happy 2020!

We're living in the future, y'all.

requisite family Christmas photo for you, too! aren't you lucky!

As 2020 starts and David and I make plans and goals for the year, I figured I'd detail them out here to keep myself accountable. And because I'm a weirdo who loves reading other peoples' goals and being able to track my own.

1. Saint of the year
Most importantly, my saint of the year is St. Joseph of Cupertino! If you don't know about it, it's not too late to visit Jen Fulwiler's Saint's Name Generator and pick a saint -- let's be honest, have a saint pick YOU -- for 2020. I know hardly anything about him except that I use to beg for his intercession before tests in college, but now a quick read has taught me he had a bad temper (same, my dude) and he's also the patron of air travelers and we have a flight scheduled in 2020 so...pray for me, St. Joseph of Cupertino.

2. Word of the year
Jen ALSO has a word generator for a yearly word, and I got READ. Sign me up for that! I have generous reading goals for the year and I felt like I failed myself last year only reading 44 books (yes that sounds insane to most people, but I read very very fast and just didn't apply myself very much for like 4-5 months) so my goal is 50 and I'm hoping to surpass that. I'm going to read along with some of the Close Reads podcast books finally (props to Christy for finally convincing me to!), I've got some other attempts lined up (my first LOTR read? my first Russian novel? how did I graduate with an English literature degree without reading either of those???) and I'm excited to detail them all out on the blog when I can!


3. House goals
We have done huge projects in the last three years, so we've declared 2020 the year of the small project. 2017 we did the exterior of the house and the fireplace living room, 2018 we remodeled the kitchen, and 2019 we remodeled the basement (although we ain't done with it yet, final post still to come) so 2020 means small projects galore! We already have a 60+ item document with things to complete, and I'm sure the list will just grow and grow throughout the year.

One thing that's not technically "small" but feels smaller than a big renovation is getting our yard and exterior cleaned up a bit. We did the majority of the front of the house in 2017, but after installing a bunch of plants and basically hating how it looked after it was fully grown, we need some direction. (I did buy a bunch of bee/butterfly friendly plants so it wasn't a total waste, but I think we might mostly start from scratch.) So that's on the docket this spring/summer! We also might remove a tree (was going to be February ish of 2020, then we had to replace the furnace instead so got pushed back due to $$$) and try to actually landscape our very-plain-and-boring backyard, but that might be too ambitious so you'll just have to wait and see.

4. Personal goals
Our phenomenally generous neighbor just sold us a very nice treadmill for way too little money, as I'm trying to walk more in 2020. I do an okay job of getting outside to walk Murphy when it's nice/warm out, but last winter I sat inside all winter because the roads were covered with ice for like 6 solid months and she is a very protective golden retriever who cannot help herself from pulling like crazy when we see another dog on a walk (aka DANGER zone if you're the one holding her leash and you're not on very solid, not-icy ground). Anyway, so I'm going to try and walk every day to build up a lot of the muscle mass I lost during Felix's pregnancy. Besides that and reading, I'm going to try and just organize myself and try not to fall behind on things like I felt like I did in 2019. Since we're not disrupting our lives by doing big huge projects, I think this is attainable! We will see.


The energy I am bringing into 2020 right there ^.
Happy 2020, y'all! Thanks for being here!
HG

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