2017 Goals

Nendrum Monastic Site

For the last several years, I have posted a list of my yearly goals here. It isn't from some weird desire to be an exhibitionist about what I am planning, but more with the hope that the whole idea of setting goals, and even some of my specific goals, will spark ideas for you. I believe that God has good plans for us, and that, just as He did in the lives of so many people in the past, He wants to lead us into those good plans. 

bundled up

I haven't always started my goal setting with God in mind, but this year, I have as an overarching goal, a desire to start inviting God into even the most mundane of decisions. I so often get overburdened and overscheduled because I do things to be nice, or even to be a good Christian, and then end up frustrated, discouraged and grumbling, nothing good or Christian about that.

Old churches

So after praying, I have a theme of "metamorphosis". That's my word for the year, and I guess it's a fancy word for transformation and change. Many of my goals flow from that word, or have that idea at their core.

If you are confused about how I came about the categories, here is a post by a friend that explains this whole system. I love the idea of setting goals in several areas instead of just globbing together a bunch of goals. However, if these categories don't work for your family, make your own.

Ireland-beautiful and cold

Also, I realize that this post is late! Hopefully, most of you have already made your New Year's goals. We made ours while sitting around a cozy fire with my aunt and uncle in Ireland, but after that, we spent 10 days doing ministry in Tanzania, Africa, (you can read more about the trip and it's educational benefits in an upcoming Wild and Free bundle). Since arriving home, we have been trying to actually implement the plans that we made while we were away. It's been busy, but good, and connection with my family has been the priority. I am fully aware that the days of having all my children home are numbered, and I am enjoying them fully.

2017 Goals

Self Care

Daily Yoga/Pilates

Do a monthly fast or cleanse

Spiritual Life

Memorize one verse each week

Make listening to God a priority

Intellect/Emotions

Teach chore consistency to children

Make math understandable

Relationships

Special focus on relationship with middle children

Listen actively to children

Time Management

Family Bible by 8:15

Spend 1-3pm on writing projects

Nest Management

Work towards simplified garden/possible downsize

Teach better home care habits to children

Uniquely You

Finish memoir with Emelie

Go to a writers conference

Financial Stewardship

Publish Playful Pioneers

Learn Squarespace

You can read about past year's goal setting here. If you need resources for learning how to goal set, my course, Bountiful Homeschooling on a Budget, is full of ideas for creating a family vision and life plan. 

On Mt. Kilamanjaro

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

I have three birthdays in December, and keeping up with all those birthdays, definitely took a toll on our excitement about Christmas. We had decided back in October to focus on used or homemade gifts for Christmas, in an effort to create less junk, and save money for things that we value, and although that worked out really well, the entire holiday just seemed a little less exciting to me this year. 

Hopefully, my children did not catch my lack of Christmas spirit. We played lots of Christmas carols, sang at a convalescent home, baked cookies, and walked by Christmas lights in an effort to make the season bright for our children, and keep their eyes bright with the joy of the season. 

 We also had a fabulous three days at the coast just a week and a half before Christmas, which didn't help with our Christmas prep, but certainly contributed some wonderful relationship building time, which is what Christmas is really about anyway.

 I confess, I am happy that it is over. I feel so excited about setting goals for the new year, and getting back into the wonderful routine of homeschooling and gardening, and mothering my children. 

For the last several years I have posted my goals for the new year here. It has been a really good way to keep me accountable. As I set goals, I pray that my vision would also be aligned with what God wants for me in the coming year.



I have been reading, Becoming Myself, by Stasi Eldridge, and one of the exercises that she has you complete in the book, is to write a list of all your biggest dreams. Sometimes, in the busy years of mothering and homeschooling, we fail to look down the road at the bigger picture. 




Even Sarah Mackenzie, in her talk at the Wild and Free conference in Virginia talked about looking forward twenty years, and dreaming about what you want your children to remember about their homeschool years. Dreaming is an important first step in any goal setting process, if we don't know what the long view is, how can we make daily or monthly goals that make sense?

So this week, as I prepare to make three month goals for the year, I am setting aside time to dream and journal about what  the focus of this next season will be. 

What are your big dreams, and the daily steps you will take to accomplish them?

