B. would like to wear more underpants on his head. That is his goal for 2013, and beyond. My goals are a little more boring:
Be more neighborly. We get caught up in our own little lives, and in this semi-rural area where our homes are spread apart by acres of land, you can go months and months without even seeing the folks who live next door. We found out our neighbor to the east went through a divorce last year, and we didn’t even know about it until it was all over. So this year, we want to do a better job of stepping outside our comfort zones and making an effort to get to know those we live near. Maybe I’ll even get up the courage to invite someone over for dinner. No, that’ll never happen. But maybe a relaxed backyard barbecue? I think I can handle that.
Continue with our church group’s eight monthly goals. These are great things like regular family night, reading the scriptures together, etc. Following these steps blessed our lives in 2012, so we want to continue doing them. I won’t list them all out here.
Better planned Family Home Evenings. I’m really good at holding Monday night family nights, but I’d like to get better at starting earlier, and planning a little better in advance. I often skip the treat part since it’s already time for bed when we’re done.
Meal planning, regular meals, and regular meal TIMEs. Oof. This is a tough one for me. You know I love to make a schedule, but keeping it, and being aware of the passage of time is more difficult. I hammered out a loose, easy plan for this year and so far so good. Here’s hoping I can stick with it.
Regular personal hygiene for the kids. Ha, don’t laugh! We’re not totally gross over here, just not good at routine. My kids all have dry skin that starts flaking off and cracking if they shower or bathe every day, but I admit sometimes one or two of them will smell a little dodgy and I think too many days might have passed since their last soap up.
My lovely husband has a goal of washing, drying, and putting away at least one load of laundry each day. There are some awfully good things about this role reversal, and the shift in laundry responsibility is one of them. Finding clean pajamas in my drawer is like MAGIC.
I would like to exercise regularly again, now that my heart is healing nicely. I’d also like to sort out what kind of diet would make my body the happiest. I wouldn’t mind shedding the 6 pounds I put on while recovering, either.
E. would also like to lose the weight he put back on during the stress of the heart surgery.
The kids would like to enjoy their green smoothies at least 3 times per week.
We would love to get back on good financial footing this year.
And following that, we want to be able to pay it forward / pay it back. (Love you all!)
I admit I had some pretty high hopes for last year, and neither one of us have let go of our little farm dreams, though we are in love with our area. We’d always dreamed of moving further east, nearer to the river where the trees grow more thickly and there are some mountains to look at, but we’d be sad to leave our friends here. There is a neighbor just a stone’s throw away who is selling a good sized piece of property, and we hope, hope, hope that this year we will be able to buy it from them. We would be able to build a modest little farmhouse on it, have more land for our homesteading ideals, and be able to have more animals… all while staying right here in our tiny town. We wouldn’t need to move to a new church body, and our kids would still be very near all their friends.
It’s a lot to hope for. Climbing out of the financial hole we’re in might take a good long while, but I’m going to put it out there. A friend of mine said one year she wrote her resolutions as if they had already happened, thanking the universe that she had achieved her goals, and it worked! She sold her house for full asking price within two days of writing them out. I’m going to try that here with these big dog goals:
- I’m so grateful that we were able to get out of business and medical debt in 2013.
- I’m overjoyed that we were able to finish our master bathroom (that has been torn apart for nearly 5 years) in 2013.
- What a good feeling it was to finally sell our home in 2013!
- I am especially thankful that we have been able to purchase this 30 acre property in our area in 2013.
- I have really enjoyed scouring house plans to design and begin building a smaller, yet storage-smart home for my family in 2013.
- It brings me great joy to be able to help others financially and to provide jobs for youth and adults on our homestead in 2013.
What do you think? Super cheeseball? Let’s see if positive thinking works.
What are your goals this year?
