New Beginnings

I wasn't the happiest with how 2011 was rung in. Shortly after our guests left our place on New Year's Eve Megan decided that she wanted to wake up just in time to watch the ball drop. I think all this Holiday partying is finally catching up to her because she was up for over an hour that night - bouncing off the wall, completely wound up! I hope this is not a sign of how the year is going to go. Either way, I am really looking forward to this year; it's the best year yet - an open door and clean slate!

With the New Year came a fresh start for John with his transfer back to the Eden Prairie store. Today was his first day back at EP and he came home all smiles. Right away he was given a key to the computer room (he couldn't even get a single key after 9 months at Chaska) and will be given his own workspace in the store. He was told that he will be assigned many special projects including helping setup parts of the Home & Garden Expo at the Civic Center this spring and also getting Home Depot involved with community projects. John will still be helping out with the specialty departments (kitchen & bath, appliances, millwork & flooring) and pretty much functioning as an assistant manager just without the title. He is mostly looking forward to the variety and a change of pace from his previous assignments.

Other new things around here (besides everything Megan is up to which I will get to in another post)... New Fishes! To go with Megan's new Nemo aquarium figure, we decided to get her some new fishies to look at. She's starting to notice things more and wanted some more color in the tank. Previously, we only had four grey/black fishes and one hot pink one. We picked up a new plecostomus, a little white fish and a pair of bright orange fishies.

With me, the newness comes in the hopes of change in 2011. I am never that good at following through with resolutions, however, it never hurts to try. Here is the list of things I want to work on throughout the year:

• Learn the In's and Out's of my new Adobe Photoshop and our DSLR camera.
• Organization/Cleaning System - this is a must. There are papers everywhere and I need to get all like things together and filed correctly. It's gotten better but still lots of room to improve on.
• Save Money - with having Megan, John's sleep apnea, and my work hours getting cut early in the year there wasn't much going into the bank. If we want to get new vehicles or move sometime in the future we need to step it up. First order of business is to track spending.
• Use What We Own - It's so easy to go out always buy new but with tracking our spending we will see that we cannot afford to always do this and having things organized we should be able to find things easier. This also applies to using up surplus supplies of groceries, cleaning supplies, you name it. Part of my goal is to also use up all of our gift cards before the end of the year.
• Finish Projects - we're both guilty with this but I am sick of projects getting 90% done and then just sitting there with the tools out for months. It seems we get it so it's functional and then don't follow through; definitely something to work on.
• Megan's Scrapbook/Baby Book - having this blog and her wall calendar definitely helps but I still need to get some sort of books put together. With all the pictures we are taking she's going to have one humongous scrapbook if I can ever get started!
• Listen & Communication - this is a biggie and often frustrates me. I need to consciously slow down to make sure I am listening to what people are saying instead of just hearing them both at work and at home.

I think everything I listed above is doable and having goals written down is the first big step to getting things done. I hope that each one of your new years are off to good starts and I look forward to seeing how 2011 treats you. What are you excited for this year?