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Homeschool Planning

I have been busy over the last few days feverishly sipping iced coffee and working on plans for our upcoming school year. Although a few of my students were still finishing up stuff from last year as I worked, that small fact won't deter me from getting started on our plans for a new year. I will have five students in the coming year, and although I will be sending a few of my students to community college for some of their classes, it is still a tremendous amount of planning.

The very first step for me when planning our homeschool year, is to evaluate what went well in the year we just (nearly) finished. If a curriculum was causing a lot of frustration, then it it will probably not be used again. Same thing with classes and activities; because there are so many of us, I have to carefully evaluate what we spend our time and money on.

The homeschool planner by Alicia Hutchinson has been a great resource for me this year, as I work on this process. I usually pull together calendars and lesson plans from various sources on the internet, but when I saw that Alicia had put together a planner that was sold as a download so I could easily fit the pages into my existing binder system, I was really excited to try it.

One of the first pages that I used was the, "More Of This, and Less of This" page. Tools like this, really help me to nail down my thoughts so that my planning makes sense.

Once I had jotted down some thoughts there, I printed one of the lesson plan pages which I used to jot down ideas of which curriculum I would use for each child. This provided a helpful grid for remembering which subjects I needed to cover as I hashed out what resources I would need. As I filled in the squares with book and curriculum ideas, I then made notes at the bottom of the page about which subjects I would need to purchase. As a long time homeschooler, I am blessed to be able to pull from a stash of books that I have collected through the years. This is one of many ways that I am able to homeschool on a budget. 

I also started a comprehensive list of what books we would be reading in the coming school year. I don't want our schooling to be just about getting through a textbook, but I want my children to interact with real ideas from living books, the kind of books that bring history to life. The planner from Alicia also included a helpful resource for book lists. 

If only the work ended there, but unfortunately, the next task usually takes the longest. Before I can get my students baskets filled with their new books, I have to weed through the pictures and pencil stumps and (mostly) finished workbooks to decide what to keep and what to get rid of. I used to keep nearly every bit of work, until a helpful friend recommended just keeping a few samples. You could check with your state, but this article from HSLDA suggests keeping samples of work, attendance records and records of what curriculum you used, among other things, but doesn't say that I have to keep every single workbook page. Sweet relief.

I did find that since we moved away from using so many workbooks, and more towards integrating written and oral narration, our keepers are much more fun. I ended up stapling some of the best ones into a booklet that we could flip through later to remember our happy homeschool year. This amazing post by Jodi Mockabee gives some more clever ideas for saving your children's best work.

Once I had gone through and cleaned out the baskets, they were ready to fill with our new curriculum, which I am slowly compiling. As I filed last years school work, I also averaged out test scores to give grades to my high school and junior high students, and filled in simple report cards for all of them. We don't make a big deal about grades in our house, everyone is expected to give their best effort, but I do start coaching them on the importance of grades as they enter the junior high and high school years. That is when grades start adding up to money for college, if that is the path they choose.

Once all the grades have been logged and last years school work filed, I am left with empty baskets and a happy list of what we will be studying in the coming year. There is plenty more to do, before I officially start school, but I am super happy to have the most difficult jobs behind me so I can get back to reading aloud to my kids.

I was blessed with a review copy of the planner, which is well worth its bargain price tag. It had tons of options for planner pages, and is a great tool for getting your homeschool organized.

Goal Setting For A New Year

I love Christmas, but as soon as the day is past, I am ready to get organized for the new year. In the past, I would wait until New Year's Day to put away the Christmas ornaments. This year, by the Monday following Christmas I had put away my decorations, organized the school baskets and painted a new-used table for our school area. 

The downside of all this productivity was that by New Year's Eve, instead of feeling all festive, I cuddled up in a cozy sweater, hardly bothered to apply makeup and showed up at a party for just a couple hours before heading back home to bed. I was even a little taken aback when I arrived at my fellow homeschool mom's house for the party and saw her looking beautiful and bedazzled, complete with lipstick and a sparkly sweater. I think the premature start on New Years productivity completely sapped my party spirit. Note to self, give yourself a little time for fun.

