family goals 2014

you see what i am doing here.

last week i shared  my word of the year. still.

today i am going to share some goals for our family.

so i am avoiding setting resolutions but picking a word and setting goals. so really i am setting resolutions but yet i am not. tricky. i know.

back to the goals.

goal #1: manners

so when i started to think about setting a few goals for our family i started by thinking about any changes i wanted to make. then i realized we were perfect. ha. just kidding. we are far from it. i wanted to think of things that would be meaningful for our whole family. some things we could work on together.

and then our first goal hit me.

manners

we need to work on our manners. now i wouldn't same we are rude and impolite people. i just think this is one area that can always be improved. and it is even more pronounced to me right now because of miss magpie. every time she wants or needs something we have her say please and then when we give it to her we have her say thank you. we do this to build manners and to have her communicate with us. we have done this with all our girls.

but are our other girls doing this when the want or need things? is tim doing this? am i doing this?

i took a nice long look in the mirror.

nope.

we are some of the time, we are not all of the time. i am guilty. not that we are rude. but we are just not always saying our pleases and thank yous. sometimes our (my) words sound down right demanding. ugh.

and our big girls are getting old enough to work on manners beyond please and thank you. holding doors, saying excuse me, etc.

how:

1. learning about manners

one way we are going to work on our manners is by learning about manners, the importance of manners, what manners to use when, etc. pinterest only has like a gazillion ideas. here is a list of just a few of the ideas i like.

books about manners
manners kids should know
manners match up
good manners
manners print 

2. thankful jar
giving thanks is not just for thanksgiving. it is great all year long. we are going to start a thankful jar based on this idea.

3. setting a good example

this one falls on tim and i. we need to use our manners, specifically by using please and thank you when talking to the girls and each other.


goal #2: active

our second goal came a little easier. this goal is based on ideas from our girls and our desire to take good care of our bodies.

we want to be more active as individuals (specifically tim and i) and even more so as a family. we understand the power of modeling. we want to model good health behaviors for our girls. which includes exercising to stay healthy. but we also want to be active together as a family.

how:

1. play at the park.

late last fall i shared this article with my girls about a family who visited 100 parks last summer. they loved the idea. we decided it might be a little tough for us to accomplish in one summer but that we could probably get it done over the course of an entire year.

our goal is to visit 100 different parks during 2014.

should be fun.

2. family walks

another thing we wan to do is to take more family walks. our neighborhood is growing so there are now more sidewalks to make this much safer.

3. family bike rides

our girls girls really want to take bike rides as a family. like really really want to. like ask all the time. this is a little complicated because we do not have bikes for everyone. tim specifically does not have a bike. cece even put it on her christmas list for santa to bring him one. this year we want to get our family outfitted with bikes and be able to bike ride as a family.

4. be outside

this is something we do pretty well. play outside as a family. work in our yard. garden.

5. exercise

this one is for tim and i. we are both working to make exercise a priority in our lives. getting into a routine of exercising consistently.




so there you have it our family goals for 2014. i think it will be fun to work on these together as a family. we will keep you posted on our progress!