Resolve

Happy 2019 everyone! It's that time of year where many of us are reflecting on the past year and creating new goals for this new year. I truly enjoy this time of year. I feel that it is very important for both an individual and a family to have time to reflect and to set goals in order to improve everyone's happiness, health and to make each year a better one.

Reflection with your family allows you to discuss the positives from the previous year.  You all can reminisce about the special moments, highlights and goals that were achieved together.  This is a really special time that promotes closeness and displays the strengths of your family and the bond that you share. The reflection is also a time to discuss the harder times. The trials and tribulations, how you handled them and what you would like to do differently. This discussion promotes openness and honesty and depicts a strength in your family to work thru these challenges. The reflection period allows your family to set goals that you all can achieve together to make your family stronger and closer and happier.

Our family goals include: going on some wonderful new hikes, saving money, paying off debt, exploring the great Pacific Northwest, gaining new experiences together and spending more time with friends and family. Our goal overall is to have a pretty low key but fun year. Over the last several years we have got married twice (once was internationally), bought a house and had a kid sooo we've been really busy and spent lots of money. We have also flown a lot with Calvin. This has been both wonderful and chaotic and has caused many new grey hairs. Especially considering our last flight, where we spent the majority of it standing and walking him up and down the aisles, we believe he is no longer at a very doable age to fly.  Instead, we want to currently focus on instilling a passion in Calvin for his home state. There is still a lot in Washington that we haven't seen so we want to go see it together. Hopefully, we can put our new toddler hiking back pack to good use this summer! Now that we have some sort of routine established and now that this parenting thing isn't brand spanking new we want to get out more and see more of our friends too.

Reflection should happen on an individual level as well. In order for a family to be healthy and happy the individual members must be healthy and happy. You can only be your best wife, friend, mother, sister coworker and so on if you are giving yourself the best you can. I feel like it can be pretty common for us mother's to put ourselves at the bottom of the priority list because we want to make sure that everyone and everything has what it needs. However, it is essential to us and for our families that we take time to care for ourselves and to love ourselves. We deserve it and it is going to allow us to continue to be Superstar moms.

My personal goals for the 2019 year are to: love myself more, to let the little things go and to work on balancing life better. It is so important for us mothers to love ourselves. We work so very hard and are so incredible and we need to appreciate our bodies and our minds and hearts that let us accomplishments this. I hope to love myself more by continuing to take better care of myself. I need to eat better and to eat when I'm hungry...not when I am beyond starving and shove some Calvin's snacks in my face. I need to go to the doctor more and listen to what my body is telling me and give it what it needs. I hope to love myself more by treating myself. I want to treat my body with massages or potentially getting some extra z's (hahaha!) or working out more. I want to love myself by being positive with myself and appreciating what I'm able to accomplish.

I want to work on letting the little things go. I  have always been a clean and neat freak. I come home and have to go thru and immediately straighten up the house. I don't like dirty dishes left in the sink. I have to have my laundry folded and put away. There has been times that I have lost sleep to finish these things since having a kid. Sometimes I have missed now super rare time that I could have spent with Wally on a day off to get the house in order. I am constantly picking up and cleaning after each activity that my tornado of a toddler does instead of just waiting until the end of the day so I have more time with him. I want to start leaving some dishes in the sink or not picking up all the time and gaining the parental experience of stepping on a leggo.  I want to put time in where time is important. I'm positive that the chores, laundry and dishes will always be there later...or even the next day.

I also hope to work on balancing life better. This is a hard thing to do whether you have kids or not but having kids in the mix makes this extra challenging. I want to work on balancing my time so that I have mother-son time, time with my immediate family (husband and son), spouse time, time to myself, time with family and friends and whatever I have left over (because I have sooo much of that being a working mom) will go to the house. I know that there will be weeks where I spend more time in one area than another. Life is crazy and not perfect and all I can do is roll with the punches and try my best to balance my time to the best of my abilities.

I am really looking forward to growing and learning and having a wonderful 2019 year! I hope that you all spend some time reflecting and setting some goals to ensure that 2019 is your best year yet!