Goals: 12 in 2012

I have struggled to make this year's list.  I mean, look at the date..its definitely not the beginning of the new year anymore.  And yet, I think that setting goals is a healthy habit...even if they are not met.  So here is my shot at making 2012 what I want it to be...even though I don't always have a say :-).

1.   Spend Intentional Time Together As A Family Once A Month. - This year for Christmas, I gave each child a checkbook sized pocket calendar.  In it, I notated each of their birthdays and ours, and the weekends we will have Allison and Cameron, and any other special events we already had planned.  I also gave them an assignment.  Each family member (Vince and I included) are responsible for planning a "family event" for two months of the year.  To make it easy, everyone got their birth month and the half birth month.  That worked for everyone except for me, so I just took the leftovers.  We left out two months - April, because we already have a family trip planned to Pigeon Forge, TN; and December, because everyone knows that December is jam packed with family events anyway.  I told them that they could plan anything within reason and gave them ideas like: going fishing, a picnic in the park, a weekend camping trip, volunteer somewhere, etc.  The only stipulation was that it had to be approved by mom and dad (for budget reasons).  The assigned months are as followed:

January - Cameron
February - Allison
March - Jacob
April - Family trip to Pigeon Forge, TN
May - Vince
June - Cameron
July - Katie
August - Allison
September - Jacob
October - Vince
November - Katie
December - Christmas

Update: So we did so good at this....until July.  July was my month and I was so excited about what I wanted to do with the family for my month.  And then...life happened.  Unfortunately, summer is a tough time with having a combined family.  During the month of July, Vince's kids didn't come to our home at all.  And we just didn't recover.  I have to admit I was upset about it, and honestly, my feelings were hurt because I felt like it didn't matter enough to the kids about my month, but it was their month they were all about it.  Sigh....and I remind myself that I am the adult..  But the kids did ask to do this again this year.  So maybe I just make sure that I don't have to wait seven months into the year before its my month!  Lol.

2.  Read 12 New Books.  I did this last year (well, I read more than 12), but I was glad that I did!  I missed reading and felt good about getting back into it.  Heather has already provided me with two books to get started with.  Nope.  I don't think that I even read three books this year.  And I missed it!

3.  Spend Intentional Time with Friends Once A Month.  I planned this for last year but it was to have people over once a month...and it didn't happen.  I think the key for me, is to put it on the calendar.  I think that you are more likely to actually do something that you say that you are going to do if you put it on a calendar.  I know that may seem silly, but how often do we get caught up in things and the time or the season gets away from us.  We set a date for the next time so that we don't keep saying "maybe next weekend".  Yeah....nope on this one too.  I think that we spent more time with friends...but we didn't plan it well, and we weren't "on purpose" about it.  We did start hanging out with another couple, which I am really enjoying. 

4.  Blog At Least Once A Week for A Year.  I think this may have been a goal a couple of years ago.  I enjoy blogging...if nothing else for the sake of posterity.  I read somewhere about how a woman was writing for her kids, and I thought that was really neat.  I know that I would love to read back to the thoughts of my mother as a young woman, as a new bride, as a new mother.  What was she thinking?  What was she living?  Ha ha.  Yeah...I'm just an epic failure this year :-(.

5.  Pay Cash In TN.  We are going on a family trip in April (March 31st - April 7th) to Pigeon Forge, TN.  My mom and dad rented a LARGE cabin there as a gift for the whole family.  I want to save the money and pay cash while we are there.  It is all too easy to swipe your credit card and worry about paying for it later.  I want to pay cash or use the bank card only.   A win!  We totally paid cash while we were in TN.  Yes!

6.  Go Geocaching.  I have read about it and have even found an app on my phone for it.  We may hate it, and we may love it.  But I definitely at least want to try it out and see what we think....regardless of who mocks us.  We went geocaching!  We actually did this a couple of times and the kids had a lot of fun doing it.  However, Jake has a tendency to get really upset when we search for a long time and can't find what we were looking for.  And sometimes that happens, because not everyone puts a cache back and sometimes people have no idea what it is and dispose of it.  There is no guarantee, but we had fun looking!  I jut wish we would have done this more.

