So I'm not really going anywhere. I mean, we're not relocating or making any earth-shattering changes. But, as a friend reminded me a couple of nights ago, we are all on a journey and I want this year to be a more purposeful journey than last year was. Yesterday I posted about 2012 and how it was the Year of The Crazy. I felt like I was a gerbil running on a wheel - totally out of breath but not really getting anywhere. With Aaron being off work since the second week of December I have had time to decompress and think, and I've come up with a rough plan for how I want 2013 to look.
I always have a reading goal in my January plans. Last year I missed my goal of 40 books fairly miserably, so this year I scaled it back. My goal is to read 30 fiction books this year. Any kind of fiction. I'm currently on a Rick Riordan kick. And then there's the 58 books (Seriously. 58.) on my shelf that have been gathered from a year of trips to the Half Price Books clearance rack. Plus, when you take my shiny new library card (why do I ALWAYS forget about the library?) into consideration I don't think it'll be a problem to find entertaining reading material. The other reading goal I have is to read one non-fiction book a month from the "Christian Living" genre. Something that will make me think and help build me up. Anybody have any recommendations that have blown your hair back?
Another goal I have is relational in nature. It's so easy for Aaron and I to get lazy about spending time together. I mean, we're together all the time (especially right now when he's not working), but I'm talking about intentional time. Once school starts for him and work picks up again it's going to be rare that we have time together. It's not going to just happen. We don't have money for "real dates", and even if we did we live a long way from potential babysitters so it's hard to make that work for us. Plus, most of the time by the end of the week we're both ready to crash in our living room and ignore the world for awhile. So we've decided to have an at-home date every Friday night. We each wrote down several ideas on little strips of paper, folded them up, and stuck them in a jar. Every week we draw one and have our date Friday night after Sammy is in bed. (Usually we draw on Wednesday so I have time to pull things together if I need to.) Each date idea involves dinner of some kind, and then a game or a movie or something like that. Aaron has agreed to tackle the same non-fiction book goal as I have, so our dinner conversation each week will start with what we've read. I'm going to try to post a little bit about each date night here. There are several competitive dates, and since we are both a little too competitive for our own good there may be some interesting stories to tell.
Then there's Sam. He is at that age where he is soaking up every little thing. It seems like every day he's saying a new word or learning a new skill. He won't start Mother's Day Out until next fall, so I want to make the effort to teach him as much as I can between now and then. I'm constantly working on little things as he plays ("Look at the green ball", "See the big tree?", "Can you say circle?") but we haven't done many planned activities that help him focus and learn. I think I was operating under the "he's too little for that" assumption and then I got distracted by life and the next thing I knew he was the perfect age and I wasn't prepared. What I'd like to do is to have specific plans each week instead of just winging it and seeing what happens. I want to work in Bible lessons and lots of "life things" (colors, shapes, action words, nature). I think he knows a lot of these things - he just can't say the words - but I need to be more purposeful in giving him ways to learn. I've been scouring websites and looking for fun activities and field trips we can do. Do you have any favorite websites to share with this newbie?
My last goal is simple. Write more. Record more memories. Take more pictures. Share more ideas. Get away from the idea that it has to be perfect before I click "Publish". Show off my imperfections of which there are plenty.
What are your goals for 2013?
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