Hopes, dreams, aspirations...things that go bump in the night

As you probably guessed from an earlier post, I don't make New Year's Resolutions.

I do, however, believe that growth is intentional.  And to that end, Josh and I had a discussion last night on where we would like to see ourselves and our family go, and how we plan to get there. 

By no means are these "this year only" things.  Many of these are ongoing - things we started last year but  feel we can grow more in that area.  Others will only last a little while before they need to be adjusted according to Kekoa's age.

So here they are: my goals for growth.  Not for the year, necessarily, but for however long it takes for these goals to become ingrained habits, or until this particular season of life changes.

Immediate Family:

• Establish family dinners when we add dinner to Kekoa's solids next month.  
• We've started praying with Kekoa before bed and want to start reading his Bible story book to him as well (this will have to wait until he's older...right now he can't quite make it through).

Extended Family: 

• Find ways to purposefully include Kekoa's grandparents in his life.  Right now we're trying to make consistent calls via webcam and that's great, but as he grows I want to find something for him to share with each set of grandparents.  I'm drawing a blank on how to do that right now (ideas, anyone?  How do you keep your children plugged in with their long-distance grandparents?).
• I want to make regular phone calls to our own grandparents.

Church:

• Since Kekoa is in the (wonderful beautiful amazing) habit of napping on my lap right through worship (!!!) and the sermon, we've mostly been back-row spectators on Sunday mornings this year.  Now we're attending Sunday School, so I want to start helping in nursery during that time period.

Community/Personal Spiritual Goal: 

• Become a initiator of relationships: each day I want to email, write to, or call one person.  I've been doing this for several months now as part of my daily routine. 
• Maintain relationships through the practice of hospitality (I did a blog post on this earlier). 

Physical goal:

• Working on slowly cutting out more processed foods and replacing canned goods with fresh or dried alternatives (emphasis on slowly).
• In exercise and lifestyle, focus on healthy, not necessarily on distance or weight or how many reps I can do.   Pregnancy and then baby weight were fabulous motivators to keep exercising, and now I need to rely on long-term perspective rather than immediate gratification as a motivation.

So - that's the plan!  We want our household to continuously grow in mental, emotional, social, spiritual, and physical health, and these are our baby steps to get there.