2015 Resolutions

New year, new goals for us. I wasn't home on New Year's Eve so I missed the discussion with my boys about what goals they wanted to set. My boys haven't really set any goal for the year except to beat the number of books read last year. They were shocked that we fell so short of our goal, they had tried hard. So this year we are lower our goal a bit to 50 books per person or 12,500 pages. We decided to include pages because Jordan had a point that it wasn't really fair that his books were 3-4 hundred pages and Jacob's were one hundrend-something. Again all the books need to be chapter books and at their reading level.

I have set our family goal this year because most of the responsibility of reaching it falls on me. January first we had a family meeting, where I shared the New Year, New Attitudes rules with my boys. Gradually over the past year attitudes have became an issue, mine included. I don't know if this hold true with anyone else's family, but when my boys are about eight and a half years old they get very argumentative. It doesn't matter what was said or asked of them, they want to argue. Jacob has recently reach the arguing stage. I understand it's independence thing and eventually he'll get past it, but... I just want to to tone it down a bit. So he and I will will be honing his skills on what kind of things to take a stand for and debate and when to let things roll off his back. For Joey, it isn't so much his attitude as his behavior that we'll be working on. While the alphabet of diagnoses does play a big part as to why his behavior is all over the place (which we are working on with different types of therapies), he needs to take some responsibility for the behaviors that aren't due to his diagnoses. Jordan has taken his "teenage attitude" to a new level. It's not just the typical rebelling and need for more freedom, he's been down right rude and mean. I have noticed that we use a lot of sarcasm in our house. I know my kids learned it from me, so I'm working on it this year. Also I have notice that the older my kids get the more potty words "slip" from my lips, so I will be working on that too.


My personal goal are-

• strengthening my relationship with God (first step-find a new church)
• sticking with homeschooling during the summer break (see if I could handle it full time)
• in my bed by 10:30-11 (which coincides with the next one)
• morning workouts
• cooking from scratch (this should be interesting)
• get back into couponing (money saved from coupons goes towards vacation)
• save money for vacation (we have talked about shutting off our cable for a year towards this)
• scrapbook 2012 and 2013 pictures for all 4 books (if I'm lucky maybe even do part of 2014)
• POSSIBLY quit my coffee or cut down some