Coming For Ya, 2019!
All in all, we crushed 2018. We made a whole lot of gains in a whole lot of areas. We aren’t necessarily talking muscle, although we’d like to think we gained some of that too. But really, as we look back on the last year, we both are feeling pretty jazzed about the turn out. We didn’t quite reach our goal of becoming superstar dancing queens, but we did accomplish and learn A LOT. Some of the 2018 wins:
We not only kept our marriages alive, but we feel like they are thriving (thank you, Jesus!). We don’t claim to be any of kind of marriage experts- without holding each other accountable, our husbands may have been suffocated in their sleep long ago. We just feel like, in the last year, each of our relationships have grown and changed. We are just grateful that all that growing has ultimately been in the right direction.
We took several bomb ass trips. The Ginger and Blonde love to travel together (#adventurepartners), whether it’s a weekend or overnight excursion or a week long getaway. This year we adventured out to Savannah, Santee State Park, Punta Cana, and Boca Raton. Maybe some of these places don’t strike your fancy- well, we had a rootin’ tootin’ good time, so there.
We completed our first 10k and signed up for a half. Lord help us.
We worked really hard individually and together to battle that negative self-talk a lot of us deal with on a daily basis. We’re learning to love ourselves a little more each day and letting go of the need to please everyone around us. You should try it too!
We continued to push ourselves outside our comfort zones in our hobbies, passions, talents/gifts. This was largely in part due to the insane support we receive from people around us (each other, husbands, family, friends). Where is Josh Groban singing “You Raise Me Up” when you need him?
We adopted a CAT! Berkeley technically lives at Jesse’s house, but get real, #coparentingforthewin. See a picture of this beautiful, majestic creature below.
We made more precious memories with all the families that we love so much. All the different parents and some siblings came to visit sometime throughout 2018, and best believe we milked our time together for all it was worth.
We oozed with pride for our men. We watched them (as their spouses and BFFs) crush 2018 in their own ways. Tyler graduated from CSU, started a new job at Volvo, and got baptized! Ed continued climb to the top in the Boeing industry by accepting a manager position. He also has a heart of gold. Serious snaps for these dudes. They also kept us laughing 90% of the time. The other 10% was the suffocate you in your sleep times we mentioned earlier.
We got some sick tats. Check the pics.
We faced a serious fear and took a firearms course and got our CWPs. The course was awesome and perfect for us beginners. There may or may not have been tears and small panic attacks when we began the shooting portion of the class, but then we got it together and nailed it. So much fun.
We made a women’s retreat dream we had come to fruition. We also met a bunch of dope ladies in the process.
And finally, we scared, excited, and confused the Ish out of ourselves by starting this blog. Something we’ve talked about for years. For us, this was a HUGE step outside our comfort zones, and we battled some of that serious negative self-talk, but ultimately we encouraged and pushed each other to just go for it. Man, are we glad we did. It may not be a big deal to anyone else (still working on that), but what a cool, crazy learning experience it has been for us. We truly appreciate anyone who takes the time to read all this mess. Ultimately, though, this blog serves our relationship the most. An open, living diary of all cool sh*t we do and think (we may be making big assumptions here).
So there ya have it- a few of the big things we loved and are thankful for in 2018. But we are excited about moving forward. We can’t wait to see what 2019 brings us. We haven’t really made any resolutions for this new year, because well, we aren’t too sorry about who we are. We just try to do our best every day and learn from anything that comes our way. BUT we HAVE set some goals for the upcoming year. Drum roll….some of our 2019 goals are:
Take a few short adventure trips and one bigger trip with the Wolfpack. Some destination ideas are Asheville, Las Vegas, Boca, Savannah, Ireland, Iceland, and San Francisco. Who really knows- we’d be happy to go anywhere. We will see where that tax money takes us.
Post on the blog EVERY SINGLE week. That’s 52 posts. A big commitment when you don’t really consider yourselves writers. But it has been so fun and exciting to see how it’s unfolded in the last few months, so we hope to see that continue if we commit to the work. But anyway, you’re welcome. Just go ahead and set a Wednesday reminder in your calendars. Or subscribe (below) to our weekly newsletter and we will do the reminding for you.
Kick that Myrtle Beach Half Marathon’s ass. By that, we just mean complete it and no walking or crying at any point.
Treat our men to eight date nights. We don’t mean eight total dates for the year; we mean eight dates that are wife-planned. We are hoping they come up with a few on their own too. This may seem very vanilla and boring, but setting a specific numerical goal for something like this can be very helpful in relationships. A targeted goal keeps you on track- and making time for dates in marriage can get overlooked in the mess of all the other busyness. We will keep you updated. Our fun date nights seem like a good blog post waiting to happen.
Live simply this year. Only buy what we need, not just a bunch of random things we want. Save money and de-clutter? #winwin
Prioritize prayer and quiet time every single day. Remember that prayer journal we talked about? Yeah, let’s fill it up.
Read 24 books. We’ve loved being a part of a book club, so we hope to continue that this year. That will have us reading a new book each month, but we want to up the ante a little. We will keep our Goodreads list updated, so you can always see what we’ve read here. If you have any great suggestions for us, please send them our way! We will read just about anything, but keep the gore and sexy romance for yourself. Yes, we are grown-ups who still have nightmares.
Make appointments and go see ALL the doctors. We are both really bad about doing this, so in 2019 we both need to see the dentist, the OB-GYN, get wellness check-ups, and so on and so forth. Are we at the age where we need to get mammograms? If so, this just turned into a much bigger goal.
This feels like a good starting point for 2019. We strive to live our best lives, so that means we want all of our days to be filled with as much love and joy as possible. We are going to try and be the coolest, best, nicest people we can be. But give us grace, because if you run into us at 8:00 AM on a Tuesday and we haven’t had coffee yet, we may be less than picturesque. We will do our best to keep you updated on how these goals are rollin’ out and you can even hold us accountable if you see us being cranky or not reading. We would also love to know what your goals and hopes are for the new year- your life is pretty freakin’ cool too, so we like knowing what’s going on with it.