Goal setting and productivity is a form of recreation for me though, which is why I look forward to this day of evaluating the goals I set in the previous year, and setting new ones. As I look over last year's list, I see that many of the same goals will be recycled for this season. Partly because they are important, and partly because I really didn't make them into a habit last year.

I am still loving the system taught by Colleen Adams which you can find explained in detail here. The short story is that, instead of trying to make A, B and C goals, or just a big list of general goals for the year, Colleen's method has you break down your goal setting into eight different areas. Also, instead of making goals for the whole year, these goals are meant to be for a shorter time period, such as three months.

The goals I set don't always turn into habits; I may have to keep rewording some of the ones that are the most difficult for me to become consistent in. Exercise, for instance, is just so easy to relegate to a low place after laundry and social media. That is why it keeps getting put back on the list. The upside is that bed making and closet organization are becoming consistent so that they can be dropped from the list.

Making goals and working towards them, while remaining flexible to the Holy Spirit, is one small step towards an orderly life and a civilized world.

As a starting point for your 2015 goal setting, I have included my goals for the first three months of the year, in each of eight areas.

1. Self Care

Exercise 5 days a week

Drink 6 glasses of water per day

2. Spiritual Life

Daily Bible copy-work

Spend first 30 minutes of the day in prayer and Bible study

3. Intellect/Emotions 

(for me right now, these are some goals with my kids)

Weekly nature walk and journaling

Teach chore consistency with children

4. Relationships

Weekly date with my honey

Work on eye contact with my children

(I do a lot of listening while working, but kids need eye contact)

5. Time Management

No phone/computer until priorities 1, 2 and 3 are done

Family Bible time by 8:30 a:m

6. Nest Management

Monthly deep cleaning

Library redo (tile, flooring, window)

7. Uniquely You

(This might mean weekly pedicures, or more time spent on self care, 

but those aren't my top priorities right now)

Weekly blog post

Improve photography

8. Financial Stewardship

Make a list of accounts

Make some money

God has plans and purposes for each one of us, and as we seek His face, He will give us inspiration about those priorities that He wants us to focus on. 

After you write down your purposes for the year, be sure and find some friends to share them with so that you can encourage each other to pursue the dreams that God has put in your hearts.

The steps of a good man are ordered of the Lord: and he delighteth in his way

Psalm 37:23

A few other resources for goal setting-

Tell Your Time

Goal Setting Printables

and linking up here for many more goal setting resources.

Bountiful Homeschooling On A Budget

I published a book. It has been a long held dream of mine to write a book, but taking care of my children, homeschooling and writing articles has taken most of my time so that book writing and marketing was just an idea in the back of my head.

The thing that finally made my dream a reality was seeing the persistence that my 12 year old son had to publish his book, Finding Joy In a World of Sorrow. He found a self publishing website, wrote the book, and I finally came in at the end to briefly edit it.

Fun at a local park

I have had many ideas for book, I am passionate about so many things, so choosing a topic to narrow in on was one of the hardest parts initially. However, my workshop on Homeschooling on a Budget provided a good framework for my first book.

My book, Bountiful Homeschooling On A Budget is not an exhaustive reference, but it is an entertaining, short book that is full of ideas for saving money as well as inspiration to know why you might want to save money.

Homemade Fun

One chapter is about saving money on household goods and I talk about how often our children have so many toys and playthings that their imagination and resourcefulness is hindered. This morning I was given hope, that despite my children's many toys, they still have an imagination.

My youngest daughter, seven years old, looked through a craft book and found the idea of painting rocks. She spent time painting with her younger brother, painting the rocks into an entire family complete with grandparents. She then painted bricks to be beds and a kitchen and then drew a chalk house on the patio to play in. Although she has a small doll house, what excited her more today was to build her own with rocks and chalk.

Your family can have the blessing of living on less so that you have more to give also, and this book may help you get started.

                                                             

I will be speaking on Bountiful Homeschooling On A Budget this Saturday at the Valley Home Educators Conference  and giving away a free copy of my book to one of my workshop attendees. It just might be you!

