New Year, New Goals

I'll be honest, I'm a celebrator of New Year's not because I enjoy seeing a new year come, but it's often because I'm mourning an old year ending and I need something uplifting to get me through it.  Sounds crazy, right?  Maybe I'm a sentimentalist.  Maybe I live in the past, but setting goals personally and as a family gives me something to look forward to in the new year.  (And some accomplishments to look back on when December of 2011 is winding down.)

So, that being said, here are our Gregg family goals (or most of them, a few have been left out for the sake of privacy ;)):

Family Goals: 

• Get healthy, which means better food choices, smaller portion sizes, and a lot more exercise together and separately.  I, personally, will be trying to do our ever infamous "eat healthy 6 days a week and have a cheater day" but I'm trying to figure out how that now fits with our current lifestyle.  I will figure it out.  Also for myself, I've set a goal weight of 125 (almost pre-pregnancy weight, that was 128), and I want to tone some.  I'm giving myself until the end of the year for that goal.  We'll see when I meet it, I'll keep you updated!
• Aaron and I are reading through the Bible in one year (in Bryton's presence).  We both felt it very important to be in the Word daily together, and I initially thought that we'd do the Bible in 90 days reading plan, but figured with all of the changes this year we'd do something slightly more attainable.  
• Aaron and I plan to meet together monthly to see how we are doing relationally.  
• 2 date nights a month.  I know it doesn't sound like much, but this means without the kids and is not something we succeeded at last year.  We'll plan accordingly and work our budget and our time in order to make it happen.  

Alicia Personal Goals:

• Blog more often.  I'm not promising everyday, and it may mean some days there may be multiples, but for now I'm shooting for one a day.  We'll see what our world looks like once Ansley gets here.  I'm sure it will calm down after awhile, but hopefully I'll be able to keep up with it.   
• Find a way to help add to my family's income while being able to be with my kids as much as possible. 
• Try new things.  For all of you who know me, you know I have this ugly fear of failure looming in my life.  I want to look back on 2011 and either say, 'wow, who knew what I could do if I would have just tried," or, "wow, I failed a lot this year, but I'm so glad I at least attempted it."  I don't want to leave the year feeling like I've missed opportunities.  As I said on facebook the other day, I want my fear of regret to overwhelm my fear of failure.  
• Write a short journal entry each day, in a journal.  I'm not going to lie, I have a few days to catch up on already, but I thought this would be a fun way to see what happened to all of us each day throughout the year.  The few that I've succeeded in have been just a few sentences long, and I'm fine with that.  
• I need the entire house clean every two weeks... somehow.  Whether that means a room a day for 6 out of 14 days or a whole day of cleaning, or whatever, it has to happen.  I know there are some of you out there that are scoffing about "every two weeks" because you are every weekers or more than that, but take a step into our church schedule and life with a two year old running around who hates the vacuum and wants to be into everything I'm into, and you'll see where I'm coming from.  

Bryton's Goals:  (He is still young enough for us to set them for him ;) 

• Potty trained by the end of the year.  (He'll be 3 years, 1 month by that time.)  Don't get me wrong, we are shooting for much before this, but I'm taking his readiness into consideration and attempting not to 'push it' on him. 
• Adding small responsibilities to his life in our household.  (We'll have chores that everybody does because they are part of the family, and then eventually he'll have 'extras' that are optional for him and earn him an 'allowance', pay depending on what he does and how often.)  For now, he's doing a great job picking up his toys and putting them away in the evening and helping mom put away his laundry (he actually does a decent job with this.)  A few things I'd like to add to this for sure is making him capable of putting away all of his own laundry and being able to scrape his plate after meals and put his plate in the sink (rinse and put in dishwasher will have to be a year or so down the road). 
• Lastly, the goal is for him to have all of his primary and secondary colors down by the end of the year and all of his numbers 1-10.  We have the idea of 'colors' down now (if you ask him what color something is he'll answer in a color but he always starts with green and yellow ;), but he needs work on knowing which ones go with what.  As far as numbers, he has 1-3 down on his own, and if you count with him he can get through 6, so this one shouldn't be very hard to attain.  

Keep in mind, I'm doing these Bryton goals from a 'new parents' perspective, I could be way off on all of them.  Maybe he'll have all of his colors, his numbers to 20 and his alphabet by the end of the year but won't be potty trained.  Maybe he'll be potty trained and we still won't have numbers... we'll just have to see.  After all, they are just goals :)

So there you go... there's the Gregg's goals... what are yours???

Alicia