December Goal Review and January Goals

Happy New Year! Welcome, 2010.

As in the past, I'll start by recapping my monthly goals:

1. Finish all my grading by December 9th. Yes, I actually just looked at the calendar and realized it was December 9th when I finished. The marking was laborious and tedious, but I survived! And I've only had two e-mails with complaints about grades.

2. Conduct at least one focus group and transcribe it by December 18th. My goal is for my Christmas holidays to start on December 18th. I want to put away school on that day and not look at it again until the New Year. I did one better on this goal! I conducted and transcribed both of my focus groups and was done before Evan's family Christmas on the 11th! This means I am done my data collection. Whoo hoo. That is a huge weight off my shoulders!

3. Survive Christmas - this includes, celebrating/hosting Christmas with the in-laws in two weeks, hosting and attending a few other parties, heading home to my parents house on the 20th to help Mom get ready and then spending time with my family between Christmas Eve-Boxing Day. Yes! We survived and thrived during the holiday season and were constantly reminded of how blessed we are. See the answer below for a recap of all of the Christmas festivities that we participated in.

4. Completely inundate my blog with Christmas material so you all know exactly how much of a Crazy Christmas person I am. I will let you be the judge on how well I achieved this goal. I wrote about our Christmas decorations, a special memory, my baking, a countdown, our stocking traditions, a recap of FD's family Christmas, a recap of our own Christmas, a few random dozen lists that had Christmas questions in them, a few thoughts about Mary's reaction to her role as Christ's mother, the sadness that was our Christmas tree, my Christmas gift come true, a recap of my family Christmas, as well as some of our favourite Christmas recipes over at Lucy's Kitchen!

January Goals

1. Lose 5-10 pounds. I know this goal is utterly and completely cliche. In fact, voicing that this goal is cliche is cliche. BUT - I obviously ate a ridiculous amount over the past few weeks and the extent of my physical activity was walking from the couch to the fridge. I am in a wedding in February so I need to tone up a bit so that I can squeeze myself into the dress and feel good doing it. For the sake of being specific about how I will achieve this goal: absolutely no pop (except on New Year's Day and FD's birthday), no evening snacking on junk (if I must have a snack after dinner, I will eat fruit or something else healthy), work out at least three times per week for 30 minutes (it's about time to drag my stat bike out of hiding).

2. Celebrate the fabulous dude's birthday.

3. Learn the names of all of my new students.

4. Complete introduction and methodology chapters.

5. Visit the FD's sister and her family.

6. Rewatch Lost Season 5 with Evan and Logi. We always do a LOST marathon in January and watch the previous season before starting the next. In fact, the FD didn't get to watch much of last season because of hockey, so it will be new for him.

7. Use my new Kitchenaid stand mixer at least twice a week!

What have you got planned for the first month of 2010?