Time to talk resolutions...

John gave a great Family Night lesson last night on Balance... it got me thinking about the different areas of my life: Spiritual, personal, family, my hubby, financial and my calling. I realized that I need to categorize my resolutions to keep balance in my life.

So, after a lot of soul searching and pondering, here are a few of my resolutions for 2009:

Spiritual: I plan to use the Preach My Gospel as my guide for my daily scripture study. Have you read this book? I haven't. I keep hearing John and others talk about it and the Sister missionaries came over the other night and presented a lesson on it and WOW... There is some great stuff in it. It's not just for Full-time missionaries. It's for everyone... Plus I want to keep my Wednesday morning temple trip. I have missed it over the holidays!

Hubby: Try to go to bed earlier so we have more time to talk. We have gotten into the habit of going to bed late, and then John falls asleep instantly and we miss out on talk time without the kids around. Plus I want us to plan more creative dates.

Family: Enjoy the daily activities more... help Tanner with homework better, talk more to the kids while I drive them places (mitchell doesn't like to talk much, so it's usually quiet in the car... I need to pry him a little harder.) Play more games together. We had a great time playing "Rack-o" last night. We used to play that with my grandparents. fun memories.

Financial: Stop eating out so much. It got pretty bad in November and December. I was very lazy on the cooking and found myself grabbing cafe rio and pizza a little too often! This will help my personal goal too...

Calling: My presidency decided today that we are going to work on getting our YW Medallion. I am excited to get this again. I would also like to communicate with my ward YW presidents better this year. I plan to do this by visiting wards more and not use email as my only way to communicate. I forget that I have a phone sometimes. And I want to have more consistent presidency meetings. We are off to a good start... (I made the cutest calendars for my presidency. I transfered dates from the stake calendar into one that I made on the computer and added cute pictures from last year. Like in March I have pictures of last years Youth Conference, in April I have a picture of last years camp banner since that is the month we pick the camp theme and then I have lots of camp pictures throughout the rest. Its like a little srapbook of last year! so fun)

Personal: It's time to admit that I have lost all control of this part! I have gained back 25 pounds of the 50 that I lost a couple years ago. Most of it in the last 6 months. So, it's time to face it and get back to healthy eating! I have been pretty good about exercising... If not, I bet i would have gained it all back by now. So, the plan is to start keeping a food journal and keep exercising. I started today and have tracked everything so far! I know what i need to do, I've done it before and I really don't want to spend the money on Weight Watchers again. So I am going to give it a shot on my own. If I write things down and plan my meals ahead of time I know I can do it! So the goal is to fit back into my favorite jeans!

To help me get started on my resolutions, I made a dinner calendar today!!!! My life goes so much smoother when I have one. I sat down a the computer with a few cookbooks and scheduled out the month. I plan to do this every month. It will help with not eating out, healthy eating, more time with family and my sanity. I put the calendar in a little binder and put any recipes that I would need to look up into the binder. So everything is ready to go. I found a really fun blog where this girl cooked in her crockpot everyday in 2008. Crazy! But, she has some good looking recipes. I will let you know if I try any good ones. I decided that Mondays would be crockpot day. I am trying out a pork chop recipe tonight... I hope it's good, it smells good. check out the site here.

Here is my calendar for the rest of January...