New Year, Improved Me...

Well this girl is a sucker for New Years!! While I am sad to see 2014 go, as it was such a special year for us, there is something about starting fresh, making goals and resolutions that gets me really excited! I have been known to make obscenely long lists of resolutions in the past. My hope this year is that by posting my resolutions, I will feel more accountable for them and have more of an inclination to follow through.

In the last 2 years that we’ve resided in Chicago, I feel like I haven’t gotten to explore the city nearly as much as I would like to. Working every other weekend and planning our wedding left me little time to enjoy all the things Chicago has to offer. Now, working every third weekend and with our wedding behind us, I can finally find the time to enjoy all the things that I missed out on!

Here are some of my resolutions and goals for 2015…

• Read 1 book a month for pleasure…I was so eager to start this resolution, that I started the week prior to the new year and even found a new way to pass the time at work. I have already read 2 books so I am feeling pretty confident that this resolution is a keeper. Ryan hates that I watch TV prior to going to bed at night and this has really helped in that department; in fact, he has tried to watch a show a few times while turning in for bed and I find it really annoying while I’m trying to read. I guess this is something I have to put up with for a little while as I use to do this to him. My, how the tables have turned!
• Try a new recipe, once a week…again, I was too eager to wait for 2015, so I started this the week prior to the New Year. Every year we make a family cookbook compiled of our favorite recipes tried and true for the year. I find myself struggling to find good recipes worthy to place in our cookbook because I slack off cooking during the year or I forget which recipes I’ve already put into our previous years cookbooks. I’m hoping this will help alleviate this problem and perhaps aid us in eating healthier, which we both could afford to do.
• Be more active, which of course includes going to the gym…my favorite…not!  I will admit, I haven’t exactly started this resolution quite yet.
• Be more conscious with savings
• Buy a home…if we find the right one and the time is right, of course!
• Be present and in the moment
• Blog, Blog, Blog
• And overall, I would like to establish more of a routine in my day-to-day life, which can be difficult at times due to working night shift but I am determined to try and figure this out so I don’t spend so much time hanging in bed when I could be exploring the outdoors

Here’s to a great year in 2015! I can’t wait to share it with ya’ll!

What's in a Name?

So for a while now, I have wanted to start a blog. The purpose of this blog being to update the ones I love with our day-to-day life, places we’ve been to, people we’ve seen as well as share all sorts of things I love; plus, it’s also a great way to look back on all the great memories we’ve created.  Our families live all over the place and I figured this is another means of communication to help make it seem like we live just a little closer to one another. After a few weeks of struggling to come up with a name, I have finally found one that I love and hold’s meaning to me.

I picked the name, “Life As We Chose It” for many reasons. As we get older, we are faced with many life events and decisions. Many we have complete control over and others we simply do not. After all, that’s what life is about and while it can be difficult at times, this is also what makes life gloriously beautiful and unpredictable. We make decisions every single day, some big and others small but all of them with the purpose of trying to get us where we want to be or need to be in that moment or in the foreseeable future.

As the New Year begins, I have chosen to lead a more purposeful life. I have decided that while I can’t control all of the things that happen to us good and bad, I can control how I react to them and what we make of them.  Of course, it isn’t always that easy (especially with the more difficult things that we will one day face) but my hope is that when life gets rough, I can come back to this blog and remind myself that life is too short to dwell on the things one cannot control and I should choose to look at the situation differently and in a way that helps us move forward.

On the flip side, my hope is that this blog also helps me appreciate all the things we take for granted on a day-to-day basis because I know I can be very, very guilty of this. I really want to enjoy every moment that I can with the ones that I love. I want to get out there and see the world and experience things with family and friends and begin to really live my life while making meaningful memories. This blog is meant to highlight the day-to-day decisions Ryan and I make in regards to how we live our lives and our experiences with them, even if that decision is as simple as riding our bikes to the museum on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

So here’s to laughing harder, loving more deeply, making each moment count and leading a more fulfilling life!