New Year's Resolutions for Families

By Katy Agro Myers

The new year is around the corner and once again the world is looking forward to a fresh start and feeling hopeful!

This year, I'd like to sit down with my family and set some goals-but not the usual "eat better, exercise more, yell less" goals. This year I'd like to set some goals that focus on togetherness and spreading kindness. With that in mind, I came up with a list to help us make a plan. My thought is that we will choose 2-3 of these things to do monthly and each month at the beginning of the month, we'll have a family meeting and come up with our plans.

• Make one meal together each month Start to finish, planning, shopping, prep, and clean up-we'll work together to create a meal for ourselves.

• Get outside more often Even when it's cold, we'll take walks, look at the stars, leaves changing, flowers blooming, and talk about how beautiful our world is.

• Monthly game nights We play a lot of games already, but knowing that one night a month is going to be reserved for games. Maybe we'll even throw in some new ones to learn ;-)

• Plan a surprise for someone monthly Maybe it's dropping a plant off to a neighbor, or leaving a surprise movie night basket for a friend. We will come up with some act of kindness and plan a surprsise.

• Plan one family house project for the year We bought a fixer upper last year and my kids have loved being involved in projects. While my husband and I sometimes cringe at their painting skills or lack of attention to detail, I'm convinced there's some outdoor project we can work on together. Redoing our shed? Renovating our gardens? Some task we can accomplish together and see our results.

• Practice gratitude I know from my own experience that the more I remember to be grateful, the happier I am. I try my hardest to instill this in my children, but it's hard somedays. I was just thinking that maybe we could have a "gratitude board" in our house somewhere where we just walk by and remember to write something we're grateful for on it. At the end of the month we can look back and remember all the reasons to be thankful.

I hope these help to inspire your family to set some family goals this year! Happy New Year!