2014: The Year We Do More than Just Survive.

So!  It's pretty late to be talking about resolutions, etc. but here we are.....

2013 was the Year of Upgrades.  And we made some HUGE ones:

June 2013:  He was so little and smooshy!!!!

Aaaand now he's big enough to terrorize the dog.  They grow so fast!

The kids hanging out in our new basement.  500 square feet of demo/renovation.  (I'll post about it all eventually but here's a little bit about the playroom)

But with all the upgrades everything else kindof fell to shit.  I mean when you have a newborn (and 2 other kids OMG) or you're super pregnant tearing apart half your house, you go into SURVIVAL MODE.  You do ONLY WHAT YOU NEED TO SURVIVE*  House wise, life wise, everything.  I've gotten really good at prioritizing and ignoring and just getting through.  And I'm sick of it.  SO!

I hereby declare that 2014 will be the Year that We do More Than Just Survive.

Really it's just simple stuff like:

• I want to get the kids back into swimming lessons - something that I think is really important but got dropped last year during the major home renovations never to be picked up again.
• I want to purge/update my wardrobe which has been in a state of "just buy a couple of cheap things to get you through this season b/c God knows what size/shape your body will be in once this current fuckery is over" since 2008.
• I want to take a trip somewhere with just the 5 of us.
• I want creativity to be a part of my life again.  I realize that we're still along way from a place where I would be able to maintain Destination Yarn or do anything professional but it's not unrealistic to think that I could start knitting again on a regular basis.  Maybe even design a pattern or two.
• I want to go visit some of our out of town friends who for the last couple of years have always come here because we were too in survival mode to be able to go to them.

I could telescope this thought out to just about anything. And obviously I know we're not ready to do most of this yet (see also: 7 month old baby who still wakes me up at night.  Not much is possible other than survival when you're really sleep deprived).  And with the Little Guy seconds away from crawling I know I will spend the next few months doing nothing but chase a baby yelling "OMG DON'T PUT THAT IN YOUR MOUTH AAARRUGH GROSS."

He started across the room and army crawled / scooted himself right into the center of the fun.

But a year is a long time.  So my goal is that when we ring in 2015 I can say that we are finally out of survival mode.

What about you guys?  What are your big plans for 2014?

*Bonus points if you get that reference.