Past Goals & New Goals

We are a goal setting family. Quite possibly because I am a goal setting person and so I drive my family crazy with questions like what do you want to accomplish in regards to...(it could be anything big or small) on an almost daily basis. See they haven't quite figured out that Mom does this so that way the responsibility is on them and she gets to take it easy:-)

It's our tradition that the first FHE of the year (or the school year, the summer, their birthday month, after General Conference, etc.) that we come up with some family goals. Last year we came up with a list of 12 things that we were going to incorporate into our family life. Like exercise, being nice to each other, fire safety, stuff like that, I can hardly remember now because we didn't end up doing any of it.

Instead about a week after we made our goals our Stake President challenged us to do these:
1. Read the Book of Mormon by June 30th.
2. Pray Daily as individuals, couples, and families.
3. Store at least one month of food by June 30th.
4. Establish a cash reserve to be added to each 72hr kit.

We unanimously decided to switch and do these goals in 2009. See our chart below. My kids were so very excited to make this. Let me just say it took me nearly ever free second of my time for 3 weeks to glue on each and every one of those single stickers!

That would be a sticker for each page of the Book of Mormon- 531 in case you are wondering. Every single sticker for each meal of food storage- 30 Breakfast, 30 Lunch, 30 Dinner. Every single sticker for the cash reserve- We did $5 increments for up to $600. We didn't do a sticker for praying because we always do that so that wasn't a real goal.

The plan was to take a picture of us at the end with our empty board and we would write a letter to our Stake President and tell him our experience. But we finished while we were in vacation in California so we didn't have our board to take a picture. Then since I was called into the Stake YW Presidency in April and now see the Stake Presidency on a fairly regular basis that would probably just seem like brown-nosing.

But, WE DID IT! And it was an awesome bonding experience, and HARD, brought us closer together, and DIFFICULT, taught us alot, and CHALLENGING! Oh my goodness, I cannot stress enough how HARD this was for our family to do together. And I mean TOGETHER! Even when Ken was on business trips there we would be on the phone reading our scriptures over speaker phone. Then there is the whole different meaning of together, like as in it is a miracle we did this together with a 1 year old and an almost 3 year old not completely running around crazy in the same room.

Like most goals with a deadline we also had to sprint to the finish line. Which just so happened that we had to do all of our meal shopping and planning the same week as Ken's birthday, Cub Scout Day Camp, the week before Girls Camp (where I was in charge of making sure the paperwork was complete for about 250 people), and the week we decided to go on our month long trip to California! I struggled so much with saving the $$ and spending the $$ on food storage when I knew we would be gone for such a long time.Let's face it I wanted extra spending $$ in CA:-) But I couldn't let my boys down after all their hard work.

And we were blessed, oh my goodness were we blessed! We finished our last piece of the goals, to read the BoM, on July 3rd. We went camping from July 3rd to July 7th. When Ken went into work on July 8th he was offered a new position at his job earning $20k more a year. It was completely unexpected and not at all what we ever imagined. But, if nothing else it has completely confirmed to us that Heavenly Father answers our prayers, when we do what he asks of us! We worried about the job market, especially with Ken telecommuting. Then with a growing family and always re-accessing needs/wants, plus thinking of buying a bigger house, etc. It truly was an answer to our prayers that we do not believe would have happened if we hadn't taken our Stake President's Challenge.

It makes me wish that our Stake President would give us some divinely appointed goals for this year! However, I don't see forsee that happening...

This year we each chose a goal we wanted the family to do together. It was interesting what the kids chose.
Here are our Goals for 2010:
1. Brush our teeth twice a day (Nathan)
2. Put away your stuff after you use it (Darin)
3. Go camping (Rose)
4. Daddy and Mommy go on a date each week (Ginger, but really Ken and I made it for her, since she is the one who is not very supportive in that arena:-)
5. Clean up the Kitchen after Dinner together (Mommy)
6. Read the Doctrine and Covenants together by June 30th (Ken) What is really so sad is that Darin wanted us to do that last year right after the BoM challenge and we totally did an awful job.

This year our goals are mainly small, daily goals. We are tracking it much more simply with a glass jar and pennies. Each night before we say our prayers we go through all the goals except the girls, and we get a penny if we did them all. For Rose's goal we will give ourselves 10 pennies, and for Ginger's we will give ourselves 5. After we reach 100 pennies Daddy will take us to do something fun as a family. We are still working on our first 100. I think this is a good way to encourage good daily habits without all the pressure of having to be completely perfect about it. Because if there is one thing to be said about my family, they are not afraid to take on a challenge! Seriously, putting away our stuff after we use it, I think he forgot what family he belongs to:-)

As far as individual goals:
Ken set a number having to do with leading our family.
I set a few that involve showing my family more love. I feel like I have been slipping this past year. There were so many fun things I used to do very regularly but have been pushed aside because of busyness. You know just cute things like notes, surprises, meaningful service, quality time, etc. Don't give me props for caring about my family or anything like that, really I set this goal because I miss being that cute mom/wife:-)