7.  Continue with Weight Watchers.  As of this blog, I have lost 39 lbs while on Weight Watchers.  I signed up in September.  My big goal is to be under 200 lbs by my birthday...so that is another 25 lbs in ten weeks (so an average of 2.5 lbs a week).  That's gonna be tough...but it would make me so happy!  I am already very happy with my 39 lbs loss but I can't stop there!  I kept doing Weight Watchers until about September of this year.  So I did it for about a year.  I lost a total of 65 lbs.  Since I stopped doing Weight Watchers, I have fluxuated back and forth with the last 10 lbs.  As I feared, once I stopped the program, I let loose a little....just in time for the holidays.  So, I am back to paying attention, and packing my lunch!  I would really like to lose about another 25 lbs.  So, here we go!

8.  Be A Morning Person.  Lol.  I don't know that this is a feasible goal, but sure, why not?  I am not really an anti-morning person.  I am not grumpy or crabby or glaring to all of my co-workers until I get my cup of coffee or until 10am or anything like that.  I just don't like to get up early.  Once I am up, I am fine.  Its just a matter of hearing my alarm clock and actually getting out of bed.  I put it off and put it off and put it off until I have to get up or I am going to be late.  And I have a really bad habit of under estimating how long it will take me to do something or drive somewhere.  And than that makes me short with Jake particularly, because he isn't moving fast enough for my agenda or we were rushing so we forgot something.  So, I really want to strive to be a morning person....to get up much earlier than necessary and be ready and not rushed to leave in the morning.  This also means going to bed at a realistic time to get enough sleep to get up earlier to be a morning person.   Ha.  I just don't think this in the cards.  You know what I find really tough?  Jacob does so much better at this than I do.  He sets his alarm on his phone and he easily gets up at 6am.  He gets dressed, brushes his teeth and pokes his head in while I am sleeping to tell me that he is all ready to go.  And all I want to do is keep sleeping!  I often have the best of intentions to get stuff done and get in bed at a decent time....and then something happens or something else needs to be done.  ALWAYS. Sigh...

9.  Make CHRIST the center of Christmas.  I think that we made some strides last year, but I want my kids to know that it is not all about what they will receive...but what they can give and how they can show Christ during the Christmas season.  I have some ideas...but its a ways away, so I just want to make sure that we plan for that, and make it deliberate, when the time comes.  I am so disappointed with this Christmas.  I feel like it was a failure as a family and at making it Christ centered.  I feel like all I did was try to buy something....anything.  And there was absolutely NOTHING that they needed.  Any of them.  And I just spent money.  And I am so disappointed in myself.  Honestly, I don't want to buy any presents for next year.  Nothing at all.  Show them that Christmas is not at all about things...but I am not confident that they will get it.  They are so spoiled.  And who can I blame but ourselves.  How do I fix this??

10.  Use my bread maker.  When my ex-husband and I got married, one of the wedding gifts we got was a bread maker.  Well, that was ten years ago.  And when I got divorced, I took the bread maker with me.  And I have not yet used it once.  I love bread...and while it doesn't necessarily fit well into my Weight Watchers plan as much as I would like, I still love it.  And so this year I want to not be afraid of the appliance that collects dust in my cabinet and actually make bread.  Nope...didn't do this either.

11. Repaint the Kitchen.  I painted the kitchen a couple of years ago and I used cheap paint....and you can tell.  When I cook pasta, the walls sweat and you can see drip marks down all the walls.  Its gross.  And I didn't do a fantastic job edging around the cabinets either.  Didn't do this either.

12.  Go hiking with my sisters.  This one is actually on Kristy's goals for this year too.  So, we do this we knock out goals on two different lists!  I did this!  We all went hiking.  Me, Kristy, Kelli, Jake, Cameron, and some dogs.