2010 was an amazing year for me and at the time I called it “the best year of my life” and now that 2011 is ending I’d have to say it was a close contender for that best year spot!!

Like most people in the blogging world I like to do end-of-the-year recaps. Here are mine from 2008, 2009 and 2010. Recently I’ve started recapping ‘my year’ on my birthday instead so rather than do two yearly recaps  I decided to borrow this idea from Lisa. Here are my top 11 moments/experiences from 2011!

1. Completing my hot yoga challenge. In January I spent 40.5 hours doing hot yoga when I took on the 30 hot yoga classes in 30 days challenge. This was the first non-running challenge I’d done in a long time and the physical, mental and emotional affect it had on me was amazing!

2. Buying our townhouse. At the end of January 2011 we officially signed the papers to buy our first home. We spent a lot of time looking for the right place and almost a year later I couldn’t be happier with where we ended up. It’s in a great location, is not making us house poor and is the perfect size for us. I absolutely love our little home.

3. Getting engaged. This was probably my top moment in 2011. After being together for 6 years Eric asked me to marry him in March on a random Thursday night at home. I am so excited to marry my very best friend in 2012!

4. Traveling to Ottawa, Minneapolis, Victoria and Orlando. I did a lot of traveling in 2011 and it was amazing. All four of my trips this year involved a blogger meet-up (and in 3 out of 4 cases an entire weekend with blogger friends) and once again I am so thankful for the amazing friends I’ve made through this space.

5. Getting a puppy! I love Chloe so much and I’m so glad we decided to take the leap and finally get the dog we’ve wanted for years in August. She brings so much fun and joy to our every day lives and it is 110% worth the extra work and money.

6. Completing a sprint triathlon. Training for this race took up a lot of my time and I was so nervous going into it but it was an amazing and fun experience. Never has a race gone by so fast – i guess the three sports will do that for you – and I can’t wait to do more triathlons in 2012!

7. Running a sub-2 hour half-marathon. The entire weekend in Victoria with Lisa, Lauren and Leigh was amazing and a top moment for me but I’ve never felt so proud of my running performance as when I crossed that finish line in 1:58:18. That race was hard for me and I left EVERYTHING out on the course to achieve my goal but I did it and that was an amazing feeling.

8. Planning our wedding. This has been several moments over the course of the last 10 months (wow, how have we been engaged that long?) and there have been many stressful moments but also many awesome moments like finding and buying my dress, picking our first dance song and booking our honeymoon. Overall it’s been more fun than stressful and I can’t wait to see the whole day come together in just over six months!!

9. Signing up for marathon #2. I have wanted redemption after marathon #1 for quite some time now but wasn’t sure if a 2012 marathon was in the cards for me. When they revealed the new point-to-point course for the Vancouver 2012 marathon I signed up almost immediately. I start training on Tuesday with the local Running Room and I can’t wait to cross the finish line of my second marathon in May!

10. Hosting friends and family in our home. Now that we have a 3-bedroom townhouse we’ve actually been able to host our families and friends when they come to town! It’s great having the extra room. Our families visited and stayed with us 3-4 times this year and we hosted three friends for an awesome and fun long weekend in August! It’s great having the space to host people.

11. Contentment. Never have I felt more content and at peace with my life and myself as I have this past year. I’ve had many moments where I stop and think how lucky I am and how happy I am with almost every aspect of my life right now. Yes, there are hard and crappy days still – I’m only human – but for the most part life is pretty darn good! I can’t wait to see what 2012 will bring.

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Question of the day: What moments would be on your top 11 list for 2011?

I read this post on Zen Habits the other day and it really struck a chord with me. If you don’t have time to read it the post is basically about quashing our urge to constantly “improve” ourselves.

One of the driving forces of my life for many years was the need to improve myself. It’s one of the driving forces for people who read my work as well.

It’s an incredibly pervasive urge: we are always trying to improve, and if we’re not, that’s something we should improve.

