The End of a Decade.

I can't believe it's New Year's Eve! While at work today I suddenly realized that I was signing off and dating things with "2009" for the last time ever. Crazy!

And it's the end of a decade. A lot has happened in my life over this decade. I started out the new milennium as a freshman in high school. I'm ending it a (near) college graduate, homeowner, wife, and soon to be mother! A lot happens over the span of 10 years even though it doesn't seem that it takes that long to pass.

Let's talk about goals. I'm not a huge fan of "resolutions" per se, but I do like to have defined goals in my life. Obviously, my number one goal for 2010 is to A) get the parasite currently living in my mid-section outside of my body and B) learn to be a great mom.

My goals for 2009 were actually set in mid-2008 due to the fact that the first half of 2008 was taken up by wedding stuff and it was all I could do to get through that madness. I didn't need to add additional things on top of that! By the end of 2008 we were still working on those goals so they carried over to 2009. After a year and a half we have made slow and steady progress!

On the financial front: I feel that we have spent the last year and a half doing a really good job revitalizing our finances. Our debt is definitely a lot smaller than when we started, but we are still working on it.

We kept up with the goal of putting a weekly deposit into our (what used to be at least...) high interest savings account and not touching it so that it can earn interest for us. Since opening that account we have earned $134.32 in interest. I wish it were a lot higher than that, but ever since we opened our account interest rates have been steadily declining, but that's an overall issue with the economy and something I clearly can't control although I wish I could.

In the next few months we will have Mark's car paid off, but we will also be dropping to a single income as I have a career change coming up so we will need to do some readjusting with our budget. I'm happy to say I have been hired as a stay at home mom once the baby is here : ) I'm sure there will be much more to come on this topic at a later date.

Overall, I'm just super thankful that we are comfortable in our lifestyle. We don't have to live strictly paycheck to paycheck, we have the ability to be somewhat flexible in our spending, and we have the opportunity to make decisions like dropping an income so that I can stay home to raise our baby. I know that we are very lucky and there are many people out there who are not in that kind of position right now.

With that said, one of my goals for 2010 is a continuation of my goal from 2009 in regards to revitalizing our finances. We have laid all of the ground work and have made significant progress, but by the end of 2010 I'd really like to be completely debt free with the exception of our mortgage.

On the organization issue: I feel like we have made HUGE strides with this! Since originally setting this goal we have redone our kitchen and office, we finally got our spare room set up as a guest room and have since started to transfrom that to a nursery!

After living here for more than 3 years we finally unpacked all of our boxes! This is a fairly recent accomplishment actually.

Also, we have donated quite a few things this year in addition to the usual bags of clothing including 2 boxes of towels and linens to the dog shelter, a couch and chair, full sized bed with headboard, a desk, and boxes of miscellaneous items leftover from our garage sale. These donations have really helped us clear out some of the bigger things that were taking up space and I'm so happy we were able to find homes for it all!

Still, I feel like things get cluttered really quickly around here and I don't feel like we are to the point where EVERYTHING has a place. So, I'll be working more with this goal in the upcoming year especially considering we are going to have so much stuff coming into the house along with another person! I would also really like to redo the bathroom at some point in the upcoming year.

And in addition to my old goals and my new goal of motherhood I'm also focusing on being happy and good at being a stay at home mom. I'm both anxious and excited to see how this goes for me. I think 2010 has a lot in store for us!