Cherry-Almond Granola, New Kids and a Flood

No sooner did I make an inspiring list of goals for the year than I got hit with a few major interruptions. First, our goat became a first time mama. The three kids are a delightful little distraction but it is easy to lose an hour staring at them when I only meant to quickly check on them.

In the midst of the fun our drain backed up, leaked out a faulty pipe and ruined my lovely kitchen floors. This necessitated digging a four by four hole in my laundry room floor which has left me in one of the worst situations for a large family. No laundry facilities!

However, I still yearn to spend quality time with my children and feed them healthy food so in the middle of the chaos I decided to enlist their help to turn some of my bulk purchased oatmeal into a hearty batch of tasty granola.

Cherry-Almond Granola

Preheat oven to 300

Mix in large bowl,

8 cups rolled oats

1 cup almonds

2 T chia seeds

1 cup coconut

(You could substitute any nut or seed in place of the almonds/chia seeds/coconut)

In a small saucepan melt together

1/2 cup butter

1/4 cup coconut oil

1/4 cup honey

1/4 cup molasses

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 t cinnamon

1 t pumpkin pie spice

1/4 t. salt

1 t. vanilla

Cook and stir just until melted and combined. Pour slowly over the oats mix, stirring thoroughly. 

Once all ingredients are evenly mixed, spread on two large cookie sheets.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown.

After removing from oven add 1 cup dried cherries.

(You could substitute any dried fruit on hand. I prefer to add after granola has cooked so the fruit does not dry out, just a personal preference).

Once cool, place in airtight container and enjoy.

As you can see, this was a fun and easy recipe that my children loved helping out with. It is also flexible enough that if a child does not measure exactly, it won't be ruined.

Linked up at Welcome Home Wednesdays

A Fresh New Year With Fresh New Goals

Photo courtesy, Emelie Pepito

I love Christmas, but as soon as the day is past, I am ready to get organized for the new year. One of my favorite New Year's traditions is getting the decorations put away and the rooms dusted and vacuumed. It is so nice to have everything fresh and clean again. Another of my favorite traditions for the first day of the year is making a whole new set of goals to help define the coming year. 

Although I have read many books on goal setting, one of my favorite systems was well explained by missionary wife Colleen Adams at a women's meeting I went to. Thankfully my creative friend Rebecca, beautifully explains the whole system here, visit her page and you will find a very clear explanation of each area of goal setting. The short story is that, instead of trying to make A, B and C goals, or just a big list of general goals for the year, Colleen's method has you break down your goal setting into eight different areas. Also, instead of making goals for the whole year, these goals are meant to be for a shorter time period, such as three months.

Although, some of last year's goals, have found their way back onto this year's list, making goals and working towards them is a useful way of starting to develop the good habits that make up an orderly life and a civilized world.

Photo courtesy, Emelie Pepito

As a starting point for your 2014 goal setting, I have included my goals for the first three months of the year, in each of eight areas.

1. Self Care

Pilates 5 times per week (planning for 5, might help me get at least 2 in!)

Drink 5 glasses of water per day (coffee doesn't count)

2. Spiritual Life

Finish Experiencing God (Henry Blackaby)

Spend first 30 minutes of the day in prayer/Bible study

3. Intellect/Emotions 

(for me right now, these are some homeschool goals)

Finish Algebra with second daughter

Consistent school with youngest children

4. Relationships

Spend friendly time with hubby when he arrives home 

(complaining about the day, or asking him to do a project does not count)

Read aloud to children daily

5. Time Management

No phone/computer until priorities 1, 2 and 3 are done

Up and productive by 7am

6. Nest Management

Keep my room clean

Keep the laundry room clean

(2 hot spots that make me feel better when tidy)

7. Uniquely You

(This might mean weekly pedicures, or more time spent on self care, 

but those aren't my top priorities right now)

Consistent blog upkeep

Keep closet organized

8. Financial Stewardship

Make a list of accounts

Organize household filing system

I hope these give you some ideas for your own goal setting. Be sure and pray through your goals and let God give you inspiration about what you should be doing. Then, once your goals are written down, find a friend to be your accountability partner and enjoy seeing all that you accomplish this year.

The steps of a good man are ordered of the Lord: and he delighteth in his way

Psalm 37:23

Linked up at Welcome Home Wednesdays