Letting go of the old and moving on to the new

Welcome to 2009.

2008 was quite a year for us. So many exciting things happened, there are things that I haven't even written about yet. Yikes!

I was planning on reviewing 2008 and see how I did on the old list of New Years Resolutions...yeah...resolutions. Did I publish those? Apparently not. So, for the sake of tradition, it looks to me like I accomplished everything I set out to do! Go Me!

Tomorrow starts the beginning of the long haul to Memorial Day. My next official office is closed holiday. Yowza. Does that make 5 full months of no time off? On the bright side, think of all the PTO I'll be hoarding.

OhCountess and I have been making lists for 2009. Our family seems to be really hitting it's stride. We share with the kids a love of travel and exploring. That's leading the list right now. Got any good vacation ideas? It's nothing personal, but Virginia is out. Our last two family vacations have been there. It's time for something NEW!

Debt reduction and elimination is our other main focus this year. This is the continuation of a work that has been in progress for a few years. We done a pretty fabulous job of getting rid of credit card addiction. It's that other debt we are looking at now: student loans, home equity line of credit...mortgage. I seriously doubt we can be debt free by the end of '09, but have you seen mortgage rates lately? If you have a traditional mortgage and haven't shopped around lately, you might be surprised to find mortgage rates are now back in the 4 and 5% range.

On a more personal note, I plan to keep up with the getting healthy progress I started in 2008. I'm down 20 pounds and would really like to lose another 40. I have no idea if it's realistic to even shoot for that much in just 12 months, but I'm gonna see what happens. For me, making and attaining goals is about set realistic and quantitatively attainable benchmarks. What does this mean? It means for this goal, I'm charting my weight and the goal is to keep a downward slope to that graph for 12 months. What the slope of that line is, I don't know and don't really care just as long as it trends lower continually.

My plans for this blog are simple and hopefully enjoyable to everyone involved (think you AND me). I enjoy writing and I need to do it more often. Over the last year I've noticed that I seem obsessed with writing something long and wordy...but I don't always enjoy long and wordy. Twitter has opened my mind up to thinking 140 characters or less. Not that I hope to post every day, but my goal for 2009 is to post more often, sometimes even something short and sweet. Let's see what this turns into. Hopefully, even you enjoy it. Got things on your mind? Let me know. Looking for an opinion? I got plenty! Heck, we might even get more pictures this year. I got REALLY cute kids :)

Yep, this was vague. Hardly a hard target in the group. There should be absolutely no reason I can't just finagle my way into rationalizing these one year from now. I'm really looking forward to 2009. I turn 40 this year. The 30's have been fantastic. Probably the best years ever. I have no intention of turning into cry baby at the loss of the 3, but I love the idea of being 40 and feeling like a 20 something.

So, rather that keep going and babbling on and on and on. Here's a toast to 2009!

Cheers!