MY RESOLUTIONS FOR 2016

Let’s see, New Year’s resolutions. I have given this quite a lot of thought and this is the first year I’ll try to make some resolutions, but I’m having hard time picking just one, so here goes: I’ll better my Dutch. I have already signed up for a conversation based learning course. Yesterday I talked to my taxi driver, an Afghan man who has been living in the Netherlands for 20 years and he thought I was Dutch. So my level doesn’t fully suck, but I also know some Dutch people who think I butcher the language to this date, so I gotta become so awesome that I can tell them to suck it.
Last month I read about a guy whose New Year’s resolution for 2015 was to exercise a certain amount of hours during the year (I believe it was 150 hours) and since I started off last August quite nicely with adding regular exercise to my life, but somewhere in November when me or one of the kids were constantly ill, I stopped trying so hard, I decided it’s about time to get back on track. I still have the coolest running shoes, colorful sporty pants and shirts, sport bras and all that jazz, so there’s nothing stopping me. Also I don’t want to give myself a challenge that is too hard and thus too easy to give up, so I’ll try minimum of three hours a week of any type of exercise that gets me sweating. And no, the Dutch language course doesn’t count, although it fills the requirement.
I’ll continue my learning with vegan cooking. I’m only a beginner and I’m having hard time finding things my kids would go nuts for, so there’s a lot of work to do. At the end of the year I’m hoping to have found 10 recipes all three of my children will eat. They don’t have to love it, as long as they will eat it voluntarily. If you don’t have kids, you might think this is peanuts, but I’m dealing with three kids of different ages and stages of eating, so this is seriously a challenge.
A friend of mine challenged herself last year to read a hundred books and she did it. Another friend of mine read 50 books. I’ll challenge myself to read at least 30 books during the year 2016. Reading makes me happy and I know I only need to give up some of my social media time to achieve that goal.
I also thought about photographing and cooking resolutions, but I think I have enough to do with these resolutions.
Have a happy New Year 2016!
Photographed tonight in our backyard.

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