Ashley Outnumbered: A Look Back

When it comes time to ringing in the New Year, we're often asked about our thoughts on the year leaving us.

Generally I hear people exclaim, "Good riddance!"

But I, myself, had never really felt that way about a year.

And looking back over 2009, I was indifferent.

It wasn't our best year ever, but we also had much to be thankful for in 2009.

As much as I would have liked to exclaim that 2009 bit the big one, I, in my heart of hearts, could not bring myself to be so ungrateful to actually label is as as "BAD" year.

And then I began working on my recap.

It's official: I'm willing to admit that 2009 was kinda lame. SUCKY. Whatever.

Now, I'm not taking for granted the great moments we had, the friendships we forged, the blessings we were given, or the general health and wellness we enjoyed. But...

I'm hoping 2010 brings me a little more internal peace that 2009 seemed to rob me of. Amen.

And now for the resolutions:

I've never been a resolution-er. Yep. Just made that up.

You see. I'm a very goal -oriented, go-get-'em person.
I do not need resolutions to drive me.
If something bothers me, I don't wait to nip it in the bud.
If I want to attain something, I do it.
I'd be willing to say that I git-er-dun [if it weren't so WT to say so].
But I do.

However, I've noticed that even though I have that never ending list of "To Do's" I'm always working on,
99.9% of the time, things that are things that I want to do,
things that are just for my sole enjoyment,
those things tend to get shoved to the bottom of my list.

Case in point: My blog.

Seriously. Looking over the past year's posts made me a little depressed.
I rarely posted.
When I did post, it was generally about something that happened 3 months prior.
[Ummm yeah. Get ready for August - December's posts to still show up. In January].
LAME.
In fact,
DOUBLE LAME.

That said, I am going to do things a little different this year.
I'm going to set some goals for myself.
Some things to make 2010 a little better for me, and in turn, those around me.

And with that, I bring you my Resolutions for 2010: [written to myself]

[1]: Allow yourself time for you.
[2]: Put effort into expressing your creative side [as often as possible]. You know how you want to do this. Do it.
[3]: Don’t put things on your “To Do” list that are solely for your enjoyment on the back burner.
[4]: Enjoy the down time.
[5]: Expand your [material] wish list to include more than one thing. It’s okay to WANT things. It’s okay to want them just for you too.
[6]: Make PROJECT Hoffmann an absolute success so that you can make your one true goal for 2010 a REALITY [Vagueness is intentional. ONE DAY I’ll be able to talk about PROJECT Hoffmann and my one true goal candidly. Today is not the day].
[7]: Continue to enjoy your baby. Maybe make another [?]
[8]: Do what you have to to like yourself again. In fact, LOVE yourself again.
[9]: Relish in becoming more domestic.
[10]: Rebuild the Super Couple.

And there you have it.
Bring it 2010. Bring it!

And now, your 2009 RECAP:

[JANUARY]:

I used a box as a babysitter:

Kaeden had his "down-there" surgery, and totally rocked the tiny-person hospital gown:

[FEBRUARY]:

A couple of special people had a birthday:

And apparently I didn't really blog at all.

Oh Wait.

That was probably because I was up to my eyeballs as my company opened our fifth location. Yeah. That probably had something to do with it.

[MARCH]:

I talked about needing to post....but then never really did [see explanation above].

In the meantime, Kaeden sprouted two teeth:

And learned how to crawl:

Wait. What? No. Kaeden learned to crawl in January. Oh. Wait. I blogged about it in March. Sooo....Kaeden learned to crawl in March. Humph!

[APRIL]:

Life continued to be too busy.

Between work and house-hunting, there was really no free-time.

Lucky for us, we closed on a dream home in late March.

We also found that other things could babysit Kaeden besides boxes:

[MAY]:

Jeff and I worked hard on putting the [re]-finishing touches on our house. We bought a foreclosure that had pretty well been stripped, so we were left trying to make rooms that looked like this: