Let's Start at the Very Beginning

Welcome to my big project! This is going to be a huge challenge and I am sure that I am up to it. Before I explain what the challenge is I will give you a bit of back ground about me.

My name is Linda and I am 39 years old. I won't be able to say that for much longer because the big FOUR OH is looming on the 4th of November this year. I am in the Navy and I live in one of the most beautiful places on the face of this earth - right near Jervis Bay, New South Wales, Australia. My husband Peter is also in the Navy and he is posted to a ship. He is about to take off on a six month deployment and it is this absence from home that is the catalyst for this blog. Peter and I have two children Ninky aged ten and Roo aged nine. They are not their real names but they are their real nicknames. I am not comfortable with giving out their details online.

My family and I have a lovely house, very close to a beautiful beach, backing onto lovely bush, with a swimming pool and a big yard. We have a lot of pets. I mean a LOT of pets. We have 2 dogs (Benny a 10.5 year old maltese and Polly an 8.5 year old labrador), 7 chooks ( or chickens for non Australians LOL), 1 duck (unoriginally named Jemima) a guinea pig called Samuel L. Guinea Pig, a yabbie and 6 cats. Yes you read that correctly - we have SIX cats. Well technically we have 3 cats, a 6 month old kitten and 2 two month old kittens. The presence of so many cats is a very long story that I will save for another blog post in future. Let's just say that we all adore them even though the keeping of so many cats is a lot of work and it goes without saying that all the fun jobs (such as cleaning litter boxes and cleaning up hair balls) are my responsibility!

We are a pretty happy little family. Obviously the children miss Mum and Dad when they go away for work but all in all we all love each other and get along well. We are very fortunate to have so much and I know that I don't take it for granted.

Now having said all that, there is a reason for the commencement of this blog. Whilst we have a good life, as with many things in this world their is room for improvemet. Some of this will be to make life better for an individual member of the family, some to make it better for all, some of it short term and some of it to make things better for the future. There are 5 main areas that I want to tackle during this six month project of mine. They are (in no particular order);

My Weight and Fitness.

I have a LOT of weight to lose. I won't go on and on about it. I could rave about the history and the agony of it all but to what end? Basically, I am over 40kg's overweight and it is affecting my health and my happiness. It is also impacting on my work as I am starting to "grow out of" my uniforms (a really gross look) and I cannot currently pass my annual fitness assessment. The Navy agrees that my weight is a major problem and as of the end of April I will be being enrolled in a rehab programme, the goal of which is to get my weight back to an acceptable level (different to my goal which is to get back to a healthy weight range) and get me fit enough pass my fitness test. I will explain the plan for this later.

House/Home

We live in a HUGE single story house that has four bedrooms and four living areas. I am a chronically disorganised person and as such my cleaning and housekeeping routines are ad hoc at best. I want to learn to be organised and have routines in place to ensure a pleasant living environment and days free from chaos.

Two more habits that I want to cultivate are menu planning and once a month shopping. There are a number of reasons for this. The first is to reduce disorganisation. The second is to reduce costs. The third is so that I don't have to spend anymore time shopping in nearby Shitsville (I will elaborate on Shitsville later on) than I have to. I have a large chest freezer and a good fridge and lots of cupboard space so it is certainly achievable.

I want to establish a small container garden that I can manage. In our previous house we had a massive veggie garden and it ended up not being used because it was too much to manage. I think I would prefer a couple of pots of things that we use (ie baby spinach, broccoli etc) that I can look after well.

While Peter is away there are some improvements that I want to make to the house and the backyard. Things like planting a privacy/shade screen only the side of the pool, getting a path concrete, making an outdoor cat enclosure and revitalising the front garden, just to name a few.

Finances

I won't go into too much detail here but the main aim is to get a budget going and stick to it. Peter and I earn very good incomes and I want to capitalise on them. We don't know how much longer we will stay in the Navy, so I want to review our long term financial goals and work out how we are going to meet them. We have a couple of small debts plus the mortgage. We also want to go on a cruise out of Hong Kong in November so I want to save for that. My goal is to save $1000 a month for the months of May, June, July, August and September. I think this is perfectly achievable. There will be more details on this later when I have given this a bit more thought.

Family Togetherness

I want to spend more time with Ninky and Roo. They are great kids and I know that they crave my attention. I have applied to take "Part Time Leave Without Pay" for the duration of Peter's deployment to assist with meeting this goal. This means that I will have every Wednesday off. Effectively I will only work three and a half days a week because where I work we work nine hour days so that we have a half day on Fridays. Hopefully all this will take some pressure off me and give me more time to get things done. Then I can spend more time with the children outside school hours. There are lots of things that I want to do with them but I will expand on this later.

Children's Education

Ninky does really well with reading and writing. She is in Grade 5. She struggles a bit with maths and I really want to focus on getting her maths skills up over the next 6 months. I purchased the Mathletics programme for her and she has already had a go at it. I can see that it is going to help but I am going to have to help her too. I also want to get into the habit of listening to her read each night.

Roo does pretty well with maths but struggles with reading and writing. He is in Grade 4. He does not have any learning disabilities - he is just simply classed as a reluctant reader and writer. Roo and I attended a programme called the Parents as Tutors programme at the University of Canberra last year for 12 weeks. It was fantastic and helped both of us enormously. During the term that just finished we were still settling in so we stopped using the method we learned. My goal is to get back to what we were doing because that makes Roo so much more confident. Besides that I gives us some great time together :-)

So as you can see there is a lot to do it a relatively short period of time. I know that I (or rather we) can do this. I know that it won't always be easy but I know that it will be worth it.

The project kicks off officially the day that Peter's ship sails. The 20 April 2009. It officially ends on 09 October 2009 when he gets back. Hopefull both of use will experience smooth sailing!