As we get closer to the end of the year, I wanted to look over what my goals and visions were for this past year and see what came to fruition. Remember how fun our Goal Setting Gathering was this past January?! I was blown away when I sat with my vision board for a bit and really absorbed how amazing putting my goals into vision. Some of these images and thoughts seemed so impossible and so big. I can’t even begin to describe how cool it is to look over this vision board and see literally everything that I felt like was so unattainable come to reality.
I wanted to focus on traveling this year as family. I wanted to make camping a priority specifically. This year we spent almost a week at Newport Dunes and had one of our best family vacations yet. The girls rode bikes for hours, Erik and I unplugged a bit and we just soaked up the summer sun. We also had been saving and hoping to get a travel trailer at some point in our future. We have been renting trailers up to this point which we found a bit limiting financially. We were eager to get our own and be able to adventure whenever we wanted. Last month, we found a perfect trailer and snatched it up! We are off to our first camping getaway in a couple weeks. We have at least four more trips on the books for 2019 in our cute little trailer.
Marriage was a huge focus for me this year. I wanted to build our marriage up on a foundation of love, consistency, faith, investing in each other and simplicity. With two kids and a lot of changes in our personal world it was getting hard to stay connected and keep our relationship easy and consistent. This year has blown me away in our marriage. I feel like the work and dig in we committed to has paid off ten fold. Not without a huge amount of prayer, humility and grace.
Our home projects were on my list this year. I firmly believe that your home should be your safe place. It should reflect all your favorite things and give you energy. We finished our built in, living room, fireplace, chicken coop and dining room this year which really changed the whole feel of our home. It’s such a happy, cozy place for me.
I made 2018 my year of strong connection with the girls. We have always been really close but as they get older I want to make sure I am all theirs and they know it. I wanted to continue to build our bond stronger and stronger. We have had so many fun adventures, hard lessons, belly laughs, sparkles and snuggles this year.
Self care and self talk is a struggle for most of us girls right?! I’ve always been confident but as I settle in to my mid thirties I wanted to lean into myself and grow. I wanted to tap into what made me anxious or stressed. I wanted to try and learn about what motivates me and what makes me stop in my tracks. What makes me beyond giddy or super content. I wanted to make exercise in some form a regular habit and did so by rejoining my favorite gym T3 Fitness. I dove into self growth podcasts, bible studies and books.
I wanted to learn photography this year. Now, I can't claim any real talent in this arena but I did really get some new skills under my belt. I learned how to work my fancy DSLR for the most part and learned how to edit in Lightroom. I still have super long way to go but made some major progress this year.
Lastly, I wanted to host. I wanted friends and family around our table. I ended up hosting around 10 different fun soirées with my friends this year and loved every second.