As another year comes to a close, I look back at how much has happened in the past 12months and how much my kids have grown. For our household, we experienced quite a bit in 2008. Grandma came to visit us from Washington state (to NY), not just once, but twice this year. We traveled to Florida for a family vacation and to visit old friends of ours from when we lived there. I got very sick and spent some time in the hospital prior to giving birth 6 weeks early to our beautiful son, and then had to stay in the hospital several days more after delivery. Our son stayed in the NICU for almost 3 weeks and we were so happy when our entire family was home together. Our last big event in 2008 (I hope) was our recent move. We did not move too far, but far enough that the kids had to say goodbye to some acquaintances that they probably will not see again. These were just family events from the past year and do not include the historic presidential campaigns and election, the major flucuations of gas prices, or the financial crisis we have witnessed in the housing and stock markets.
I am sure we are not the only family that experiences such major changes each year and I know millions of others experienced the other events along with us. How neat it would be to look back on past years and see the changes experienced not just in the world, but also in your home. This year, we are planning to put together a family time capsule as part of our New Year's Eve celebration. We wil include a family picture taken at Christmas, several pictures from throughout the year (depicting the major events of the year), news clippings, and any special pictures or crafts made by family members. Additionally, each person (who can write) will write a little about themselves and their personal events of the past year. They will include favorites (foods, colors, etc) friends, future goals, etc. We will then pack the time capsule away with our Chirstmas decorations to be reviewed next New Year's Eve. I am hoping to do this every year and slowly add to the time capsule collection so that we can review not only the prior year, but also 5 years prior or 10 years prior, etc. Another option would be to create a year-end scrapbook together.
Now onto the assignment: Another thing I am planning on New Year's is to set some goals as a family for 2009. Next week's Family Friday will be to discuss the goals we have set. Your assignment is to think about what goals you would like to set for your family and either discuss them with your family to agree on them (they ARE family goals, not OUR goals for the family) or set up a time to do so. Be sure to include goals that span a variety of areas in your family life. For us, we will have spiritual goals (can include setting up regular family scripture reading or prayer, regular church attendance, etc), time goals (committing to spending a certain amount of time to certain activities), economic goals, health goals (can include increasing eating healthy foods, decreasing eating unhealthy foods, increasing exercise, decreasing idle time) and recreation goals (can include vacation plans or extracurricular activities).
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