2012 goals

I hate making goals because I hate seeing the failure when I don’t accomplish them. But I know it’s important to keep trying.

Personal Goals:

1 ) Health-Despite being pregnant, I would like to keep my health up. I mentioned in my post about last year’s goals that I feel so much better now than I ever have, and that’s because I am making my health a priority. I am finally motivated to exercise for health sake, rather than for a number sake. Because honestly, that never really motivated me anyway. So my health goals for the year are:

 a. run a 5k- probably after the baby. There’s a 5k for the Wentzville firefighters out here in October. I almost signed up for it this year, but ended up being sick that weekend anyway. I believe it’s for breast cancer awareness. If I feel super motivated, I may do one before the baby, but I honestly get really hot when I run. I prefer to run outside, so even though it’s been in the 30s or 40s in the mornings, I’ve been out there running. And It’s great. I finally found a pair of pants on clearance, so I am wearing those and a light jacket and if the sun is out, I end up taking the jacket off before my run is over. I imagine running a 5k anywhere from May to September will be miserable for me, especially being in my third trimester. But now I’ve put it out there, so I better make it happen, right?

b. keep running. At my very first appointment for this pregnancy, the nurse practitioner that I met with was concerned about my running. She said I should just walk. The other OBs I’ve seen haven’t been concerned. So I want to keep running as much as I can. I said before that some days are REALLY hard. I go as much as I can, and I’m okay with that. I know I am out there doing something, and that’s better than anything else.

c. eat healthy. This one is really hard for me during and after a pregnancy. Fast food sounds SO good ALL THE TIME when I am pregnant. It’s ridiculous. Add to that the sudden ravenous hunger strikes and you can see where I may have issues. I try to keep a granola bar in my purse or car all the time for when I am out, and in general I try to plan outings to occur before lunchtime, but it’s a big weakness for me. And we can’t afford it either. I’ve had so many stomach issues with this kid. The first few weeks, fresh fruits and veggies were the only things that tasted good to me. Then it was processed foods. Then everything I ate for lunch made me sick. Now, I seem to be okay with most things, but definitely craving seafood a lot. And focusing on providing lots of fruits and veggies to my kids is important to me too.

2) Blog more. I know. I’ve said it before. But I get really discouraged when I sit down to blog for “15 minutes” and it takes me 45 minutes to write the post and then I want to add pictures and blogger won’t add pictures and ugh. Right now I’m having to add pictures to blogger by using picasa because it won’t upload any photos for me. It’s frustrating.

3) Pictures. Continuing to take photos of my kids is important to me. I love looking through them and remembering how they have changed. I tend to pick my favorites and save them separately and when I see a free prints code somewhere, I get prints made. It works pretty well. I rarely spend any money on printing them. I did okay last year, but I want to do better.

4) Journal. Still something I struggle with. I want to write, but I have a hard time. As long as I can keep up wit hthe kids, I guess I’ll be okay for now.

5) Scripture study. This is one place that I feel I am doing really well in, but can always improve.  What helped me this year was printing a calendar all on one page and I mark off every day that I read. It’s really good for me to see what I am doing. I like the record. I tend not to read on weekends, which needs to change. So that’s my goal. I want to read every day. My mini goals for this are: read the Book of Mormon by Easter and read the Gospels (aka Life of Christ) by Easter. Can I do it? I hope so.

6) Prayer. This is another area I struggle with. It’s so hard for me to say a morning prayer. Unless I am able to get up before the kids every day, I just don’t have any me time until they go down for naps. So I am going to try to make morning prayers happen.

Family goals: These are my goals for our family. Alann generally supports me and trusts me to show the kids the way.

Where we are doing good: prayers. We switched a while ago to making our breakfast prayer more of a family prayer. We are usually together for breakfast, so it made sense. That has definitely been a good change in our lives. We almost always pray before eating- assuming I get everyone’s food on the table before the kids finish their meals anyway. That’s mostly a lunch problem. We often have different lunches because we are eating leftovers. So be the time I sit down, they are done. But Claire is asking to pray more and Alex is asking to pray, though he doesn’t really talk. He just folds his arms and bows his head and mumbles while I tell him what to say.  And the kids rarely let us go to bed without saying prayers. If we do, it’s because they fell asleep in the car or something.

FHE- Okay, seriously, this year, we are going to do it. Claire is definitely old enough to sit through 10-15 minutes. I think I will just go through the nursery manual for FHE or something.

Scriptures- also something we need to work on. I’ve got another calendar just for family scripture study to mark the days we read. And I really want this to work. I don’t care if the kids just run around while we read. I want to be reading.

Preschool for the kids- Alex is now at the age where he might enjoy some more learning type stuff. I do try to get the educational stuff out – the play doh, the finger paints, the beans (for scooping, pouring, making a general mess). We color. But I feel like so many of my days are spent doing anything other than interacting with my kids. They love to play together, which is great, but I also need to spend more time playing with them and teaching them. I’m not sure how I am going to tackle this one yet. I’ve still got the other program I was thinking of using for Claire. I can use it for both of them. It’s really still the preparation that bogs me down. He’s too young to understand a workbook. I think Claire may be as well. I just worry. I read a few parenting magazine and they all say kids in preschool do better in regular school. They tend to graduate from college and get advanced education, which is something I want for my kids. (Hopefully something with a little more use than my college degree, but if it makes them happy…) There are desperately few preschool programs here in town. The ones I’ve seen are $70 a month or more for a 3 year old class and there is no public preschool. And she wouldn’t be able to enroll until August anyway. Part of me says just find a good curriculum, buy it outright, use it with all the kids, and save lots of preschool moneys.  But the other part of me says “we don’t have the money and you won’t follow through anyway”. I really admire those women who homeschool their kids from scratch and piece together a curriculum and get just the books they want. But honestly, if I were to homeschool, I could not do it that way. I would have to buy a curriculum. So I don’t really know where to go from here. This is one of those ephemeral goals that may or may not be met.

Temple/Date Night- we do fairly well and get out about every 3 months. It’s pretty difficult to find a sitter here. I’ve got one that isn’t too far away and drives her own car, and the kids know her because she is one of the sitters at bible study, but she isn’t always available and Alann and I are so last-minute planners.  That’s my own fault I know.  Temple is also hard because they do the youth temple night the same night as the adults, so we can’t really go then because we have no sitter. But I want to work on it.

Less yelling/stress/fighting in the house. I’m not really sure how to work this one. I’m working on my part of it, but the kids are getting to the age where they are fighting over things now. Alex cries pretty often- probably 10 or more times a day. I’m trying to not be so quick to comfort him so that he learns to comfort himself and so they can learn to work things out themselves. Mostly I try to step in before someone loses an eye.