Resolutions

Happy New Year! 2011 was a great year for my little family. Would you like a recap of the super fun and exciting stuff that happened? Sure thing.

-We went on a cruise to the Bahamas, Grand Cayman, and Cancun
-Celo entered Primary as a Sunbeam
-Diego turned 5
-We bought and remodeled a house
-Eliana turned 1
-Eliana started walking
-We paid off my van
-Celo turned 4
-Diego started kindergarten
-Diego started reading
-Eliana started talking
-Celo remained completely obsessed with all things construction related all year long
-Photography kept me very busy
-My brother got married
-Marcelo turned 31
-Marcelo signed up for school (he starts next week!)

One sad thing that happened this year is that I lost my grandpa. His birthday was December 31st, so this New Year’s Eve I wasn’t feeling very festive. I didn’t dance at our family party at all. The night was bittersweet. So many great things happened in 2011, but I couldn’t shake the sadness of the loss of my sweet grandpa.

On New Year’s Eve Marcelo’s cousin took this picture of us. (Just ignore my claw on Marcelo’s shoulder.)

We went to my uncle’s house and got together with tons of family and some friends. We had a tasty dinner and then my uncle handed out some sheets that had a bunch of categories of things to be grateful for. We had to put 10 things in each category. I really liked taking that time to reflect on the blessings in my life. We also had to write 10 resolutions for the new year. Marcelo and I took some time the next day to write our goals for the new year, just like we do every year. This year we had 20 things on our list. I’ll share a few here in a second. At midnight we ate our 12 grapes (and made 12 wishes for the new year) and drank our sparkling cider. My uncle gave a toast and talked about gratitude, and then Marcelo’s cousin offered a prayer as a start to our new year. Everything combined was really a great way to celebrate a new beginning.

Here are the only 2 pictures I took on New Year’s Eve:

My cousin and her friends were playing around with sparklers and I was like, “Oh Oh!! Let me take a picture of you writing something!” We didn’t think about writing 2012 until they were on their last few sparklers, so we only got one shot and we blew it. Both of the “2’s” forgot that they should be writing the 2 backwards. Whoops. At least we kind of have a pic to use in 2018.

Alright, so on to the resolutions. Here are just a few:
-FHE every week. Towards the end of last year we let this one fall by the wayside a bit. We started letting lots of things count as Family Night and made it less formal, so we’re  ready to get back to the more structured way we were doing it before.
-Nightly scripture reading with the kids. We’ve been doing this about 3 times a week, but would like to make sure we do it every night.
-Nightly scripture reading as a couple. This is also one we’ve been doing for awhile, but not nightly.
-Go to the Temple once a quarter. With 3 kids it’s really hard to get to the temple. Just the drive is almost 3 hours round trip. Add in another 2 hours there and you’re asking someone to watch your kids for at least 5 hours! Our awesome friends kept our kids the other night so we could go, and as grateful as we were, we stressed many times throughout the night about whether or not they were behaving and how difficult Eliana was being. Even though we couldn’t get that worry out of our minds, it was still so so great to be at the Temple together. We’ve each gone once in the last year, but we hadn’t gone as a couple in two years!! When we came home we decided there’s no reason we can’t trade off with friends, or ask our parents to watch our kids so we can go once every 4 months. That’s a doable goal, I think.
-Date nights with the kids every week. Our boys are in desperate need of some one on one time. So once a week we’re going to write it in our schedule for one of us to take one of the boys out for an hour to do something fun. We’ll rotate so they both get turns to have a Daddy date and a Mommy date. I’m really looking forward to this.
-15 minutes of teaching Spanish daily. I can’t even express to you how much it weighs on me that I haven’t really taught my kids Spanish. Whenever I think about it, I feel like there is a lead weight sitting on my heart. I know they are going to grow up and ask my why the heck I didn’t teach them and that makes me feel awful. It’s just so hard for me to turn on the Spanish switch in my brain when English comes so much easier. The thought of teaching my kids a second language is just so overwhelming to me!! I don’t even know where to start. Diego understands about 60% of what my mom says to him, but Celo understands about 1%. Whenever I try to teach him stuff he gets frustrated and wants me to stop. I always think, “He’s already 4! It’s going to be so hard for him to pick it up!” But how much harder is it going to be when he’s trying to learn it at 14? Or at 24? Much harder. So I finally decided that this is the year that I will be disciplined and JUST DO IT. I’ve been feeling bad about this for years and I decided I don’t want to feel that way forever, so why not make the change now? Telling myself to just start with 15 minutes a day of speaking Spanish doesn’t seem impossible. Hopefully that will slowly grow to an hour a day, but we’ll see how it goes.
-Take on no more than 2 shoots a month and raise my prices. I love love love photography. I love walking into people’s homes and seeing the pictures I took on display. I love having an artistic outlet. I love being able to chip in financially. But I do not love feeling like the rest of my life (my kids, my husband, and the state of my house) has to take a backseat so I can spend hours sitting at the computer editing. I have spent a lot of time learning this art and developing a style. I have also spent a lot of time worrying that not enough people like my style and that I have to keep my prices lower than everyone else or I will lose a loooooot of clients. But I’m not worried anymore. I have to do what is best for my family! I announced on my photography page on facebook (http://facebook.com/nathalyblalockphotography) that I am taking limited shoots this year and told a few people my new prices and within 24 hours of making that announcement, I booked March, April, and November! I already have this month booked, too. It is definitely a weight off to know that I’ll still be able to do what I love, without sacrificing time with my family. It may sound cheesy, but I am constantly amazed that Heavenly Father continues to open these doors for me. It makes me feel like I am on the right path.

We have a ton of other goals that I won’t write here. Some are financial, some personal, some practical (like make a leaf for our dining table so we can finally sit more than 4 people. This WILL happen this year.). I feel very blessed to have such a great guy by my side to help me reach these goals. I’m going to stop writing now because I’ve got this overwhelming feeling of gratitude for my family and if I keep writing, there is sure to be a whole lot of mush. ;)