It’s everywhere. Where does this urge come from? It’s embedded in our culture — in the U.S. from Benjamin Franklin to the early entrepreneurial titans, everyone is trying to better themselves. It goes deeper, to ancient Western ideals of the perfect well-rounded person. But it flourished in the 20th century, from Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill to Stephen Covey. And now it’s in full bloom, with blogs. And yes, I’m part of this movement.

So what’s the problem? You could say it’s great that people are constantly trying to improve themselves, but where does it end? When is anyone ever content with who they are? We are taught that we are not good enough yet, that we must improve, and so … we always feel a little inadequate.

…

What if instead, we learned to be happy with ourselves?

What would happen?

That last paragraph and two lines from further on in the post, which I’ve bolded, is the one that really struck a chord with me. When does it end? When are we good enough?

Don’t get me wrong, I am all about goal setting and would not be where I am in my life right now if I hadn’t set some lofty goals for myself. Especially when it came to my career and running. But I also feel like now-a-days, especially around this time of year, all anyone can think about is how they want to improve or change. This falls into the “I’ll be happier when…” way of thinking for me.

I’ll be happier when I lose 10 pounds.

I’ll be happier when I move.

I’ll be happier when I have a new job.

I’ll be happier when I’m done university.

I’ll be happier when I have a partner.

I’m not trying to be hypocritical because I will admit to having these “I’ll be happier when…” thoughts a lot. I’ve set goals and New Years resolutions on a regular basis. Some I’ve achieved and some I haven’t. However, in the last couple of years I’ve started to really settle into where my life is right now. I’ve started trying to find joy and contentment in the every day, in what I have and who I am RIGHT NOW.

I think the urge to self-improve is good. Great even. But I think our society has taken it too far. I think that if we continue to get so caught up in this urge to be better one day we will be 90 years old, on our deathbed, and look around and wonder where our life has gone. Heck, we’ll probably wonder that regardless because life is so fleeting.

Keeping with the idea of being happy with who I am right now this year I am not setting New Years resolutions nor am I writing out a list of changes I want to make in 2012. I am just going to live my life as I am right now and as who I am right now. I will do exciting, fun and wonderful things in 2012 but because I want to and because they make me happy not because I have to “improve” who I am.

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Questions of the day: What do you think of this urge to self-improve constantly? Have you encountered it in your own life? Do you think it’s a good thing to constantly be trying to improve oneself and set goals or do you think it’s become too much?

I take an absurd amount of photos with my iPhone each week. It’s obnoxious really. One of my latest obsessions is instagram. I’ve had instagram since I first got my iPhone but I’ve only recently become re-obssessed with it after not using it for months.

Since I’m in a bit of a blogging rut lately with not much to say here are a few of the photos I took on my iPhone this week using instagram!

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Whenever I run lately I try to tag an extra mile or two on at the end with Chloe in the trails behind our house. I can run in there with her because she can be off-leash and it’s good for my high energy dog before she spends most of the day in the crate! On Thursday’s run we actually got to witness the sunrise too

I was flipping through this book when Eric and I were at Chapters the other day Christmas shopping and it is SO AWESOME. It has every country in the world in it with great, high-res photos. I know I already made my Christmas list but I would love this book too. I just might have to buy it for myself and then go through it with post-its to keep track of all my travel dreams

I ordered new running shoes off of Amazon during the Cyber Monday sales this week and they arrived yesterday. I got them for about $70 cheaper than I would at the local running store. Score! I am saving these babies for when marathon training starts, which is in one month. Eep!

A couple months ago I was going to Starbucks 2-3 times a week which was ridiculous considering a latte costs over $5 right now. I decided I was only going to get Starbucks once during the work week and that would be on Friday’s. Today was my self-imposed “Starbucks Treat Day” and I picked up a non-fat, extra-hot, light-on-the-whip, gingerbread latte this morning. I must say, after a completely hectic morning sipping on this made me feel much better!

Oh, and since I’m talking about instagram today check out this awesome post that just popped up in my reader by Caroline! I starred it and definitely plan on doing something like this with my instagram photos in the new year!

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Do you take a lot of photos every week? Do you use instagram?

Happy Friday! XO