Our family tries to get together once a week, completely unplug, and spend some quality family time together. We usually hold a little family meeting, let the kids teach lessons about values we want to instill in them, play board games, or read stories. I love the time we spend together and our kids still look forward to it every week. We usually have our family night on Monday nights. So, I have been thinking a lot about our plan for tonight.
In honor of the new year, tonight we are going to set goals to accomplish. We will set family goals, and individual goals. Most will be shared with each other, but there will probably be some personal ones as well. We also review the goals we set last year and evaluate how well we did with them. We do this every year, typically the Monday directly following New Year’s Day, but last week we had a get-together with the extended family so we are a bit late.
I really enjoy this tradition. I feel like it gives us a sense of direction and allows us to have something clear and concrete that we would like to accomplish as a family. That way, when we are faced with a decision, we can determine whether or not it fits in line with our family goals.
For instance, this morning my husband and I were talking about the goals we might set this year. We wanted to propose a family trip to Hawaii at the end of 2010. Doing so would force us to put extra money away to save for the trip. Shortly after that conversation, my husband said, “we really need to carpet our basement.” I was able to point out that if we want to go to Hawaii, and that is our chosen goal, we should get the money we’ll need for that trip saved and stashed away, then if we have extra, we could finish the basement. Without the concrete goal of going on a family vacation, it would be easy to spend a little money here and there, then by the end of the year we wouldn’t have the money we’d need for the vacation.
We aren’t always good at reaching our goals, but at least it gives us something to work towards:). I guess our best is all we can expect.