A New Year, A New Family!

I love the beginning of the New Year!  All of the hope and dreams...All the new chances to become who you want to be!  It's so exciting making plans and anticipating what the future will hold.  It can also be nerve-wrecking and overwhelming with the fear of not accomplishing what you wanted.  Even so, I love making new goals and going full throttle for them! 

As Ken and I reviewed 2012 the last few weeks of December we realized that we let a huge amount of disorganization, worry, and stress get in the way of accomplishing what we wanted for our family.  Really, we spent way too much time worrying about things that never came to fruition.  We worried about Nathan having seizures, having a baby, Ken being laid-off.  We let ourselves be distracted by a huge amount of stress with Nathan seizures, me being Primary President for half the year, and with selling our house.  None of that stress was particularly helpful either, we had done all that we could possibly do, worrying about it wouldn't change any of the outcomes.

Anyway, onto the New Year... I've always shied away from hanging up home organization stuff because it makes our home look like a classroom.  But, I've decided that's really not a bad thing, we do a ton of teaching in our home why not be organized about it.  Besides better out of Mom's head and onto the wall.

This is by our kitchen table.  

First, I wanted a 6 month calendar.  3 months, just doesn't cut it.  I have a bin of permanent markers by it, it took me all of 2 minutes to decide that a dry erase marker would be a bad idea.  Besides I bought these month calendars at the dollar store.  $12 for a year of sanity is a super wise purchase in my book!  Seriously, can you believe our schedule.  It's only gotten worse since I put it up too.  I am anxiously awaiting the day when I can hang up my July month, the month of vacation!

As we were contemplating goals for the New Year Ken and I decided that we wanted to have more of guiding principles.  I've been reading "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin for my book club and I have totally devoured all of her fabulous sayings.  They are catchy and I found myself thinking about them often throughout the day.  Ken's been reading it too.

These principles, at times, totally contradict each other.  We want to act with purpose and at least one of these principles will be in the forefront of everything we do.  We chose 3 ways we wanted to act upon them.

For us, as a couple, we narrowed it down to our top three desires:

1. Increase Cash Flow- it's not a secret that we really want to buy a beach house eventually:)

• Obviously cutting expenditures is one way, but that will only buy us a dribble of what we need.  We are pretty conscious of expenditures in everyday living
• Launch a business or a stream of passive income. 
•  Save 30% of Ken's salary each month. Or more accurately, I should say save 30% towards this so that we can spend it later. This is on top of 8% in retirement accounts because we can't afford to pay taxes if we don't.  It will be a stretch but I've been pretty committed since November. 

2. Master Our Time- Honestly, we feel like this is the biggest hindrance to us becoming the people/parents that we should become.  

• Go to Sleep Earlier-  It's just so hard to stop playing around after the kids are in bed.  It feels like our reward for making it through the day.  We literally have stayed up to midnight (or 2 am) nearly every single night the past 15 years.  It's ridiculous and we have got to get it under control.  We figured out an amazing way to still connect and go to sleep by 10-10:30 pm but I'll only tell in person;-)  Again, we've been doing this off and on since November too so I'm thinking it will stick.
• Wake-up early.  Alot of the things we were doing at night has shifted to morning; family scripture study, going on our walks and exercising, working on the computer.
• Cutting out all the wasted time on emotional junk.  No stressing over things we can't change, not getting involved in drama with work, family, church, school, or whatever.  Doing what needs to be done without the whining or feeling like a martyr, saying what you mean and not beating around the bush, etc.  I could go on and on about how many times I've caught myself spending time on things of zero value. 

I am especially thankful that Ken and I have set these goals together.  Something happened where I was really slighted, more like my children were (and there is nothing that get a mama bear going then hurting her children) and I was really complaining to Ken about it and trying to discuss different ways of handling it.  And Ken really drilled it down in less then 5 minutes and helped me to forgive and just let it go.  It wasn't really important to have an emotional battle over this situation.

