up, swept, vacuumed... whatever needed to be done. Now with this new house/apartment it's been more important to me to keep it clean because we share it with Grandma. But I've been feeling really frustrated because though it's more important to me I was feeling like I couldn't do it, even with a dishwasher now. So we've reinstated the 15 min. except with rotating chores for each day of the week. I know it's not fly-lady quality, but it's progress, and I can tell by the way my house looks and how I feel about it.

Getting in Shape

This is the goal that I feel most sheepish about. I always thought it was kind of dumb that it seemed like everyone set this goal for new years and no one accomplished it. (You can tell by the increased ads for exercise equipment, clothing, and gym memberships.) For me it's more of a goal to actually do yoga, because I love it I just don't do very well at making time for it. The actual impetus for this was the cool yoga DVD I got from my Sister-I.L. for Christmas and the DVD player we got from my Brother-I.L. and Mother-I.L. And the entertainment center to contain all that stuff that I got for my DH. I haven't been doing as well as I wanted to since school started again (except that I lead it for PE with my class at school). But that's the point of why it's not a New Years resolution, it's just a goal that I can set again next week, and re-evaluate next month. But I love my yoga!

Getting up in the Morning

I have to say that this is my fault. My husband was really great at getting up in the mornings until he married me. And it hasn't really improved any with setting a goal. But at least we're thinking about it. LOL

Financial

Our finances have been pretty well in order thanks to my husband's savings, online statements, and the Xcel program that I wrote, but it wasn't quite doing everything that I wanted. So we used an Amazon gift certificate to buy Quicken, and I'm excited and it's fun for me. But I guess that's not really a goal, it's just having in mind the things you want so you don't go blow a gift certificate on something else.

I guess what I'm mostly trying to ramble about is that life is for progression, so if we only focus on improvement once a year, I think we're really missing out on our potential and the joy of developing. But New Years really is a better time than I thought to get excited about changes of our choosing.