Our Thursday Photo #86

This past week has been a bit of a whirlwind.

Christmas is always a busy time, particularly when you have children as young as ours. This year, I didn’t manage to take any time off work either so busy doesn’t even begin to cover it.

And I suppose, being New Year’s Eve it is customary to take a look back at the past year. Well I can confirm that 2015 hasn’t been my favourite year.

I have lots of goals and aims for next year, none of them are exciting or paricularly ambitious but here they are nonetheless.

• Get to a point by the end of 2016 where I’m only working on my blog and my palm oil free website and perhaps working with a few small freelance writing clients for a bit of variation.
• Build my following on social media and climb the rankings on both the Tots100 and Trips100 indeces.
• Find the time to exercise enough to realistically start training for a half ironman in 2017.
• Get to sleep before midnight most days.
• Have some time to myself at least once a week, be that running with a friend, playing water polo or going out.

But the reason for all of these goals is because I want to be a better mum to the girls. I want to spend more time with them, with Libby in particular.

When I am with them, I don’t want to be so exausted that I can’t think straight. I want to be able to focus on what I’m doing, not think about the work that’s building up or the fact that if I spend another hour with the girls, I’ll end up going to bed at 3 am instead of 2 am.

For my husband, I hope that his injuries heal quickly and he can soon get back to normal. I hope that by the end of 2016, we will be back to doing normal things as a normal family.

I hope that next winter, when our dog escapes and the fence needs fixing, it will be him crawling through bushes and mud with a hammer and nails instead of me.

For the girls, I hope that they carry on just the way they are. They are growing, maturing and changing every day and it’s wonderful.

This Christmas, a milestone occurred that I wasn’t expecting. At aged just 1 and 3 years old, the girls’ have got their own pad. So here they are outside it, posing for our Thursday Photo #86.