Hello 2018!

Happy New Year everyone! As always I'm fashionably late with this post but better late than never eh? I completely skipped blogging for several months last year & only started back up again in May. Even then I only posted sporadically but I finally got back into the groove towards the end of the year. 2017 was yet another crappy year in my life. I knew it was gonna be a bad year when the dishwasher started causing power cuts a couple of days into 2017. The boiler was also making horrendous drilling noises & after years of complaining we finally got a new boiler fitted. Then things got a little more promising. Andy earned tons of commission working at Mercedes so we decided to splash the cash & book our first family holiday in February. I started hitting the gym hard as I was determined to look good in a bikini & it definitely paid off. I felt more confident & comfortable in my own skin than I had done in years.

Then a week before we were due to fly to Spain at the end of July, Chloe caught chickenpox from another child in her class. We had to cancel the holiday which was completely devastating. I haven't been on holiday since 2008 & I'd spent the whole first half of the year looking forward to this week away. Claiming the money back using our travel insurance was incredibly stressful & we had to pay £300 excess. We had also spent loads of money on new clothes, new suitcases & getting Euros for our trip. Basically we ended up losing a lot of money & could no longer afford to book another trip as it took so long for the insurance company to pay out.

This holiday was the only thing that I had to look forward to & when it got taken away from me I sunk into a deep depression. I stopped caring about my appearance entirely. I couldn't be bothered to look after my skin, put on makeup, get my roots bleached, eat healthily or go to the gym. I sometimes struggled to even do basic things like getting dressed or having a shower. It was such a difficult time & no one we knew really gave a shit. I've had to cut a lot of toxic people out of my life because it's quite clear that they only care about themselves. After that disastrous start to the Summer surely things couldn't get any worse right? Wrong.

I never expect to do anything particularly exciting for my birthday. I normally just spend it with Andy & Chloe so we tend to do fun things as a family such as going to York Maze. This year I wanted to go to Little Owl Farm in Oldham because I love owls & wanted to feed some baby animals haha! Andy went out that morning & when he came back he was completely stressed out as one of his cars had been clamped. Once he'd sorted out all that palaver it was too late to go anywhere so I just accepted it & figured we could go later that week. Andy then informed me that we should pack a suitcase because he'd booked a hotel in Liverpool & we were going to spend the weekend there. We didn't quite make it to Liverpool. About five minutes away from our house Andy got into a collision with a guy on a moped. It was one of the worst days of my life.

It's taken quite a while for me to get over the events of last Summer. I'm thankful for the new year as this time I really do see it as a new start. I saw some tweets saying that it doesn't matter if you didn't achieve anything in 2017, it's okay if all you did was survive. I can definitely relate to that as I've felt a bit down about my achievements. It's important to remember that your value is not measured by your productivity & comparing yourself to others is a fruitless exercise. I've not set any resolutions or specific goals this year. I mainly want to get my life back on track. I've started going to the gym again & I had forgotten how exhilarating a good Body Pump session could be. I've spent most of this week struggling with DOMS but I can't wait to do it all again next week! I've sacked off Slimming World because I wasn't getting anywhere with it. I've joined Team RH Fitness & I'm loving being able to eat what I want as long as it fits my macros. I also can't wait to get my hair done, six months of regrowth is not a pretty sight!

One of the main things I want to do this year is become a full time blogger. I started this blog back in February 2010, whilst heavily pregnant with Chloe! A lot of things have changed since then but despite the occasional lack of posts, my love of blogging is still going strong. I've always been too scared to take this step but I really want to make a go of it. If so many other people can do it, why can't I? I'm turning 30 this year & it's about damn time I took control of my life. So here's to 2018! Let's hope this year treats all of us well!

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