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Some eats from our 2012 Garden

It’s been quite some time since I reported an update on how 2012 is treating me….(or should I say, how I’m working 2012?).

The truth is it’s easy to start the year with gusto and then slowly fizzle out as the months roll on. Well, in an effort to be both accountable and honest with you, I thought I’d do just that: share how my goals for the year are going now that I’m more than halfway through it (and also seeing that I’ve not updated since March on this topic!).

Fitness & Health

At March, I’d officially dropped 20 pounds to 139 pounds, which is the lowest I’ve been since having my second baby (who’s actually 4 and makes it hard to claim a “baby” anymore!). I did this through diet and exercise alone, no fancy supplements, expensive meal plans, personal trainers, nada. Well unfortunately, I think I sat on my laurels a little too much, because when I went to the doctor’s a couple weeks ago I was shocked and saddened to see that the weight had crept up.

No! No! No! I thought. And my other thought was this “RUN!” So quite literally, I ran. And ran. And ran. I’ve actually run most days since that doctor’s visit and managed to tip the scale back in the much better direction again. I’m sitting at 143 pounds this morning, so I’ve got a little work to get fully back to where I was, although I’m now in much better running shape than I’ve been in more than a year. Last Saturday I managed to run nearly 6 miles. This was an accident, though – I decided to change up my 4-mile route a little bit and ended up running about 2 miles more than I’d planned on when I got a bit lost. WHOOPS.

I’m actually planning on running this 5k in Federal Way if anyone cares to join me. If you see me on the course hollar at me and I’ll hollar back. I promise.

Financial

The hubby and I continue to make progress on Baby Step 2. Lest you think Baby Step 2 comes from the movie What About Bob? I should mention it actually comes from Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University.

I don’t feel comfortable sharing specifics with you here, but suffice it to say, we’ve paid a LOT of stuff off this year including a vehicle and my student loan. Have you ever paid off debt? It feels a lot like losing weight. All of a sudden, you have a little wiggle room, you’re freer to move around and your outlook on life improves.

We still have some work to do, but we’re down to our last three bills and are tackling them aggressively and hope to be done within a year’s time. Unfortunately, the cash budgeting system has fallen off track a bit, but I hope we can get back on in August here. Truly if you’ve never tried cash budgeting, it’s AH-MAZING and the only budgeting system I’ve tried that WORKS. (At least works for us because we truly need that level of discipline in our lives!)

Getting my House in Order

If you’ve been following me, you know I’m forever trying to maintain my crazy home. As I sit here, I can assure you the dishes are put away, my floors are freshly vacuumed, and there are only a few stray toys on the floor. The garage is even mostly cleaned, which is saying a lot if you’ve ever seen our garage.

But the house isn’t entirely where I want it in this massive 2012 declutter project. Things were progressing, but then…life happened a bit. As it does. I can’t go into detail, but suffice it to say we’ve needed to use our home to extend some help to others this summer. The long and the short of this means, I’ve had to put getting the house exactly as I want it on hold, but sometimes there are things that are more important that a clutter-free home.

On a related note, yesterday my sister asked if I could watch her three kids, which of course, I agreed to. If you’ve never had 5 kids under the age of 8 in your home (8, 6, 4, 2, and 1, to be exact), you should! It’s a trip. At the end of the day, the house could be cleaned up and my kids had a blast making memories with their cousins.

All this to say, I’ve been doing some thinking about my overarching goal of “getting rid of chaos.” Here’s why. People – relationships – sometimes “upset” our lives, don’t they? Maybe you had plans for a quiet evening, but someone needs your help. Or maybe your kid wants you to play with him on a night you really need to get some work done. Or maybe a friend really needs to chat with you over coffee about something she’s going through. Maybe a little chaos in my life is a good thing. Maybe instead of chasing a fantasy Pottery Barn life, I chase one where my hands are in the mud with friends and family a bit, but my heart is full.

Social

Terry and I managed to sneak out for a double date with some dear friends of ours recently that we’d not seen in way too much time. When we got back in the car, we realized we’d spent four hours chatting with them! What a great time!

It takes work to keep friendships strong and it can be so easy to let time go by! This week, I made plans to go running with my friend, Susan. I’m thinking of taking her on the 6 mile “route” I accidentally discovered last week. I’ve not gone to my book club in a couple months and I miss that sorely (although the last week’s was postponed anyhow). We’ve been meeting for about 5 years now and it’s such a great group of women. We may or may not ever get around to discussing the book in much depth, but we usually discuss which actors we’d cast in the movie version, bring some sort of snack themed after the book, and enjoy a glass of wine together.

Facebook is a nice way to stay in touch, but I always prefer an evening I can slip out with a girlfriend over a great meal!

August Goals

Here are some goals I’d like to complete for August:

• Blogging Accounting. I’ve got some back-end work I’ve got to manage with running this blog! As much as I just love posting, I’ve got to tackle some of the not-so-fun paperwork part of running this business.
• Get back to 139 lbs! I’d like to get back to my weight loss low, 139 pounds, by the end of this month.
• Run a 5K, set some running goals. I’m going to run the 5K next week, and then I need to determine what I want to do with running beyond there.
• Clean up the stockpile. I recently got some storage in the garage, so I would like to move some parts of my stockpile out there. I need to clean up the fridge and pantry again. Bad.
• Go back to cash. Following Dave Ramsey’s system.
• Gardening. I need to do some sprucing, some planting, and we’re also thinking about starting an expansion project back there, including the construction of a small greenhouse using recycled windows. I don’t know that we’ll complete the expansion in August, but I’d love to start planning it.

So there you have it. What goals have you been working on in 2012? How are you keeping motivation high – or do you need to jump back on the bandwagon?