The list is long and my sights are high and I know the year will bring more than I will be prepared for. The the list of things I want to learn, do, see, accomplish.
Make a point of spending as much time as possible with my kids and make a plan to do so. Spend more time reading the Bible because it has supernatural transforming power that I desperately need. I am going to Sacremento, CA for a week to visit with a friend and horseback ride through the Sierra mountain range and camp at Lake Tahoe. I can only imagine the things that my eyes will behold in that week and I anticipate it being a life changing experience. I want to teach myself how to make lotion bars and I want to continue learning to make diffferent artisan breads. So far I have Boule, focaccia and down pat and absolutely love them. And if I get really brave I may possibly attempt to make hard cheese, though quite honestly it scares me half to death. Who knows why I am scared of cheese but it is the truth:). I want to get more more fit and want to get my horse more fit in the process too. I hope to go to lessons once a month and a show once a month. Those are pretty high ambitions and I will be happy to make a few shows all season. The lessons though are a must. I plan to go to the eventing camp at Come Again Farms in July and I am already overwhelmed thinking about the work it will take to prepare, then all the work during the 4 day camp and 1 day show and all the information I am surely going to me inundated with. But it is all so exciting. We will surely add more to our garden this year and I am still going to do most of my seed starting and hope to be even more successful at that this year. I started a few things in the cold frame last year and they were all very successful so i am going to try it a little earlier and plant a little more. The garden is an amazing amount of work especially since I am the only one that does the work though each year I utilize the kids more and more but it provides so much satisfaction. First of all knowing that there is no healthier food on the planet. It is of course a way to save an great deal of money throughout the year on grocery shopping. We eat from our freezer and pantry throughout the winter months and the homemade food cannot be matched from the store. We will again purchase turkeys though I wll probably put my foot down and not do it until we have proper housing for them. The amount of extra work it is for me because I am constantly moving them all over is not something I want to do again. We are going to have to break out our nonexsistent engineering degree and come up with the perfect solution. Some sort of turkey tractor would be ideal because free ranging is a must. Then going trail riding with Elaina and possibly Macy depending on how she does in 4-h. The hours out on the trail with my daughters are something that will stay will them throughout their lives as it will mine.
These are the ones on my heart today and as the year draws to an end I know my mind will be making more lists and goals as it does every year about this time. I know some people find resolutions cliche and a waste and I cannot say I disagree. I don't see this as a time for resolutions but a time of refocusing. We all need to take time out in our lives to think about where we are and where we want to be. If we have no goals then we will unintentionally spend too much time wandering aimlessly with no destination in mind. For me it is usually just after Christmas and into the New Year that I refocus my heart and mind toward the ultimate destination that I want to be in my life. The time I question my focus for the past years and get a picture of what kind of life I want. I decide with a prayerful heart what steps I need to take to make that picture a reality. Then I write down the steps. Then the only thing left to do is to take the first step!
I have done goals again...perhaps 3 years in a row. And some things are carried over still from the first one! But I have read that writing your goals down to see helps to make them happen. Time flies and if you don't grab onto some, it's all gone and time for bed..or getting up! Spending time with your children is blessed. Spending time with your Bible is also blessed. One year I organized a group in our church and we read through the Bible in a year, but I realize how I didn't really chew on some of it because I was doing the rush, rush thing. So we have a new plan to re-visit some of the Bible Stories of our childhood with a little more depth- this year's reading project at church. Activity sheets and questions for the whole family! Hope it works out for us. Last year was a passport to stamp each week, but perhaps a little too unchallenging. I had 20 people read the whole Bible and at least we can all say we did it!!
ReplyDeleteI also have bread and cheese on my list. I want to make some different breads and to make at least mozzerella once. But now I've got to fly, because time is passing, oh, so fast!!
Good Luck