2012

When I was in junior high, one of my teachers was Clayton Brough, who was also a weatherman for Channel 4 news. He highly influenced my life and is one of the big reasons why I became an English major.
I remember him telling us that "in a few years from now" (which was probably 1998 or so) we would be able to buy a TV so thin you could hang it on your wall.

None of us believed him. That seemed absurd.

Now here I am recording TV programs and fast-forwarding through commercials on my super-thin TV. I download music onto my Ipod (even though the I-tunes platform drives me nuts! Come on, it's 2012, Apple! Can't you make it more advanced and user friendly?). My car has a back-up camera that pops out of my rear view mirror every time I put it in reverse.

Technology is awesome. So glad to be living in 2012 with all of our cool gadgets.

We spent New Year's at our friends house. Layla had fun running around and playing with tons of toys. We left at 9 so we could put the munchkin to bed, then Mitch and I stayed up watching The Office, Coldplay's New Year's Eve concert, and the Times Square ball drop. We were too lazy to light off our fireworks and went to bed at 12:30. Church is now at 11 so the next morning was great because we all three slept in!

I set some pretty high goals for this year. I thought if I wrote them down here, that people might actually hold me accountable for them. In no particular order:

• Give up sugar. I'm allowing two exceptions: Sunday dinner and frozen yogurt. Because let's be honest, I need to keep my sanity. Of course, I realize that nearly everything has sugar in it, but I'm just talking about candy, desserts, junk food, etc. I eat way too much of it.
• Edit at least 175 articles per month. That is a lot for me. This goal will force me to work hard and improve my editing and writing skills.
• Read the Book of Mormon again. I love reading it cover to cover.
• Learn how to use the manual settings on our new camera.

Mitch and I also set goals for Layla:

• Be potty trained by her 2nd birthday. (Perhaps this should really be a goal for her slacker parents, since we talked and talked about potty training her during Christmas break and failed to make even one attempt. I really think she'll catch on fast; it's just a matter of actually trying.)
• Learn her ABCs (she has part of it down).
• Count from 1-20 (she can count 1-5).

Here's to a New Year!