Goals in '12

Goal making is fun. Goal keeping is a bit trickier but it's always fun to make them at least :) Here is our inspiration for goal-making each year

Luke 2:52 And Jesus ^aincreased in ^bwisdom and stature, and in ^cfavourwith God and man.

I love to read. A lot. I don't enjoy crafts & projects -they just stress me out- although I do want to try to remedy that someday when I have more time. What I like to do to relax after a long day or any time I can squeeze it in is to read, read, read. I can't ever get enough it seems. Something happened in the very early part (like 11 days into it) of 2010 that put reading on hold for me for a year. I only read 6 books in 2010 & 3 of them were the Hunger Games books which I read in a week & 1 was 'Charlotte's Web' that I read to Hyrum. Even though I felt like I didn't have time, I missed books so much, I decided to make a goal in 2011 to read at least 1 book a month. I ended up reading 34 books! I was so proud of myself for making the time.

Here are some of my favorites:

The Mistborn trilogy (I'm not a big fantasy fan but I am now a hugely converted Brandon Sanderson fan); Anne Frank: A Biography, North & South (they have a great 4 hour BBC movie adaptation of this), Defiance: the Bielski Partisans (an amazing true WWII story), Little Dorrit (again they have a superb BBC movie of this book-8 hourssss though), Little Princes:One man's promise to bring home the lost children of Nepal (love hearing of all the good things that people do in the world), all the Artemis Fowl books, & Goose Girl (such a sweet story!)

I made the same goal this year but I'm a little worried that something happening around March 3rd may put my reading on hold again :) So I've already read 8 books so far (lots of Shannon Hale & Agatha Christie)

This is the first year we involved the boys in goal making & it was fun. We had them just make one goal & draw a picture of it.

The other main goal I'm most excited about is our Mommy/Daddy-dates. Each month either Jeremy or I will take each of the big kids on a one-on-one date. I did December, Jeremy did January & it's my turn again. I have a friend with 5 little kids spaced the same as ours & she & her husband do this & that was my inspiration. It doesn't have to be super long but I think it will be a special tradition if we can keep this up. It will get a little trickier as they all get old enough to participate but I am really excited about this. Having all these kids close together it gets really hard to have any sort of alone time with any of them but I think it's important. I remember my parents doing this for a couple of years & I loved it. So here is to lots of good memories (hopefully!)

New Baby!!!

Haha, made ya' look. Not that new baby-I still have four weeks on that one. A new baby to drive. After 6 years & 3 months of good times together we finally needed to say goodbye to our 16 year old Dodge Grand Caravan. It has been such a great car but it's been having lots of trouble over the last year.

We bought a new Honda Odyssey last night & can I tell you how nice this thing is? So nice, that's how nice. And I'm not worried about getting stranded driving it! One of the best parts - no car payments- wouldn't Dave Ramsey be proud of us if he read our blog??

Coming home from the park today Hunter started complaining his tummy hurt & we barely got out of the car before he puked a lot, a lot, a lot. I am SO glad it was on our floor instead of in the new car-whew! Close one.

Hunter asked me to draw a picture of he & I together.

And then he drew one too & I like his drawing better. Most of me hopes he always draws people with just a head, limbs & hair & no body. And I really like his name - you never know what order the letters will be in :)