Goals for 2015

At the beginning of January, we sat down together to make some goals of what we wanted to accomplish in the year of 2015--our first full year together. As it goes with most goals, some have gone very well, and others have not. We just want to take a moment reflect on the goals we made, even though we are nearly half way through the year already :)

We had categorized all of our goals underneath three subjects: Physically, Spiritually, and Marriage.

Physically

We had made the simple goals to maintain a healthy weight, eat less and healthier, and exercise more.

We will be the first to admit that we don't always eat the healthiest or the best amount--Dustan simply cannot resist his wife's perfect cooking ;) And we both have a great love for copious amounts of popcorn and ice cream during movies, which is never good. But where we have gotten better is in exercising, especially during the month of March.

This semester, we have been taking a cycling class together, which meets a couple times a week for an hour. We also have our own bikes which we ride to and from campus each day. This was a great start for the beginning of 2015. In March, we jumped right in by attempting to complete the BYU Lazy Man Iron Man.

For this Lazy Man Iron Man, we had to complete a whole iron man within the month of March. This included 2.4 miles of swimming (or 85 laps), 112 miles of biking, and 26.2 miles of running. We found the biking easy--between cycling class and going on bike rides together, we got those miles done quickly. But the running and swimming were a different story. Neither of us are in running shape, and neither of us have really just swam laps before. But by making a schedule and trying to stick to it as much as possible... WE COMPLETED THE IRON MAN! And got awesome shirts for our effort.

Spiritually

Our goals to increase our spirituality were to revamp our Family Home Evening and have a real lesson and activity each time, and to read a full chapter from the Book of Mormon each night together.

When reading scriptures together last year, we would allow ourselves to just read one verse or change the amount depending on how tired we were. We wanted this to change. By challenging ourselves to read a whole chapter every day, we are becoming better about planning a good time to read together and getting more out of what we read by discussing afterward.

For FHE, we wanted to make sure we were actually learning together, and not just doing an activity or something that we would do on any other day of the week. Depending on what might be going on what we might be doing as an activity, we study a topic together. If we don't have anything specific in mind, we like to read from the book, Covenant Hearts by Bruce C. Hafen which is about covenant marriages and how to make them last. Then we have an activity together. Sometimes these activites have to do with the lesson, other times they are just for fun. This last FHE before Easter, we spent some time watching Easter videos and exploring LDS.org and mormon.org

https://www.lds.org/topics/easter/videos?lang=eng
http://www.mormon.org/easter?cid=HP_SA_4-4-2015_dMIS_fMRMN_xLIDyMSTHD1_ (this one was really neat, with a timeline that talked about each day before Christ's death)

Marriage

We made the goals to go on one good date each week, make a some new married couple friends, and our personal favorite: go on a trip to Jamaica!

We have to be honest. We have failed miserably in one of these goals. We have not succeeded in making new married friends. Since we were the first to get married from our groups of friends (with a couple exceptions), most of our close friends are still single. And we love to hang out with them! Combined with a not very social married ward, we are not doing well. But we have higher hopes for our summer plans and this fall!

Ever since we started dating, we have never missed going on a date at least once each week :) Some are small, like going out to ice cream together. Some are a little more extravagant, involving 11 foot tall homemade paper air planes. They are all fun though, and this is a habit we hope to continue throughout our entire lives.

Group date where we made and threw an 11 foot airplane!

Hard at work painting a mug at Color Me Mine

Double datin' and moutain bikin'

And JAMAICA. Dustan served his mission in Jamaica (here's the link to his mission blog: http://elderkraus.blogspot.com/), and has been wanting to visit again. And since we didn't get a long honeymoon, we decided that it was only reasonable that we go to Jamaica :) We had wanted to have it almost completely planned by March, which did not happen. But as of right now, we have finally bought a couple plane tickets and have researched a few places to stay while we travel the island. We could not be more excited! We leave on April 24 (just a few weeks away) and are staying for a full two weeks!!

Dustan on his mission in Jamaica!

Dustan on a Jamaica beach with Ziggy Marley, son of Bob Marley!

Picture right after we bought plane tickets to Jamaica SO EXCITED