New Year Resolutions

I don't know if making new year's resolutions is still a thing or not, but I always like to make them. Peter and I both grew up making goals for the new year with our families.

Growing up, my Dad always made us set goals in different categories that he always compared to a wagon wheel. The lecture stayed pretty much the same every year, and for whatever reason, the category "social-emotional" always seemed oddly named to me. But all joking aside, I'm really glad my Dad made me do that every year; I learned a lot about goal setting and the importance self-improvement, and ultimately, eternal progression.

Peter's goal setting experiences were similar. Amazingly, my mother in law kept almost all the goals her kids set over the years, and recently she gave us a large box of papers and I found some. I have to share my absolute favorite goals Peter set growing up.

As a kid, Peter (age 6) set a goal to shower at least 3 times a week. This cracked me up on it's own. But then, I looked at his goals for the next year. Apparently, 3 times a week was a bit of a stretch, so that year's goal was just to shower twice a week. By the next year, he apparently still struggled with this, and finally made the goal to just "shower." I was in tears reading these; little Peter was such a crack-up. Peter swears he only wrote that because it was easy and he didn't actually have to do anything. I may or may not believe him.

Also worth mentioning, his social goal at age 13: "to bug dad about how lame he is."

And let's not forget his lifetime goal of owning 50 acres of sand dunes.

And I'm sure I set plenty of silly goals as a kid, too. I mean, this is coming from the girl who had "brush teeth" as a job chart category into high school (I swear I brushed my teeth; I just didn't want to lose the easy 25 cents I got for that!), and had the lifetime goal in 2nd grade to work at Dodger Stadium in concessions. And I'm pretty sure I wanted to climb Mount Everest with my American Girl doll (I was really into Sir Edmund Hillary because, you know, what 8 year old girl isn't?).

But seriously. We set goals for the new year this week with our kids and I'm making sure they get written down, because a major part of the goal lecture from Dad included the quote "a goal not written down is simply a wish" several times.

Hamilton Family 2015 Motto: "Love One Another"
We could all stand to work on loving each other more, being more patient, more willing to share, more charitable. And this extends beyond our family circle; we hope to increase our love, compassion, and service for all around us.

Jude's Goals
1. Get fully potty trained. Mom can't handle the back-sliding anymore. Time to get potty trained and ready for preschool this fall.
2. Learn to get dressed, use seatbelt, do basic things for himself. Basically, my theme for Jude this year is "become more independent and less clingy."
3. Go to preschool. This may be more of a goal for mom and dad, who may have to start a drug cartel or something to afford it.
4. Complete weekly chore chart, earn allowance, pay tithing. This has been on mom's do list for awhile, but I am seriously making it happen this year. Also, Jude's already picked out his first toy purchase when he has enough saved up: a little $3.99 train from Ikea he calls "the BART train."
5. Share with Eleanor & be a good example. Dreams, I know.
(We tried to get Jude to come up with his own goals, but all his goals were to "get more model trains.")

Also, there's this fantastic gem from just today:

Linda's Goals
1. Stay home more. I know this is basically the opposite of most people's goals to get out more, but I'm with Liz Lemon on this one. I need to stay home more and make less unneeded trips to Target. Really, I want to work hard on less unnecessary money spending, which usually happens when I get bored and invent an errand.
2. Paint the house. I'm gonna be brave and paint the house something other than off-brown. Hopefully it won't take me 11 months to summon up the courage to make a color choice.
3. Practice the oboe 3x a week. I know I don't actually have anything to practice for, but I really want to keep it up. I have my eye on some possible community orchestras (if they ever have an opening) for the future.
4. Less TV during the day. I made this goal for myself a couple years ago and I actually did it; I no longer watch my shows during the day. But, now we've slipped further and further into kid's tv land and it's getting kinda bad. I need to be stronger and just make Jude play by himself when I need to get things done instead of relying on the tv to keep him distracted.
5. Find new exercise program. My first half marathon is in two weeks and I've been training like crazy for it. But once it's over I'll need to figure out my next fitness goal and what will work for me. And no, there is NO WAY I'm running a marathon. The first guy who did that DIED remember?! We do not need to commemorate that.

Family Goals
1. Go camping & other family trips. We love spending time with our extended family on both sides, but we'd also really like to take some vacations that aren't compulsory family reunions. I'd like to road trip somewhere totally new; maybe one of those middle states?
2. Read scriptures every night. We just need to make this a habit. We're kinda on and off about doing it consistently, so we'd really like to get it ingrained. Also, maybe come up with a more engaging way to read with the kids?
3. Finish the backyard. We need grass, pronto. It's basically a mud pile right now and I never let the kids go out because I don't want to deal with the mess. But that totally defeats the purpose of having a backyard, so we need to get it all cleaned up and ready for play!
4. Do a family service project. Something to help the community or a local family and make sure the kids are involved!
5. Go to the temple at least once a month. We almost made it last year, just missed a couple months in the summer!

Peter is keeping his goals private, but I promise there are no showering goals this year. And by that I mean an absence of a "showering goal" not a goal to "not shower". I can confirm he does in fact shower regularly.

Eleanor's only goal is to keep being ridiculously cute, which won't be hard at all.