2017 Personal & Family Goals

Can you believe 2017 is here?! I'm not sure how that happened. It seems like Dan and I were counting down to 2014 for so long, and that year took FOREVER to get here, but ever since then, time has seriously flown. We'll celebrate three years of marriage this year. Already. It doesn't even seem possible!

Like every other year, I love to start with fresh goals. Without them, I have nothing to strive for, and this year, I set some personal goals and worked with Dan to set some family goals... so here we go!

PERSONAL GOALS

1. Blog at least four times a month. This only works out to be once a week, and I think I'm comfortable with that goal. There were six weeks that slipped by during the fall that I didn't blog once, and I think it was in part due to me being unable to commit to blogging regularly and catching up on everything I missed. I don't want that to happen again. I want to document our life, so I'm going to focus on quality over quantity here. And if I'm able to post more than once a week, then I'm happy with that too!

2. Read 20 books. Last year, I successfully completed my goal of 16 books and even surpassed it with one more. I figure if I can read 17 books in a year, I can definitely read 20 as long as I make a conscious effort. I definitely sleep better when I read before bed, so that habit will continue.

3. Grow my current Etsy shop. AnnaKate Paperie was pretty successful at making passive income last year. December was definitely my busiest month with people shopping for Christmas gifts, and since all of my items are digital downloads, the orders kept rolling in through Christmas since customers could print them at home to give as last minute gifts. I am more inspired now than even before and hope to continue and piggyback on that success... which brings me to...

4. Start a new shop with a clear focus. This has been in the works behind the scenes for a few weeks now. It was actually my husband's idea, and my target customers are going to be military families. I am in the process of creating designs and setting up shop, so I'll be announcing it soon. Stay tuned.

5. Finish my personal cookbook. Yes, this has been a goal of mine for quite some time. I like my recipes to be tidy, so I am re-typing all of them to be in the same format with the same fonts, spacing, etc. I want them to be easy to read when I'm cooking and organized by category. It's been a huge undertaking, and I need to catch up so that all I need to do is add new ones as we try them.

6. Make healthier choices with food and activities. This one is the cliché "get in shape" goal, but I seriously do need to take better care of myself, and that begins with the choices I make. Dan and I are in this together, so I'm hoping that helps us stick to it.

7. Learn how to actually use my camera. We have a nice Canon DSLR camera, and I love it. It's the best purchase we made right before Annabelle was born. The problem is that I'm stuck in auto mode because I don't know how to work manual mode, even though I know I'll get better photos once I learn. There's no better time to learn than when you're trying to capture a wild toddler, am I right?!

8. Publish a piece of writing somewhere. This one is vague, but it's also my big, scary goal for myself. This is the one that will push me out of my comfort zone. It's something I've ALWAYS dreamed of. It doesn't matter if it's a bigger blog or a website or even a printed piece. I just want need to make this happen this year.


FAMILY GOALS

1. Socialize Annabelle. She is such a social butterfly, but she doesn't have any real friends. No one else in Dan's class here has a child, and of the people I've met here who do have children either have tiny babies or older kids. We want to make more of an effort for her to play with other toddlers. This will start with library story time.

2. Go on at least one date night per month. All parents know how hard it is to stay romantic when dealing with a baby/toddler/child 24/7. We want to prioritize our marriage, so we'll be taking advantage of the Parent's Night Out put on through the CDC on base once a month to go out just the two of us and have a great time.

3. Do at least one ACTIVE family activity each week. Remember my personal goal up there about making healthier choices? This will help. Dan is SUPER busy with pilot training, but we can go on a family walk or do any number of other activities at least once a week. We have to make time for it.

4. Hike in the Wichita Mountains. These "mountains" aren't big compared to the ones we were used to in Colorado, but they're only an hour away in Lawton, Oklahoma, so we definitely want to get up there this spring to check it out. It'll be the perfect first "hike" for Annabelle!

5. Go on an Oklahoma City trip. Dan and I explored Oklahoma City once when we first started dating nearly eight years ago, but we haven't really been back together since then. I've been on a couple solo trips there, and we've driven through several times, but we want to take Annabelle to the zoo and the kids science museum there, among other things.

6. Visit San Antonio. Luckily, the Air Force will make this one easy for us. Dan has a training there later this month for a few days, and Annabelle and I will be tagging along. We want to check out the Riverwalk for sure, but there's so much to do there compared to our little town in North Texas.


Do you have any goals for the year?

Pre Pilot Training Travels

We recently were able to take a couple weeks of Dans leave and travel the country a bit! Annabelle still hadn't flown on an airplane, nor had Dan's aunt and uncle met her, so we first headed to Portland, OR to see them for a few days. While there, we went to the Evergreen Aviation Museum an hour away and wine tasting, of course!

After that, we rented a car and headed up to Seattle, WA for a couple days and then caught a Space A flight out of Joint Base Lewis McChord, which was really neat. Annabelle did SO well on the  c-17 we flew on, and it was our third Space A trip! I definitely prefer it to commercial flying, but it's not always a smart option... just depends on your timeframe! Dan had 10 unused days of paternity leave that the Air Force so graciously lets new dads use any time within the first year... and since Annabelle was born on the first day of his three week break between grad school classes, he never needed to use it... I'd say we put great use to it!

From Seattle, we went to Colorado Springs, CO! Yes, I know, I know... we've been there a million times and even lived there for several years... but I have zero regrets because I got to eat at my favorite restaurants, see friends, and even visit my former coworkers and some students I taught a couple years ago, and let me just say that it was a real treasure seeing these teenagers interact with Annabelle. That alone made my heart so happy! We also were able to take Annabelle to the Air Force Academy and Garden of the Gods for some photos, which I will share another day because I love how they turned out.