3. Enjoy Our Family!

• This one really goes without me needing to say much.  Obviously playing around, goofing off, going on vacation are right up there!
• It also includes basking in every positive experience our children have, including documenting it on our blog. They are growing and learning so much!  I have to say this is a huge thing for me right now because I'm afraid that we haven't been appreciating the boys becoming teenagers when there are really so many positives.  It's been a learning curve for all of us as we try to find a good balance teaching and guiding them while not forcing everything we want for them on them.  
• Ken has also ramped up his Mano-on-Mano talks (now that me and Darin are learning more Spanish we should know that really doesn't mean Man-to-Man, but Hand-to hand--imagine that!).  Anyway, Ken is scheduling twice a month one-on-one talks with the boys.  

Previously it was once a month but sometimes if he was traveling or whatever (cough-laziness-cough, cough) would get in the way.  Not now! And it's not really limited to twice a month since these talks have seemed to have prompted even more nightly chats with both of us, but that's good-- I think.  Since we have no idea what we are doing parenting teens we figure as long as we are talking it's a step forward.

The girls also have a Sunday blocked out for their talks with Dad, which is only once a month and it's both girls together and usually involves them ending up at a park.  Last week Ken talked to the girls about not talking to strangers and what they want to do when they have a family.  They only remembered 1 thing from the discussion so it's good they are on a regular rotation with the boys now. 

I have also ramped up talking to the kids.  Previously, whenever Ken took them for one of their "drives" I would nap, sometimes work on Faith in God, or clean-up the house.  But not anymore, they are getting a session with their own personal Life Coach (aka: Mom).  This is whatever I think they need to learn to get them making good decisions, being responsible, and planning for their future.  

We also have two guiding principles that we selected for our entire family:
1.  Act Your Age
2.  Do What You Should Do
We had thought of incorporating a scripture or something but figured that a lot of the subtlety would get lost on our children and having to reiterate it when we could just be direct and succinct would be in violation of one of our goals as a couple.

We have been really surprised at how many times we have referred to this with our children this past month.  It's seriously awesome!  It solves pretty much every single dispute between siblings.  It also solves pretty much any annoying habit that we want to break.  It even works on us as parents!

Each of us also chose one thing that we felt like our family should do this next year.  Here's what everyone chose:
Rose- 5 Family Testimony Meetings (we told her to pick between 1-12 and she chose 5, yikes!)
Ginger- 2 Camping Trips (after learning our lesson with Rose we set a reasonable amount)
Nathan- 12 Family Game Nights
Darin- 12 Driving Lessons (he would have chosen 52 but we capped him at 12:)  Ken takes them to the school parking lot and lets them drive around.
Stephanie- 12 Temple Trips
Ken- 4 Family Service Projects

Our everyday goals are:
Read Scriptures Daily
Eat Dinner Together and Clean-up Together
Have weekly F.H.E
Accomplish Chores Daily
Weekly Dates for Mom and Dad (our kids are actually really excited to support us in this, could be the junk food and unlimited movie watching we let them do when we are gone)

We just have two chore charts, one for the girls and one for the boys.  The change in our family has been miraculous!  We've had more time to play and have been much more responsible.  The fact that I was sick for 10 days and our house was clean, functioning, and we were staying on track with our goals is a testament to how well our new goals/mindsets and organization has worked.  

I thought this process would lead to our family accomplishing more and being responsible, but we have been pleasantly surprised that it has added an increase in love within all of our relationships.  Not just because there is less stress but there has been a big increase of service towards each other!

To keep us on track and motivated we are tracking each of our every day goals with stars.  Chore Chart is the only category where a star can be earned individually by each of our children.  Ken told the kids that he would take them out to celebrate after we got 150 stars.  Since I'm such a supportive wife I talked the kids into, talking their dad into, counting attending temple trips and service projects as 15 stars each:)  We are at 91 stars and counting!  Not to shabby for 2 1/2 weeks!