From Colorado Springs, we took a Greyhound bus (don't do it... just my advice) to Albuquerque, NM to visit one of our good friends, Aaron, who has now been deemed Uncle Aaron. It was so great catching up with him for a few days; we had so much fun! From there, we flew home to Texas and slept SO well in our own bed. Traveling is a lot of fun, but it sure is exhausting... especially when you're moving cities and hotels every few days!

Enough of my rambling... I'll just let the pictures do the rest of the speaking for this post.

We had an amazing trip overall and are so fortunate that we had all that time together before pilot training starts! Lieutenant Lovemuffin will be so busy that I like to call this the calm before the storm. 

Have you visited any of these cities? 

Traveling With a Baby: Packing Edition

We travel with our daughter. A lot. Over the months, I've perfected how to pack for her in the most efficient way. It's taken some trial and error, and sometimes I don't even follow my own directions because I'm trying to save a teeny bit of room in our bag. But I ALWAYS regret not doing it just like this. I'm here today to show you what I do - and really, it's so simple I shouldn't even be writing a blog post about it... but if I were new to traveling with a baby, I'd want to read this!

My little traveler herself! This is during our recent PCS (military move) across the country. I'm so glad she sleeps well in her Pack n Play, and aren't her little dino sheets the cutest?!

I start out by figuring out how many days we'll be away from home. Normally we have access to laundry somewhere on our trip, but for our PCS, I didn't want to chance it, so I packed enough outfits for as many days as we'd be gone - plus a couple because, well, babies. Her pajamas (just the little footie sleepers so far) are not pictured, but I keep them all together and just pull one out when needed. She usually sleeps in the same one two nights in a row when we travel. 

I lay out every outfit for the trip, and then I add matching socks/shoes when necessary and a matching bow for each outfit. The goal here is to do the work up front so it's easy peasy lemon squeezy when you're actually on the road. This way, I'm not spending precious time digging through all of her stuff to coordinate pieces, and she can still wear her adorable outfits.

Then, I fold or roll everything up into a small Ziploc baggie. I was able to fit entire outfits in these bags until she surpassed the 3+ month clothing. Then, I simply started using bigger bags.

While we are away, whether in a hotel or at a friend/family member's home, I can spend less time figuring out what Annabelle will wear by simply grabbing a Ziploc baggie out of our suitcase. It's so easy, and it allows Dan to dress her as well without throwing together a bunch of mismatched pieces. 

This is what I include in one bag - enough for an entire outfit.

*As a side note, I will say that we also go through a bib and burp cloth every day, but those don't fit in with the outfits if using small bags. To combat that, I also pack a Ziploc baggie of bibs and burp cloths, and each morning, I am able to just grab one of each item to place in the diaper bag so they are fresh. 

This may seem a little silly and wasteful to some, but we re-use the baggies for sure. You can save them for your next trip, use them for whatever else you want/need (even food!), or use them as makeshift wet bags in your diaper bag when there's an accidental diaper explosion.

First Vacation as a Family of Three: Niagara Falls, Canada

Back in January, Lieutenant Lovemuffin had a three day weekend due to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, so we decided to head out on our first official family vacation as a family of three! Of course, we had already traveled over winter break to see family, but it wasn’t a real “vacation”, so we were pretty stoked!

It turns out, Annabelle is a great traveling companion, and she LOVES the snow! Sorry we’re moving to Texas in a couple weeks, kid… you won’t see much snow there. But seriously – it snowed the entire weekend, and she LOVED it.

We wanted to put Annabelle’s brand spankin’ new passport to good use, so we ventured to CANADA! Niagara Falls was beautiful, and it was all of our first time there. (Dan says he went as a tiny baby, but he obviously doesn’t remember it… much like Annabelle won’t).

On our way to Niagara, we stayed one night in Canton, Ohio so we could check out the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I had been wanting to go since we first moved to Ohio, but the three hour drive just didn’t seem worth it for one museum where there’s not much else going on. Since it was on one route to Niagara Falls, however, we got to see it! And how fun it was! There were so many cool Chiefs things to see, along with lots of players who have been inducted. I really enjoyed it, and Dan reacted exactly like he does to football games: he didn’t care. At all.

On Saturday afternoon, we drove the rest of the way through Pennsylvania and New York and ended up in Canada at our hotel. We had dinner and saw the Falls all lit up from our hotel – it was magical looking, but the windows weren’t very conducive to picture taking, so we saved that for the daytime when the Falls weren’t all lit up. We had dinner at an okay restaurant and saw the Chiefs lose their playoff game, so that was disappointing, but I was having so much fun with my little family that I didn’t let it bother me as much as usual.

 

Sunday, we set out for fun! We hiked through the snow, pushing Annabelle in the jogging stroller all the way. She was bundled up tight with a jacket, scarf, and hat and covered with a blanket AND her car seat cover, but the girl is warm-blooded like my side of the family, so the poor thing was sweating bullets despite the crazy cold and snow. We drove back to the USA for some New York pizza, and we hiked around some more. We checked out a cool gift shop in Canada, went to the Daredevil Museum (about people who have tried going over the falls in different contraptions), which was really neat, and ended up having dinner at the coolest Asian restaurant ever, where you pay a flat price, like a buffet, but you order from a touch screen at your table. They just keep bringing you whatever you want, so we were able to taste lots of appetizers, entrées, and desserts, and Dan even had some sushi. Annabelle was a ham, as always, and flirted with everyone around us.

We spent that evening taking pictures of the Falls and then went back to our hotel room. The next morning, we left pretty early since we had a long drive back home. We took better lit pictures of the Falls and hit the road through Canada to go through Michigan on the way back and add another state to our list. We stopped for poutine before leaving the country, of course.

Overall, we had a great weekend and an amazing first family vacation! I can’t wait to do it again… who knows where we’ll end up next?!